The (Grand Junction) Daily Sentinel, Nov. 6, on the state’s water plan:
When the Colorado Water Conservation Board finalizes the state’s first-ever comprehensive water plan later this month, it will contain a “conceptual framework” for discussing possible transmountain diversions.
Area lawmakers recently expressed concern that such language could open the door to more diversions of Western Slope water to the Front Range.
But the framework is actually an important tool to head off legal action over diverging views on water supply, said James Eklund, director the CWCB.
Eklund, former Department of Natural Resources chief Russell George and Eric Kuhn of the Colorado River District met with Western Slope county commissioners to explain why the Western Slope is better off with a framework in place and succeeded in getting some of them to pass resolutions supporting it.
A “not one more drop” mentality has gotten the Western Slope diversions of 500,000 acre-feet because “the reality is that if you duke it out in water court, the Front Range is going to win,” Eklund told The Sentinel’s editorial board.
Eklund reiterated his belief that the state’s projected supply deficit of 560,000 acre-feet by 2050 could be met through storage projects already under way and conservation.
The plan explores how to make water laws and regulations more agile to maximize limited water supplies for the benefit of agriculture, Colorado’s cities and towns, the environment and recreation. It includes “actionable items,” date-certain deadlines and measureable results that address conservation, storage, land-use planning and reducing “buy-and-dry,” among other things - including ideas on how to raise an estimated $100 million a year to cover implementation costs.
In other words, it’s more than a list of platitudes about the state’s most precious resource. The hard numbers - 400,000 acre-feet of additional water storage and a 400,000 acre-foot drop in yearly municipal and industrial water use by 2050 - should cover the supply gap and ease concerns about diversions.
“The math doesn’t square up with a massive transmountain diversion from the Western Slope,” Eklund said. “You can reduce the projected supply gap without buy-and-dry of the entire Eastern plains or diverting 200,000 acre-feet of West Slope water.”
The plan contains aspirational goals. There are no mandates that force the hand of local governments. But it could serve as a “menu” for water projects that require legislative action. Lawmakers will have at their disposal a document that contains collaboratively developed ideas about how to best meet the state’s water needs.
It could also open the door to establishing a hierarchy of capital projects. “We need the same kind of prioritized list for rivers and streams that regional planning boards provide to CDOT about road projects,” Eklund said.
Gov. John Hickenlooper mandated the formulation of a plan by executive order in May 2013. Basin roundtables, local governments, water providers, and ordinary citizens all have had a hand in shaping it.
It represents a lot of hard work. Regardless of whether stakeholders agree on every point, they should take pride in collaborating on a shared vision for the future. Finalizing the plan is the first step of an even longer journey to assure future generations that Colorado will remain a special place to live.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/1HgEPm8
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The Durango Herald, Nov. 7, on Gov. Hickenlooper’s proposed 2016-2017 budget:
Given that budgets are inherently political documents, the proposed 2016-2017 spending framework Gov. John Hickenlooper distributed on Nov. 1 is exactly what it should be: a detailed accounting of the imbalance between Colorado’s available revenue and the expenses required to keep the state functioning at the level taxpayers expect - and proposed cuts to balance the scales. For the upcoming fiscal year, that discrepancy is projected to be $373 million - a gap that Hickenlooper proposes to close with cuts to higher education, slashing the capital construction budget - including cutting maintenance funding in half, and no money given to pay back the K-12 negative factor, among other painful belt-tightening. That this near-term future looms in a rosy economic climate for Colorado is testament to the need for a fiscal overhaul in the state. In the meantime, the year to come will be challenging indeed.
Despite the fact that property and income tax collection have risen statewide in the past year, a combination of Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights restrictions on revenues - requiring refunds to taxpayers when the state collects more than TABOR allows - and growing inexorable demands on limited state dollars has left Colorado in the position of having to make cuts to other crucial programs. Hickenlooper’s budget projects $830 million in new expenditures for the next fiscal year: $301 million from increased K-12 enrollment and inflation, $160 million to pay back the reserve fund the state borrowed from this year, $80 million for new Medicaid enrollees and $289 million in TABOR-required rebates. Meanwhile, the proposed budget projects just $457 million in new revenue for the coming year.
The constitutional and statutory spending requirements that have left Colorado increasingly hog-tied each year coming dangerously close to paralyzing state services if the trend continues. TABOR, Amendment 23, which requires that K-12 spending increase by inflation plus 1 percent each year, and the Gallagher Amendment, which permanently fixes the ratio of commercial to residential property tax paid, as well as requirements that transportation and corrections be funded adequately each year, are combining with increased demand for Medicaid - and the associated shifting financial burden from the federal government onto the state to make for a budgetary mess with no easy answers.
Hickenlooper’s proposed budget does not sugar coat the reality. There are a few quick and minor fixes the state can make - including removing the Hospital Provider Fee from the general fund and placing it in a separate enterprise fund, therefore bringing down the revenue total that triggers TABOR refunds - but the larger, far more complex problem remains. And it will worsen over time without a significant correction of the competing forces that hamstring state spending, even when the economy is strong.
The governor’s proposed 2016-17 budget should - in fact, must - get lawmakers’ and voters’ attention that something must be done to unwind the limiting factors that threaten to starve essential programs and services like education - K-12 and beyond - transportation, medical care, corrections, as well as those less obvious but equally important including public health, social services, parks and wildlife, building construction and maintenance. There is way more to do in the state than there are resources to accomplish those goals. Hickenlooper’s budget makes that clear. A change is needed.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/1Si0eM2
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The Denver Post, Nov. 8, on broadband Internet legislation:
Nearly 40 cities and counties around Colorado voted last Tuesday to reclaim local authority over broadband, which a 2005 law took away absent a public referendum.
The results in almost all of the elections were not even close, with some of the margins reaching 80 percent or even 90 percent.
The public clearly understands the value of allowing local government in certain circumstances to invest or partner in broadband infrastructure (usually fiber optic cable lines or cell towers).
Notably, most of the cities and counties that approved the measures were in rural parts of the state that too often have been left off the Internet superhighway. They don’t necessarily have plans for investment, but they do want the freedom to take action or to cooperate with private providers to enhance the economic vitality of their region.
However, misguided legislation from a decade ago prohibited cities and counties from spending money on improving broadband service without a public vote. Senate Bill 152 in 2005 was supported by the industry to ensure private Internet providers wouldn’t have to compete with government-funded data networks, according to The Denver Post’s John Aguilar.
In general, we don’t like the idea of government competing with private businesses that are already serving the market, either. Scarce public resources should be concentrated on programs and services that government really is uniquely qualified to provide.
But there are communities in Colorado, as critics point out, where customers’ only choices for Internet service are slow and expensive - if they have any choice at all.
And that is particularly true of rural Colorado.
Until this year, Internet providers poured money into local communities to try to defeat ballot initiatives that allowed local action on broadband. But this time they stood back, maybe realizing that voter approval is much easier to obtain than was thought when SB 152 passed. Indeed, the referendums have become so automatic that they are clearly a waste of time and money. The legislature should simply lift the requirement.
Most municipalities don’t have the money or systems in place to create their own networks anyway. Most don’t want to replace the private sector but to partner with it, said attorney Ken Fellman.
Citizens should be able to rely on the judgment of their local elected officials to make the call on whether public money should go into broadband services.
Editorial: https://dpo.st/1WRieyl
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The (Loveland) Reporter-Herald, Nov. 10, on meeting the needs of veterans:
Every year, thousands of young men and women take an oath swearing their allegiance to something bigger than them.
They swear to support and defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders given to them. As one observer notes, there is no expiration date attached to it.
That oath, recited by those who have enlisted into the service of the United States military, is the common denominator for millions who are either in active service or are being celebrated today, Veterans Day.
For too many of those who have served, however, the repayment of the nation’s debt to them has not been of the quality or quantity they were promised.
News stories from just recent weeks and months about the treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at Colorado Springs bases and the construction of a new Veterans Administration hospital in Aurora underscore the challenges of the federal government to fulfill the promises made to our veterans. In the Colorado Springs case, an investigation from Colorado Public Radio and National Public Radio uncovered how veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are being discharged from service - often in terms other than honorable - because of behaviors exhibited because they did not receive the treatment they needed at home. In Aurora, a lack of oversight has allowed the cost of the new veterans hospital to balloon to more than $1.6 billion - without a single patient being treated.
As this editorial is being written, not a single candidate in the presidential debates has fully addressed the ongoing needs of our veterans. Americans have only heard threats to create more war veterans through the use of force throughout the world.
Today, as parades and events mark the anniversary of the armistice that ended the Great War, later known as World War I, Americans should think more about how we can help veterans every day instead of carving out new ways to celebrate them on a single November day.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/1MzTPfl
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