{"id":96983,"date":"2018-11-23T21:02:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T04:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tipton-looks-to-tackle-disaster-assistance-opioid-crisis-in-fourth-term\/"},"modified":"2018-11-23T21:02:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T04:02:27","slug":"tipton-looks-to-tackle-disaster-assistance-opioid-crisis-in-fourth-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tipton-looks-to-tackle-disaster-assistance-opioid-crisis-in-fourth-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Tipton looks to tackle disaster assistance, opioid crisis in fourth term"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, plans to focus on wildfire prevention and veterans during his upcoming two-year term.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Five days before Election Day, election forecast blog<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the Republican was elected to represent Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District for his fourth term by 8 percent points over his Democrat challenger Diane Mitsch Bush. Now, Tipton may faces a new challenge: He\u2019s returning to a Democrat-led House after a wave of districts nationwide went blue.<\/p>\n

Tipton, however, told The Journal <\/em>he is not concerned about the Democrats\u2019 leadership because he has been able to garner bipartisan support for the bills he has authored and passed, including his May 2018 Education and Energy Act. The act relocated new federal mineral and geothermal lease royalties back to the states to fund public education.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are good, commonsense bills for not only our communities but for the West, and we hope to be able to continue to garner that support and work with our colleagues,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cThese issues, many of them, they shouldn\u2019t be political. These are important for our communities, our families and our jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tipton promised during his campaign to address key issues with taxes, jobs, public lands, benefits for veterans and more. He said he plans to focus on those issues during his two-year term as well as federal assistance for natural disasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne big issue, obviously for our district, and we\u2019re now continuing to see in California, are wildfires,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cWe see some opportunities to not only be able to create forest health \u2013 to be able to prevent the catastrophic nature of wildfires going forward \u2013 but to be able to create some jobs as well. And to make sure we\u2019re having provisions in place so that this natural disaster for the West is recognized by the federal government to be able to provide assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tipton said he will work to pass legislation introduced in early September that will create a federal designation for areas affected by wildfires on federal land, ensuring disaster assistance in the form of aids and grants. Tipton said the flood damage he witnessed at the Durango North\/Riverside KOA campground from the 416 Fire partly inspired the bill.<\/p>\n

Tipton also reinforced his support for several other environmental policy bills that would address the prevention and aftermath of wildfires, including the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, which passed the House last year and aims to remove restrictive regulations that prevent the U.S. Forest Service from allocating more time and money to wildfire prevention.<\/p>\n

The Farm Bill also includes reauthorization of the Landscape Scale Restoration Program, which Tipton said will allow the Forest Service to clean areas near public lands to prevent wildfires from breaking out.<\/p>\n

Other issues Tipton plans to tackle include legislation on opioid addiction prevention and treatment; legislation to improve benefits for veterans; small business deregulation; water rights and expansion of broadband into rural areas.<\/p>\n

Tipton previously included a provision he cosponsored with Colorado U.S. Sens. Cory Gardner, a Republican, and Michael Bennet, a Democrat, in the sweeping opioid bill signed into law by President Donald Trump in late October. Their ALTO Act established a permanent version of the Colorado Opioid Safety Collaborative Pilot, in which alternative painkillers were used and encouraged instead of opioids in hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a long road in front of everybody in our communities impacted by the opioid and heroin crisis,\u201d Tipton said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing some real movement now in that we\u2019re creating public awareness. \u2026 To be able to get resources back to our community for mental health and for treatment, this will be a long-term initiative, one that will not be solely solved by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tipton will continue to host roundtables with families affected by opioid addiction and with veterans in Colorado to get input from constituents.<\/p>\n

He will also continue to work on issues he addressed in his last term.<\/p>\n

Emily Martin is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Incumbent from Cortez won re-election by 8 percentage points<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96983","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=96983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96983"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}