{"id":118571,"date":"2014-08-07T21:30:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T03:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/treasurer-candidate-visits-cortez\/"},"modified":"2014-08-07T21:30:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T03:30:24","slug":"treasurer-candidate-visits-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/treasurer-candidate-visits-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasurer candidate visits Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Betsy
Betsy Markey visits with local residents as she campaigns for Colorado state treasurer.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Betsy Markey, the Democratic candidate for state treasurer and a former congresswoman, stopped in Cortez Tuesday and promised to bring innovation and transparency to the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should know how they\u2019re tax dollars are being spent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Markey is facing incumbent Walker Stapleton in the November election and was highly critical of her opponent\u2019s calls to reform the Public Employees Retirement Association into more of a 401(K) model that\u2019s used in the private sector. There are 500,000 public employees who rely on PERA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe it is a retirement system that needs to be protected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

PERA is $26 billion in debt, and it was reformed in 2010 to require employees and employers to contribute more to the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to let those changes play out,\u201d she said. If more reforms need to be made, she said she would work as a member of PERA\u2019s governing board to make sure the changes were made in a bipartisan way.<\/p>\n

However Michael Fortney a spokesman for Stapleton\u2019s campaign, said that since the expected rate of return was lowered last year the 2010 reforms will not solve the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely one of Treasurer Stapleton\u2019s priorities to get PERA back on solid financial footing,\u201d Fortney said.<\/p>\n

Fortney also touted Stapleton\u2019s first term accomplishments.<\/p>\n

In the past four years, Stapleton completely overhauled the way debt is issued in Colorado, making it more transparent and accountable. He also restructured Colorado\u2019s unemployment insurance, which has saved businesses up to $150 per employee, he said.<\/p>\n

If re-elected, Fortney said Stapleton was planning to work on possible ways to help improve debt management standards within colleges, the Colorado Department of Transportation and other agencies.<\/p>\n

Both candidates would carry impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Markey has run two small businesses and served in Congress from 2009 to 2010. Most recently she was the assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

Stapleton served as the CEO and CFO of various private and publicly traded companies before taking office.<\/p>\n

mshinn@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

contentious issue in state treasurer\u2019s race<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[438,450],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-118571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-food","tag-restaurant-and-catering"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118571"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=118571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}