ASPEN — Public policy and political will must shift as dramatically
as the winds that have whipped Colorado’s record wildfires, experts
say, or the state’s residents will continue to pay a higher and higher
price for forests that are dying due to global climate change.
Colorado’s conservation community deemed the 2012 state legislative session a success this week after it saw a half dozen bills it supported pass and 15 efforts to undermine the environment thwarted.
Colorado lawmakers are searching everywhere for ways to create jobs, even now turning to landfills.
Just a year after record snowfall throughout much of the Rocky Mountain West, the region is locked in a snow drought not seen since Jimmy Carter surrendered the White House to Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. The record dry conditions have lawmakers and industry observers extremely concerned about looming water shortages and wildfire danger.
State Rep. Millie Hamner, a Summit County Democrat, made it clear on Monday that she’s running for the state House in 2012 and expects a tough fight from a Republican challenger. Hamner was appointed to replace Christine Scanlan in House District 56 late last year.
Special interest groups will continue to be able to use 501c(4) organizations to donate money to political campaigns anonymously in Colorado for another year, if not longer, after the final gavel fell on this year’s legislative session without a bill being introduced.
A bill to create a working group of Colorado forest health, environment and energy experts to draft a biomass plan for coping with the beetle-kill epidemic passed on third reading in the state Senate Monday and passed on second reading in the House on Tuesday.
Republicans countered Democratic desires for drawing competitive districts Wednesday by refusing to use party registration as a factor in the Joint Select Committee on Redistricting’s effort to draw Congressional lines. The move led to another stalemate between the parties, leaving no map drawn and an ever increasing chance that Colorado courts will again draw the Congressional districts.
Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility and a key backer of Colorado’s aggressive renewable energy standard (RES), reacted with skepticism to Monday’s lawsuit seeking to overturn a state law mandating 30 percent of Xcel’s electricity be produced by renewable sources by 2020. “… We understand that [the complaint] was made by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization,” Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz told the Colorado Independent. “We would be surprised if a federal court would overturn Colorado’s legislatively approved Renewable Energy Standard.”
A bill originally intended to force 501(c)4 groups to disclose the donors of money given to 527 groups may be introduced soon in the Senate by Gail Schwartz.
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