Fifteen Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … State Rep. Gary McPherson, R-Aurora, who died when the small plane he was piloting crashed in British Columbia, was eulogized as a loving husband and father and “a gentleman who always had a smile on his face.” Gov. Bill Owens recalled how he had introduced McPherson and his wife-to-be, Shelley, the governor’s executive assistant.

While the Rod Stewart song “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” played, Owens spoke directly to the McPhersons’ three daughters, Christina, Elizabeth and Ashley. “Girls, your father was honest and kind,” Owens said at a memorial service at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church. “In a professional atmosphere that is sometimes contentious and at times even breeds disdain, Gary was someone who could always look for the positive in a situation.” Tributes to the three-term legislator came from both sides of the aisle. Wearing a tartan tie as a lone bagpiper played, House Speaker Russell George, R-Rifle, recalled his friend’s successes at the Capitol. House Minority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, said McPherson was well respected by members of both parties. Proud of his Scottish heritage, McPherson had joined state Rep. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora, to sponsor a measure establishing a state tartan, and both sponsors had worn full regalia, including kilts, for the House vote. An attorney with Kissinger and Fellman, McPherson was named an outstanding lawyer by the Colorado Bar Association several years earlier. During the service, Brandon Hull said the award would be named after McPherson. Also, Republican Debbie Stafford was appointed by Owens to serve the remainder of McPherson’s term. …

… Statesman “on-line editor” Norman Duncan took a look at useful websites in the Dot-politics column, including stateline.org and a nifty site run by Denver’s Robert Niles, who also oversaw the Rocky Mountain News website. The stateline site, run by the Pew Center on the States, included a robust and comprehensive list of news stories. For example, a Denver Post story about telephone giant Qwest paying for Colorado PUC members to take a trip to Arizona was “linked by a mouse click” from the site, as was a story about Gov. Bill Owens appearing at a Las Vegas campaign event for presidential candidate George W. Bush. The “data” site run by Niles contained “the most amazing trove of information I have ever seen in one location,” Duncan enthused, including the full text of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Duncan also praised Denver for its greatly expanded website, which had recently been named best municipal site in the country. Restaurant inspection reports, he noted, were just a few clicks away.

Fifty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Members of the Legislative Council and its staff had been busy studying a myriad of subjects in between sessions, House Information Clerk Elizabeth Wing wrote, and were readying proposals. Among them: establish a “consumer counsel” agency to represent the consumer’s point of view. “You can’t expect a private group funded from private sources not to have conflicts with consumer interests at least some of the time,” said state Rep. Gerald Kopel, D-Denver, “whether that group is a labor union or a Better Business Bureau.” State Reps. Mark Hogan, D-Denver, Richard Gebhardt, D-Boulder, J.D. MacFarlane, D-Pueblo, and Ken Monfort, D-Greeley, were putting together proposals on taxes. Tweaks included reducing the fee paid to vendors for collecting sales tax — it appeared to be among the highest in the country — and the possibility of posting property tax records so the public could examine them. …

… State Sen. Roger Cisneros, D-Denver, predicted a “vast reservoir of aroused Spanish-surnamed voters” in the Arkansas Valley would show up at the polls in a year to oust U.S. Sen. Gordon Allott and Gov. John Love in the 1966 election. Speaking at a conference in Lamar, Cisneros said many more Spanish-surnamed voters were turning out. “They started making their presence felt in force during the Kennedy campaign of 1960 and their numbers grew substantially in 1964 when the fear of Goldwater and the Far Right extremists sent them to the polls,” he said. “Now those same voters are dismayed at (Allott’s) opposition to programs such as Medicare, the War on Poverty and the much-desired permanent recreation pool at the John Martin Reservoir.” If the Spanish-surnamed voters register and show up to vote, Cisneros declared, they “could well hold the balance of political power in Colorado.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman