Easy -- Governor in Absentia.

No other state in the union would allow their chief executive to avoid the budget problems facing his or her state, as Colorado has allowed Owens to skate free on the issue.

The record is simple -- since last fall, the legislature from both sides has publically stated that the state will hit the fiscal wall, and the problems have to be fixed.

The Chief Executive's primary role in cases like this is to roll up the sleeves, get to work, negotiate, knock heads if need be, propose, knock more heads, GET SOMETHING DONE.

The media's role in grown-up states is to hold the Chief Executive accountable for doing so.

Colorado? Owens has avoided the issue entirely. Just as he's avoided every issue this calendar year (waiting for evidence otherwise from anyone).

And our illustrious local fourth estate has happily abetted his vacation. (The Post didn't even bother to try to find Owens for a quote today, no less hold him accountable. The Rocky, of course, simply mumbles support for Owens on the issue. Even Bob Ewegen, while suggesting our new ad campaign be 'Welcome to Colorado; the Clueless State', leaves his Owens-less-ness off the hook.)

If the state were a corporation, the shareholders would have booted this CEO long ago, as the share price collapsed to -- what, 1/3rd what it was a year ago? 1/10th what it was six years ago?

If we were a grown-up state, the press would never let the CEO off the hook this way.

Remember all that as our undereducated sons and daughters line up for the only jobs out there, at Wal-Mart and prisons...

Which is, of course, EXACTLY the outcome the right-wing controlling Colorado wants. Just like the South in the sixties -- no money in a state divided between the rich and the rest of us, for anything but prisons and asphalt (oops, we're $30 billion behind on that little liability);