Steve Pomerance

A group of citizens called East Boulder County United has put what they are calling the Community Bill of Rights on the November ballot in Lafayette. Although this charter amendment focuses on limiting fracking in Lafayette, the implications are potentially game-changing in how we view the rights of people versus the rights of corporations. As you might expect, this threat to corporate profits has not gone unnoticed, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is pulling out all the stops to prevent its passage. Their tactics will be familiar to many readers. For example, according to Cliff Willmeng, spokesperson for EBCU, apparently COGA had someone register to vote and then file a complaint against the amendment a day later. The complaint was quashed by the city clerk, so then came the inevitable innuendos. As noted in this week’s Daily Camera, COGA implied that existing gas supplies to Lafayette might be affected, presumably referencing the language in paragraph i-3 in the amendmen

Both of the announced candidates to replace term-limited State Rep. Claire Levy have asked me what I thought were the pressing state issues. It’s always nice to be asked for one’s opinion, but the more I thought about it, the longer the list has become. Here’s an abbreviated version: Roads and Schools – The proposed 0.7-cent state sales tax for transportation is exactly the wrong way to go. The legislature needs to impose statewide impact fees on new development to fund all new capacity needs, whether roads or transit. For the small remaining deficit, which is mostly maintenance costs, do some form of user fee (gas tax and/or VMT tax), as it is the most equitable and efficient. The proposed statewide school tax increase only addresses operating costs. So put impact fees in place to raise the money to build the new schools for the millions of additional residents expected over the next decades; that way existing residents don’t have to pay over and over. And get rid of the 2001 capi

Some municipalization supporters recently did an analysis of Xcel’s Colorado pre-tax profits, based on Xcel’s multi-state corporate filings: Colorado now accounts for nearly half of Xcel’s profits, although our customer base is far smaller than Xcel’s in Minnesota, and even a smaller fraction if you include the other six states where Xcel also provides power. In the eight years from 2004 to 2012, Xcel’s Colorado pre-tax profit more than doubled, even though sales and generation capacity were essentially flat. Amazingly, the same data was presented in a strong article in  redstate.com , a notorious conservative website. (Google “kyle forti xcel colorado” .) Apparently both the left and the right are upset about the increase in Xcel’s Colorado profits. Boulder, of course, is part of Xcel’s profit machine. The same local people calculated that Boulder contributes something like $35 million a year to Xcel’s windfall. This excess is, to some extent, a function of the exorbitant almost