Bill Owens

Owens angered some conservatives by working with moderate Republican and Democratic legislators to craft and endorse what became known as Referendum C – essentially a 5-year timeout from TABOR's spending restrictions. National conservative leaders such as Grover Norquist and Dick Armey publicly criticized the measure and Owens’ support thereof. Referendum C passed with 52% of the vote in November 2005.

Owens was an early supporter of Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign. After Romney dropped out of the race, Owens worked actively for John McCain's campaign. He endorsed Romney again for the 2012 Republican nomination and served as co-chair of Romney's Colorado campaign.

Owens joined the University of Denver's Institute for Public Policy Studies in January 2007 as a senior fellow.

Upon entering office, Owens worked with a legislature controlled by his own Republican party to push through the largest tax relief package in state history, amounting to $1 billion in rate cuts to the sales, personal-income, and capital-gains taxes. Owens also championed, and eventually won, the elimination of the state's marriage penalty. By 2006, the Owens administration estimated the overall tax cuts pushed through during his administration had saved Coloradans $3.6 billion.

Democrat Bill Ritter was elected in November 2006 to replace the term-limited Owens.

In 2005, Owens faced what former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm termed “the test of his time.” Conflicting budget measures in Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR, which caps government spending) and the voter endorsed Amendment 23 (which mandates increases in education funding) combined with a nationwide recession to leave Colorado's budget 17 percent below 2001 levels. A “glitch” – as Owens termed it – in TABOR prevented the budget from rebounding once the recession reversed.

Owens was a regular participant and panelist at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, appearing in 2005 on a panel debating U.S. foreign policy with Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.

Leading up to the 2004 primary, Owens caused some controversy in the Republican Party by announcing support for Bob Schaffer's run to replace retiring U.S. Senator Ben Campbell, but then endorsing Pete Coors when Coors later announced his entry two days later.

Owens won reelection in the 2002 governor's race by defeating Democratic nominee, Boulder businessman Rollie Heath, 64%–32%—the greatest majority in Colorado history. Shortly before the election, Owens was proclaimed by National Review as "America's Best Governor".

In the summer of 2002, when the Hayman Fire and Coal Seam Fire ravaged much of Western Colorado, Owens made perhaps the first major press faux-pas of his tenure. Responding to a reporter's question following an aerial tour of the fires (“What does it look like up there?”), Owens said “It looks as if all of Colorado is burning today”. Many western slope residents blamed Owens for driving away tourists with the press's truncated version of the quote (“All of Colorado is burning”).

In November 2002, Colorado voters rejected Owens’ water storage initiative, Referendum A. The referendum failed to win a single county in the state, as opponents successfully savaged the measure as a “blank check”. Owens would later joke, “it takes a particularly adept Governor to lose a water referendum in the face of a 300-year drought.” While the initiative was supported by most Colorado newspapers and business groups, it was opposed by the environmental community and many on Colorado's Western Slope who feared it would lead to the Front Range using more Western Slope water.

Owens was elected as the 40th Governor of Colorado in the 1998 governor's race, when he defeated Democratic opponent Gail Schoettler by 8,300 votes (less than one percent of ballots cast). When he was inaugurated on January 12, 1999, Owens became Colorado's first Republican governor in 24 years. His platform was three pronged: cut taxes, repair Colorado's aging infrastructure, and continue school accountability reforms.

In November 1999, Owens brought his transportation funding initiative to the ballot. Called TRANS, the $1.7 billion bonding initiative accelerated future federal transportation dollars on 28 road projects across the state. The keystone project was the "TRansportation EXpansion" dubbed T-REX.

Owens was elected to statewide office as Colorado State Treasurer in 1994, where he was responsible for managing the state's $5 billion in investment funds. He served during this time on the board of Colorado's $25 billion pension fund, the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA).

Owens based his education reforms on expanding and empowering the already-established Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP), which had been created during the administration of Democratic predecessor Roy Romer. Owens added “accountability reports” to the tests, which provided parents with a 'school report card' to allow them to better assess the performance of Colorado's public schools. He also expanded Colorado's charter school program (which he had sponsored as a state legislator in the 1990s) as well as other school choice initiatives.

Owens served as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from 1982 until 1988, and as a State Senator from 1988 to 1994, representing Aurora and Arapahoe County.

Following his graduate work, Owens accepted a position in the Washington D.C. office of Touche Ross & Co. (now Deloitte). He moved to Colorado in 1977 after accepting a position with the Gates Corporation. He later served as Executive Director of the Colorado Petroleum Association and as Executive Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association.

Owens and his wife Frances married in January 1975 and divorced in 2010 after a highly publicized separation, in which extramarital affairs were alleged. They have three children.

William Forrester Owens (born October 22, 1950) is an American attorney, author, and former politician who served as the 40th Governor of Colorado from 1999 to 2007. Owens was re-elected in 2002 by the largest majority in Colorado history, after making transportation, education, and tax cuts the focus of his governorship. As of 2020, he is the most recent Republican to serve as Governor of Colorado.