Colorado Editorial Roundup

The Colorado Springs Gazette, Oct. 15, on Denver Climate Strike:

Teen global warming celebrity Greta Thunberg seemed rational and mature during the Climate Strike in Denver on Friday. That’s because the rest of the scene was an ice-age-to-the-left of absurd.

Children have good reason to defend their futures and every right to protest. Adults should show them responsible ways to discuss the important topic of climate change, how humans can adjust and what humanity can do to improve the environment.

The Denver protest achieved none of this, doing more harm than good for the cause.

Random teenagers held signs suggesting strangers have sex with them instead of F-bombing Mother Earth. A toddler’s sign said, “let’s eat baby boomers.” Another placard said, “EAT the RICH SAVE the PLANET,” as a speaker on stage asked the crowd to hold hands and celebrate unity.

Organizers paraded young kids on stage to lecture about environmentalism with words they could barely pronounce. Adult speakers introduced themselves with genetic credentials that attested to minority status. Climate change, they insisted, takes a disproportional toll on Indians and other minorities.

At least one speaker said climate change harms members of the LGBTQ community more than others.

That message should offend LGBTQ individuals and those who love them. LGBTQ does not mean weak. Rising heat and sea levels don’t much care about sexual orientation. As such, they probably affect LGBTQ individuals no differently than anyone else.

From start to finish, this was an embarrassing carnival of self-pity, blandishment of grievance and evangelical catastrophizing about an imagined any-day-now Armageddon that targets minorities first. Children were used as props for it all.

We heard rumors Thunberg would win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Instead, it went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. A champion of capitalism, Ahmed joined an armed uprising as a young man against his country’s Dergue Socialist regime. The Nobel committee chose him for promoting peace between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea.

Though Thunberg and her followers sincerely hope to improve life for all of humanity, their agenda would not move the world toward peace. If society eliminates fossil fuel production and consumption within decades, people will suffer and die.

Contemporary life without fossil fuels spells poverty. It means insufficient agriculture to continue the world’s steep reduction in hunger and starvation. People in underdeveloped countries would lose hope for relatively clean energy to heat homes and workplaces.

Millions of more humans would go without shoes and clothing and the building materials essential for basic shelter.

The war on fossil fuels means a massive new demand for batteries, which causes a substantial escalation of child slaves working in foreign mines without protections of the EPA and OSHA.

Domestically, Indian reservations hold about 35% of America’s fossil fuel resources, reports the Indigenous Environmental Network. Department of the Interior maps show nearly 54 billion tons of coal, 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 5.4 billion barrels of crude beneath Native American land. It amounts to more than $1.5 trillion in untapped wealth, based on information from the Council of Energy Resource Tribe.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Affairs division works as a liaison between tribes and industry to support future fossil fuel production. The right legal social justice support could help Indians prosper from energy below their lands.

Outside the reservation, modern fracking means six-figure hard-hat salaries. To eliminate fracking would kill thousands of high-paying jobs in Colorado alone.

Traditional fuels do not doom life on Earth, no matter how much propaganda activists channel through innocent kids. Fossil fuels - like the climate - do not hate Indians, gays or other minorities. They heat homes, help to grow food and end poverty without prejudice. That’s no good reason to skip school and strike out against them.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/2MQeq48

___

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Oct. 15, on Proposition CC about education:

Much is being made of the fact that Proposition CC “forever” does away with revenue caps imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill or Rights, allowing the state to retain and spend whatever it collects instead of refunding excesses to taxpayers.

We’re among those who would have preferred that the measure - referred by the Legislature - include a sunset provision. It would have made it easier to pass. But TABOR itself didn’t have a sunset provision when it passed, so it seems a little one-sided to make it an issue. Besides, TABOR is all about asking voters to sign off on changes in tax policy.

Prop CC, therefore, doesn’t violate the spirit of TABOR as some critics contend. It’s entirely appropriate to let voters decide if they would prefer to forgo nominal refunds and let the state use the extra money to address some long overdue societal needs - namely roads and education.

We acknowledged some of CC’s problems in a July 14 editorial after hearing from the “No on CC” folks, including Mesa County Commissioner Rose Pugliese. After meeting last week with “Yes on CC” representatives, including former state lawmakers Tim Foster and Bernie Buescher, we’re endorsing the measure.

First, consider the premise. In “good” years, when revenues generated by existing tax rates exceed the TABOR cap, the state would take the excess and divide it equally among K-12 education, transportation and higher education. Excesses don’t accumulate often, but in the coming two fiscal years, they’re projected to be around $400 million.

These are real dollars that would go to fund real projects and programs in Mesa County and across the Western Slope as opposed to “refunds” to taxpayers in the form of a slightly lower income tax rate.

Opponents characterize CC as a tax increase. That’s a stretch in our opinion. Semantics aside, tax rates aren’t being raised and voters will still be asked to approve future tax increases if Prop CC passes.

In its first year, Prop CC would direct an estimated $88.1 million to state, county and local transportation projects, $88.1 million to higher education and $88.1 million to our public schools for “non-recurring” expenses like buying books or computers or creating incentives to retain and attract quality teachers.

Again, opponents point to the variability of good years as a downside because no consistent funding stream is established for identified needs. But some money is better than none. Look at School District 51. Anything it receives beyond its current state allocation that could be applied to non-recurring expenses it was going to pay anyway is money that could go toward its backlog of deferred maintenance.

The Denver Post opposes Proposition CC because the money for public schools will not go through the normal education formula. Instead it will be doled out to school districts equally on a per-pupil basis. That actually benefits Mesa County schools which are at the bottom of the state’s “J-curve.”

With roads, Proposition CC mandates that 40% of the new money go to cities and counties while 60% would go to the state highway fund.

But opponents want to argue that the Western Slope will lose out - that Front Range priorities will supersede rural needs. Consider the alternative. Here’s a mechanism to deliver dollars to places like Mesa County as part of a statewide solution. If voters reject CC, what happens? The Front Range, with its congestion, starts to take a regional approach to solving its traffic problems, levying its own taxes to build more lanes or turning to toll roads. So the next time there’s a statewide effort to raise money for roads, Front Range voters will balk and say “We fixed this problem ourselves. Rural is on its own.”

Finally, opponents are quick to dismiss the annual independent audit that will show voters how Prop CC money was spent. Usually, the argument is that the five-year TABOR timeout, Referendum C, was supposed to do the same thing and didn’t. Buescher told the Sentinel’s editorial board that’s simply not true. State finances are “confusing” but the Ref C money “was spent as promised to voters,” he said.

What Prop CC really boils down to is trust in state government. Opponents want voters to believe that there’s no guarantee the Prop CC money would go where the ballot says it’s going - that the initiative cannot bind future legislatures.

While that’s technically true, Foster and Buescher conceded, they trust that the political process will work - that lawmakers will accede to the intent of voters on Prop CC excess revenues and call for a question if they ever want to redirect the money to other priorities.

That’s what they should do and that’s what we’ll demand if it ever comes to that. In the meantime, here’s a chance to bring some money home without paying new taxes.

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

___

The Boulder Daily Camera, Oct. 12, on city council endorsements:

The 15 candidates running for Boulder City Council this year constitute an especially strong slate of candidates. As a group they offer a deep reservoir of knowledge about complex community issues and informed opinions on how to tackle local problems. Only six of them will take a seat at the dais with the next Council, and that means several will fall short despite having the talents and experience to have performed successfully as a city official.

Elections for the nine-seat City Council typically involve races for five seats at a time, but this year six seats are contested due to the departure of former Councilwoman Jill Adler Grano, who resigned in January to take a position with U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse. All Council seats are elected on an at-large basis, so all voters get to vote on all seats.

The Camera Editorial Board, based on individual interviews and observations of the candidates throughout the campaign season, recommends these candidates for Council positions: Aaron Brockett, Paul Cure, Rachel Friend, Junie Joseph, Mark McIntyre and Bob Yates.

Aaron Brockett: Brockett was chair of the Boulder Planning Board before winning a City Council seat in 2015. As a member of Council, he has established a record of pragmatic and sensible responses to difficult questions. During the Council’s contentious discussion last year about flood mitigation at the CU South property, for example, Brockett demonstrated a welcome willingness to compromise that was absent in some of his colleagues. That issue remains unresolved, and it will be one of Brockett’s priorities if voters return him to Council, as will racial and social equity issues, and ongoing major planning projects.

Paul Cure: Among the Editorial Board’s candidate recommendations, Cure might seem an outlier. He is not endorsed by any of the prominent local advocacy groups, his fundraising tally was recently the lowest among all the candidates, and he himself views his candidacy as a “long shot.” But Cure has much to offer as a community leader. In 2004, he co-founded Cure Organic Farm, said to be the first organic farm to lease Boulder-owned agricultural land, and he remains involved in community affairs, currently as vice president of Historic Boulder. He exhibits a detailed understanding of Council-related issues, and the Editorial Board views his lack of ties to vocal advocacy groups, such as PLAN-Boulder County and Better Boulder, along with his creative approaches to city issues, as an advantage that might open a space for him in the center of what can too often be factious debates in Council chambers.

Rachel Friend: Friend is often associated with the debate over how the city should mitigate flooding on South Boulder Creek, not least because the flooding affects her own neighborhood, and she has written about the issue in the Daily Camera. But Friend is hardly a single-issue candidate, and, with a focus on facts and data, she is able to articulate definite positions on a range of community questions. She wants to focus especially on good governance and social justice, as well as flood mitigation, and as a lawyer who has represented asylum seekers, and as a community member who was deeply involved in the city’s recent Large Homes and Lots project, Friend has the qualifications to successfully represent community interests.

Junie Joseph: Boulder voters should feel excited about elevating a candidate like Joseph to City Council. Frist, her resume: A native of Haiti, Joseph worked with a nongovernment organization on justice issues in South Africa, was an intern working with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, and served as a U.S. Agency for International Development fellow in Cote D’Ivoire. Now she is a University of Colorado law student. As a student, she is all too familiar with the lack of affordable housing in Boulder, and housing is her campaign’s salient issue. She believes more density is warranted, though she is sensitive to the concerns of affected neighborhoods. Joseph is a relative newcomer to the community, but her grasp of Boulder issues belies the brevity of her residency.

Mark McIntyre: If any one Council candidate embodies the values to which Boulder aspires, it is Mark McIntyre. He’s a 42-year resident of Boulder and a CU graduate. Four generations of his family live in the area. He travels by bicycle to every campaign event (including his interview with the Editorial Board). As a member of the city’s Transportation Advisory Board, he has already helped improve alternative modes of transportation in the city. McIntyre ran for Council once before, in 2017, when he came in eighth out of 14 candidates. With his focus on greenhouse gas reduction, affordable housing and progress on transportation, he deserves a win in 2019.

Bob Yates: The one other incumbent, along with Brockett, on the ballot this year, Yates has served admirably on the City Council, and voters have every reason to retain him in a high position of civic leadership. He is one of the most engaged and accessible members of the Council, and he publishes a monthly newsletter, the Boulder Bulletin, which is an invaluable primer on Council discussions of the moment. He is typically a voice of reason, such as on flood mitigation, land use and city budget issues, and he often serves as a consensus-builder - he and Councilman Sam Weaver are behind the proposed Middle-Income Housing Program, which Boulder residents will vote on next month. It would not surprise the Editorial Board to see the title “mayor” in front of Yates’ name someday.

Three other candidates stand out as viable contenders and are worth noting.

Benita Duran brings to her campaign a matchless depth of relevant experience, including stints in the administration of former Denver Mayor Federico Peña and as an assistant Boulder city manager. Susan Peterson is a longtime resident of the city, and, with her involvement with the advocacy group PLAN-Boulder County and issues forum The Blue Line, she has a deep understanding of Boulder neighborhood sentiments. Corina Julca, who immigrated to the United States from Peru, is a renter in Boulder who emphasizes community engagement and slow growth in her campaign. She’s new to Boulder politics, and perhaps not quite prepared for prime time, but she no doubt will be soon if she stays active in community affairs.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/35EDCmX