Colorado Editorial Roundup

The (Grand Junction) Daily Sentinel, Aug. 15, saving the Land and Water Conservation Fund:

After returning to his family home in the shadow of Pikes Peak, Garett Reppenhagen retreated to the outdoors to reflect on his experience as an Army sniper in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.

“Without the solace and serenity of our public lands I never would have survived the transition,” he said.

Today Reppenhagen is the Rocky Mountain West coordinator for the Vet Voice Foundation, which is an unrelenting supporter of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Veterans share a strong connection with the outdoors and the foundation members view protecting public lands as a patriotic duty.

The LWCF is arguably the most successful conservation and recreation program in the nation’s history, providing more than $17 billion for states and communities to invest in outdoor recreation resources.

Since 1964, LWCF has a used a portion of federal offshore energy revenues to conserve lands, water and open spaces and provide matching funds to state and local governments to build trails, parks and recreational amenities - all at no cost to taxpayers. But it’s set to expire by Sept. 30 unless Congress acts to save it.

As Colorado’s U.S. senators - Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Cory Gardner - pointed out in a recent op-ed, LWCF has invested more than $268 million in Colorado, leading to the protection of iconic landscapes like Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and lesser-known gems like the Ophir Valley in the San Juan Mountains.

For a state where the great outdoors represents a sizable chunk of the economy, the LWCF is an indispensable tool to protect and grow that resource.

“Put simply, LWCF works,” the senators wrote. “It is a time-tested and effective way to boost the economy and increase tourism in an industry responsible for $28 billion in consumer spending and 229,000 direct jobs in our state.”

The two senators have co-sponsored legislation that would permanently reauthorize the program and prevent the chipping away of its funding every year.

What they didn’t say in their op-ed is that Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who oversees the program, poses a threat to the program.

That’s where Reppenhagen and his Vet Voice Foundation colleague, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, come in. Because Zinke is a former Navy SEAL, they have no qualms expressing disappointment that a fellow veteran has become an impediment to the LWCF’s future. Zinke has defended a proposed budget that virtually eliminates the LWCF.

“When he was a congressman, he was absolutely on board with everything we were about: supporting monuments, supporting the national park system and the LWCF,” Eaton told the Sentinel. “He has done an about-face and he has done so in an administration that is catering heavily to extraction industries.”

The LWCF is an important tool for the Vet Voice Foundation’s policy goals, two of which have a direct link to military service. One is protecting historic battlefields and America’s outdoors heritage. The other is fostering recreation and recovery in the outdoors, or “walking off the war,” as Eaton puts it. This is the experience that Reppenhagen credits with helping him come to terms with his wartime experiences.

The current fight for LWCF funding is “dogmatic” in nature, Eaton said. Despite a history of bipartisan support, the LWCF sits at the center of the same ideological divide that led the Outdoor Retailer Show to move from Utah to Colorado.

Opponents have embraced “this ideology that there should be no more growth in public lands,” Reppenhagen said, overlooking the fund’s impact on urban recreation, improved access to the outdoors and support for critical habitat. “It’s a great resource and it doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime.”

While Colorado’s U.S. senators support permanently reauthorizing and fully funding the LWCF, the VVF is frustrated with Rep. Scott Tipton, whose position is unclear.

“We’ve never heard an actual response on why he’s not supporting the LWCF,” Reppenhagen said.

The LWCF can legally see up to $900 million appropriated, but that has only happened twice in more than 50 years. Last year’s budget, for example, put $425 million into LWCF. Given the growth of offshore drilling since 1965, Congress should permanently reauthorize the LWCF and raise the cap, Reppenhagen said.

We’d settle for fully funding the $900 million and putting an end to the short-term extensions to keep the LWCF alive. We’re grateful that Sens. Bennet and Gardner recognize the LWCF as a way for Colorado to invest in its outdoor recreation future and urge Tipton to signal his support of the fund, which has delivered millions in recreation and community projects in his district.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/2w8yTcg

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The (Greeley) Tribune, Aug. 11, on adding a citizenship question to the U.S. census:

We don’t see a reason to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census questionnaire.

We do see good reason - for Greeley, the rest of Colorado and many Western states - why it’s important for the federal government to leave it off the census form.

This comes up because last week marked the end of the public comment on the U.S. Commerce Department’s plan to resume asking a citizenship question as part of the census. Such a question was asked between 1890 and 1950, but it hasn’t been on the form for 70 years.

Shortly after the Commerce Department announced the planned change last spring, 19 states - including Colorado - sued to stop it.

“We have a responsibility to Colorado to see that every person is counted,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said in announcing the lawsuit.

The census matters. The reason we conduct the census every 10 years is to get an accurate count of the number of people who live in the United States. It’s required by the U.S. Constitution, although a citizenship question is not. The data, in turn, affect the way many crucial decisions are made, including the distribution of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

If residents shy away from participating in the census, either because they’re afraid of getting wrongfully caught up in an immigration dragnet or because they view the census process as having become unduly politicized, our state would stand to lose out on political power and federal dollars. That’s why we’ll say here that all residents must fill out the form, even if the question is on it in two years.

Still, it’s exactly the concern about an undercount that led officials in Colorado and other states to oppose the citizenship question. They say, rightly, it will scare away undocumented residents and keep them from being counted. That will affect, for the worse, not only immigrants in the country illegally but all of us here in Colorado who will stand to lose out on our fair share of federal funds - to which our taxes contribute - and political representation.

For all that, the question won’t do anything to improve border security or fix our immigration policy. In fact, the question doesn’t even ask whether residents who aren’t citizens are in the country legally. And, there is nothing to guarantee that among those who do answer the question, the answers will be accurate.

Like many Americans, we believe border security is important, and our nation’s immigration policy is in dire need of sensible repair. However, we also believe it’s vital for politicians, policymakers, health care providers and others to know accurately how many people actually live in the United States and how they’re distributed among the country’s various communities.

We believe all these goals are achievable. To do it, however, we’ll need accurate data and sensible policies. Adding a citizenship question to the census will give us neither.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/2MkLWSQ

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The Durango Herald, Aug. 11, on needing leadership on immigration from the president and Congress:

If the name Karrar Noaman Al Khammasi doesn’t ring a bell, that’s not the worst thing.

A week ago, several Colorado Springs police officers responded to shots fired downtown. They found an armed man, exchanged gunfire, and officer Cem Duzel and the gunman were both wounded.

Duzel, 30, was shot in the head. He’s in critical but stable condition. The gunman, Al Khammasi, 31, was hospitalized for his wounds and is expected to recover.

Days later, several Colorado news outlets reported that Al Khammasi is an immigrant from Iraq who came to the U.S. in 2012 after winning refugee status.

In itself, that is neither here nor there. What’s bad is shooting a police officer, whether you come from Syria or Peoria. Yet in a climate of anxiety about immigrants, when the president insinuates that they are all criminals, you don’t know where the next spark will fly.

Al Khammasi was arrested for drunken driving in 2013. That year, he was also charged with extortion, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of first-degree trespassing and was sentenced to two years of probation.

In 2014, he pleaded guilty to felony trespassing and was sentenced to prison for violating the terms of his probation. After his release, he was arrested, in 2017, for allegedly punching a person in the face three times.

This year, he was arrested on a weapons charge after police found a stolen pistol in his motel room.

A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Al Khammasi had been scheduled for deportation in 2016, until a federal appeals court found, in an unrelated case, that part of the immigration law defining violent crimes was too vague.

It is a bit of a mystery to us why the president hasn’t tweeted about this yet, seeking to make Al Khammasi the poster boy for “bad” refugees and immigrants.

It is still true, of course, that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, but here is one refugee who is demonstrably much more likely.

We’re confident he will be dealt with by our courts. We expect he will go to prison for quite some time and then, someday, be deported back to Iraq. By then, if he’s lucky, no one will remember him there.

If we are honest with ourselves, we really don’t know what we want from DHS these days, whether we want everyone or no one deported, expeditiously or so cautiously that people like Al Khammasi may fall through the cracks.

We know that we want the courts to keep checking the possible overreach of Congress or the president. It’s hard to say we want that even if a police officer may get shot, but it is essential.

What we need is leadership on immigration from the president and Congress - legislation and reform, not tweets and exploitation - before this happens again.

Meanwhile, we have leaders who seem to reason wholly from anecdotes.

Al Khammasi is exceptional in the worst possible way. That’s why we don’t make policies for one person any more than we do for unicorns - because hard cases make bad law.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/2w8HITg