Champion for technology

DENVER - Like many Pikes Peak region elected officials, Ron May spent a portion of his career working on how to expand Powers Boulevard.

The difference, though, is that when the 73-year-old state senator was planning the future of the highway, it was a two-lane road whose center line marked the boundary between Colorado Springs and unincorporated El Paso County.

May and many of his colleagues reflected Friday on a 27-year public-service career that will end Oct. 31 after he submitted a resignation to the Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday. Republican and Democratic legislators credited the Colorado Springs Republican with improving the state’s technology and ensuring that public roadways receive ongoing funding.

“He’s always gotten along well with both sides of the aisle without compromising his intrinsic values,” said Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, who shared an office with May this year. “And there’s probably nobody in the Legislature that understands transportation better than Senator May.”

May joined the Air Force in 1953, serving as a pilot and navigator before being sent to a school for computer programmers and analysts in 1964. There he learned how to automate records on a computer that filled an entire room and had four kilobytes of memory, acquiring the skills that later led him to start a computer consulting company.

A well-known love of technology led to May’s appointment as a charter member of the U.S. Internet Council and to his leading the push to get legislative bills and other state information online. It also may have saved the interior beauty of the Capitol.

As former House Speaker and fellow Colorado Springs Republican Chuck Berry explained, staffers in the mid-1990s were talking about pulling onyx marble off walls temporarily to run Internet wiring down through the building. May, however, stuck a wireless device in the thirdfloor gallery of the House chamber and demonstrated how to use it, leading to the current setup at the Capitol.

“Ron, in the House, brought his knowledge of technology at a time when most of us didn’t know anything about the Internet or e-mail,” Berry said. “Ron May is the grandfather, if you will, of computer technology in the Capitol.”

May’s other passion was transportation, something he gleaned from the time he served on the Powers Boulevard Task Force from 1981 to 1985, when what is now a major artery in eastern Colorado Springs was just a minor road on the city’s border. As a representative from 1993 to 2000 and a senator since 2001, he sponsored the bills that created the first budget set-aside specifically for roadway funding and later increased the amount of funding that highways could receive.

A man who took to the legislative microphone less than many of his colleagues, May said he wanted to be the go-to guy in just a few areas rather than attempt to be an expert on every subject. He passed the same advice along to Democratic Sen. John Morse of Colorado Springs when he began his term this year, and Morse said he appreciated the wisdom.

May also was known for being the GOP’s vote-counter, a guy other legislators would go to if they needed advice on whether they had enough votes to pass a bill. May said he learned the skill while serving on the Colorado Springs City Council in the early 1980s, when he and the late Councilman Frank Parisi would bring pockets full of quarters to every meeting, write down their guesses on upcoming votes and ante up if they lost.

Though known as “Mr. Conservative of the Caucus” by Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, May also earned the respect of many Democrats in the Legislature. Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, recalled May was the only Republican who skipped a GOP event to attend his son’s bar mitzvah.

May, who played first base and center field for Southeastern State University in Oklahoma, also bonded with colleagues over his love of baseball. In 1993, he pitched a ball down the center aisle of the House to Sen. Jack Taylor, a former college ballplayer then serving in the House.

May made every openingday Rockies game until this year, and he even wrote the bill in 1995 that set up security procedures for Coors Field, including a ban on fans’ bringing their own beer into the stadium. He often wore a Rockies tie this year.

“He’s been a mainstay and the dean of the El Paso delegation for several years,” McElhany said. “Ron will be missed.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: (303) 837-0613 or ed.sealover@gazette.com