With new, more environmentally stringent oil- and gas-drilling regulations a perfunctory state Senate vote and gubernatorial signature away from going into effect next month, all the Republican gnashing of teeth seems to have fallen largely on deaf ears.
Conservative blogger and columnist Ari Armstrong says state Sen. Scott Renfroe should resign and calls on the state GOP to “publicly condemn” the Greeley Republican for his remarks comparing homosexuality to murder during a debate over a bill to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of state employees.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Armstrong writes in his FreeColorado.com blog, “and it’s also the prudent political move, if the GOP wishes to be taken seriously as a political force in Colorado.”
Senate Republicans and Democrats smoked a peace pipe Wednesday in their heated debate over a transportation funding bill called FASTER (Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery).
Not sounding quite as conciliatory as his state Senate Republican colleague Al White, R-Hayden, minority leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Tuesday he’ll do everything in his power to slow down FASTER.
State lawmakers continue to be divided along party lines on a controversial Senate bill that would raise vehicle registration fees $32 a year to pay for badly needed road and bridge repairs.
The bill’s main impact would be to boost vehicle registration fees $32 annually, raising a little over $200 million in its first year to fund badly needed road and bridge repairs, including the state’s 126 structurally deficient bridges. It’s cruising through the statehouse under the catchy slogan-title Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery or FASTER.
Should Colorado lawmakers somehow convince oil and gas executives to voluntarily pay more severance taxes, some say that money needs to be a big part of fixing the state’s critical transportation-funding shortfall.
The oil and gas industry spent $10.8 million to bring about the Election Day defeat of Amendment 58, a measure that would have dramatically increased the severance tax the industry pays to the state for extracting resources from Colorado soil.
So it seems counter-intuitive that the industry would now voluntarily agree to pay even more severance tax, which in Colorado is currently the lowest among all major energy-producing states. But that’s exactly what key Western Slope lawmakers are hoping to accomplish in the coming months.
Sunday drivers out soaking up mountain views along Interstate 70 will have a few less political signs to mar their vistas after someone stole two massive McCain-Palin signs near the Avon Wal-Mart Supercenter and Democrat Ken Brenner pulled his voluntarily from the same property.
Of all the items on Colorado’s leviathan ballot this year, Referendum O is the only one that seeks to save the state’s voters from contending with similarly massive ballots in the future.
State lawmakers and energy experts are hotly debating a pair of dueling oil and gas severance tax questions on the Nov. 4 ballot, with even some Republicans divided on Amendment 52, which is being touted by conservatives as an alternative to Gov. Bill Ritter’s Amendment 58 tax hike.
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