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.
As predicted by environmental groups in a Colorado Independent story last month, new federal regulations dictating government royalties for oil shale production on public lands in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah fall far short of fair compensation, numerous critics said Monday.
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.
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.
A Denver-based nonprofit legal watchdog group filed suit in Denver District Court Tuesday against three Republican state lawmakers, asking a judge to compel them to fully comply with an open-records request relating to their correspondence about Amendment 52.
A severance tax hike proposal is certain to be on the 2008 ballot. How the monies are divvied up and who gets a piece of the action should voters pass the measure are still to be ascertained.
Severance tax is just about the No. 1 topic among oil-and-gas boom communities’ political leaders on the Western Slope because in their opinion, it’s about the hundreds of millions of dollars of impacts on rural town infrastructure, with minimal state…
The rapidly increasing revenues from state and federal taxes and royalties on energy production is often nicknamed Colorado’s Golden Goose. If Democrats get their way in the 2008 legislative session, more than a few tail feathers will be plucked.
Gov. Bill Ritter had just given his recommendations for the 2008 state budget before lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) last week when Sen. Steve Johnson (R-Ft. Collins) asked for the governor’s thoughts on the high-priority funding needs around…
The legislative severance tax committee members may have discovered that talking about problems with the state’s severance tax revenue distribution is easier than deciding on solutions.
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