Steve Pomerance

A couple of weeks ago, having received both my COVID vaccinations, I decided to risk a plane flight and went to San Diego. After flying across the mostly unoccupied areas of western Colorado, Utah, and eastern Nevada, we went over Las Vegas. I was looking down at the tall buildings in the casino area, and had the thought that they looked like a huge termite hill surrounded by a sprawl of peripheral sub-nests. It was as if a new species of giant insect had invaded the area. As we approached the coast of California, the same sensation came over me, like I was seeing another form of this species’ home, with a lower but more clearly rectangular pattern. Anyway, I think you get the idea – what I was imagining seeing was the takeover of the natural environment by a highly successful species that had transformed huge swaths of land into a form that works for it. These experiences did not have any feeling of negative judgment. It was more one of those epiphanies that we all get sometimes, ...

Based on the Boulder City Council’s discussion last Tuesday night, the answer is — whenever the council decides it isn’t. To understand why this is important, some background is necessary: Boulder has very stringent open meeting laws. Charter Section 9 provides the primary directive, “All meetings of the council or committees thereof shall be public.” So, unlike under state law, the council cannot hold executive (closed-door) sessions for any reason. The citizens temporarily granted executive session power in 2014 for the Xcel negotiations occurring then. But it was abused, and in 2017, the citizens rejected the council’s request to extend that power. Section 9 also contains the only exception to Boulder’s requirement that all committee meetings be public. It allows a committee of not more than two council members and any number of noncouncil members to meet privately to screen applications for city manager, city attorney and municipal court judge; to evaluate their performance, an...

I thought it would be interesting to review the legal history around municipalization and the franchise. In 2011, Boulder’s charter was amended to allow for creation of a municipal electric utility under certain conditions, the most significant of which was, “The city council shall establish a light and power utility only if it can demonstrate, with verification by a third-party independent expert, that the utility can acquire the electrical distribution system in Boulder and charge rates that do not exceed those rates charged by Xcel Energy at the time of acquisition …” Even at that time, some of us raised concerns with the vagueness of the “can charge rates that do not exceed … at the time of acquisition” language, since it is not clear whether this rate test applies for a moment, for eternity or what. This unclarity, plus the use of the word “establish” would prove fateful down the road. In 2013, a very public wrangle occurred over the city’s attempt to condemn Xcel’s circuits...

  A few days ago, I was watching the video of the Dec. 15 City Council meeting to find out what happened with the ordinance addressing on-line and other petitioning matters. I heard a number of council members complaining bitterly about “ad hominem” attacks, presumably related to comments made by citizens about the performance of the city attorney. As a former council member, I can understand their upsets. But what seems to be missing is any acknowledgement of the existence of some serious underlying problems. Just for example, relative to this ordinance, I had sent in some obvious corrections to the ordinance. It was missing the 180-day limit on signature gathering, and it continued the city’s self-created exemption from state requirements for petition formats, which leaves the city without complete legal standards. But nothing was fixed. This is far from the first time I’ve taken on mistakes that never should have happened. For example, in the recent election, the council p...

Boulder has one of the most educated citizenries of any city in the U.S., and Boulder citizens are very knowledgeable and strongly engaged in the issues that affect our future. Unfortunately, many citizens have lost trust in the city’s processes. Our City Council should take advantage of the recent retirement of City Manager Jane Brautigam to resolve many longstanding issues so that our city government works better for Boulder citizens. The next city manager must have the ability and interest to successfully manage “policy projects” – those efforts that address the significant issues and opportunities in such difficult areas as: flood planning; the new Xcel franchise and getting to a clean energy future; and growth issues, including jobs/population balance, affordable housing, transportation planning that actually reduces congestion, and keeping Boulder livable. For policy projects to succeed, the manager must ensure that citizens are involved early and often. That includes using...

I’ve heard many misconceptions as to what would happen if we sign this franchise with Xcel Energy. So I’ll try to try to clarify a few points. Regulated for-profit monopoly investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) like Xcel are not the norm. Competitive markets, including some multi-state, exist in many areas of the U.S. Rural electric associations operate in other areas. And around 2,000 municipally owned utilities operate across the U.S., with 29 in Colorado, including Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Colorado Springs, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, and Gunnison. This current regulated for-profit structure was created about a century ago. The companies’ goal was to eliminate competition, and “capture” their regulators (public utilities commissions, or PUCs) by limiting them to operating in a reactive mode. That way, the companies secured both market control and profitability. These IOUs then invest as much as the PUCs will allow in power plants, transmission lines, etc. For exam...

A number of people have asked me about this year’s bumper crop of ballot measures. Here’s my brief take. The big money ones are Amendment B, repealing the Gallagher Amendment; Proposition 116, reducing the state income tax; and Proposition 117, requiring voter approval for certain new state enterprises. The argument for repealing Gallagher started with some small districts that are predominantly residential and where property values have not risen like in the majority of the state. So Gallagher’s mechanism, which lowers residential property taxes to keep a statewide balance between residential and commercial taxes, has cut into their revenues. But eliminating Gallagher will just raise everyone else’s residential property taxes even faster. The solution needs to be focused on solving the small districts’ problems, not just throwing out what has worked so well in keeping residential and commercial taxes in balance. Prop 117 requires voter approval for many fee-funded “enterprises.” This ...

The “Our Mayor, Our Choice” ballot measure failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. But the Boulder City Council voted 5-4 to put it on, anyway. The council fixed a number of problems that both the petitioners and city staff had ignored. But the council failed to address the fundamental problems that a directly elected mayor will face within our governmental structure, as well as the serious flaws with this measure’s mandated “ranked choice voting.” Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a system where the voters rank order the candidates using a grid on the ballot that has the candidates’ names down the side and first, second, third, etc. across the top. Voters fill in the ovals in the grid to “rank” order the various candidates. Obviously, this could get tedious and mistake-prone with lots of candidates, which we’ll likely have, because there are no restrictions on who can run. Worse, we could easily end up with a mayor who is not the people’s optimal choice. Imagine a ra...

Over the last months, Boulder officials had a number of closed-door meetings with Xcel Energy. They appear to be following the rules for executive sessions (rejected by the voters in 2017) where nothing is revealed other than the basic topics. Given this lack of information, citizens attempting to provide input in the public comment sessions were unable to give detailed feedback. These agreements, almost 100 pages of dense text, are now public, and predictably, have serious flaws. For example, a critical question is enforceability: What happens if Xcel doesn’t live up to the terms? The only recourse provided is for Boulder to “opt out” of the agreements. The first real opportunity is five years after the Public Utilities Commission approves the agreements. 2026 at the soonest and very far in the future. Worse, the agreement’s “opt out” language is completely garbled: “The city will notify the company that it will end the franchise, if by vote of the City Council or of its intent ...

Clear information has been lacking about the rules on the city’s petitioning process. Here are the basics from state and local law: The 1970 home rule amendment to the Colorado Constitution Article XX added Section 9. This grants citizens the power to amend home rule city charters, and directs the Legislature to set the rules for such charter amendments. It also added Section 8, which states that this amendment supersedes any parts of the constitution that are not consistent with it. In 1971, the Legislature passed its Home Rule Act to implement Article XX’s amendments. Its legislative declaration in C.R.S. 31-2-202 states that it supersedes all other provisions. In C.R.S. 31-2-210, the act set the signature percentages and timing rules — 5 percent of registered voters for “regular” (council) elections, 10 percent for “special” (all other) elections, 90 days to collect and submit signatures, and signature submission to be done by 90 days before the election. Boulder Charter Sec...