Tim Foster has friends in high places.

In 2011 Colorado’s legislature tried to deal with the fact that counties impacted by oil and gas development were seeing PILT money lowered by the amount of federal lease money they received.  The introduction to the bill reads “counties would not be able to fund important services and programs for citizen enjoyment of public lands without maximizing payment in lieu of taxes funding to Colorado.”

So the purpose of the bill was to help cities and counties who were impacted by oil and gas activities. How are cities and counties impacted? Schools have an influx of kids, during the boom cycle when there is a corresponding increase in workers from out of state. Roads are torn up by heavy equipment. There are housing shortages. There is an increase in respiratory health problems when gas is flared, or toxins evaporating from oil and gas pits become air borne.

Mesa County set up a Mineral Lease Board to implement the bill. The bill requires that a Mineral Lease Board include at least one county commissioner, but representatives of the county could not be a majority of the board. The board was to be appointed by county commissioners, who could also remove a member that they had appointed. The duties of the board are “to distribute all of the funding the district receives from the department of local affairs to areas within the district that are socially or economically impacted by the development, processing, or energy conversion of fuels and minerals leased under the Federal Mineral Lands Leasing Act of February 25, 1920, as amended.”

The county representative to the Mesa County Mineral Lease Board is Craig Meis (oil and gas industry suck-up). Two other representatives are David Ludlam  (Spokesman for the oil and gas industry) and Craig Springer (President of Home Loan Bank.) Note that the board has two members who have close ties to the oil and gas industry, but nobody from School District 51, or the city of Grand Junction, or the community of Whitewater, or the community of Mesa  or the city of Fruita, or the city of Palisade, or the health care community, or anybody actually impacted by oil and gas activity in Mesa County. So it is probably no surprise that all of the money coming to Mesa County under this bill is going to our local “University “ and none of it is going to help K-12 with their funding; none of it is going to local hospitals or other health care professionals; none of it is going to repair damaged roads; none of it is going to impacted cities.

There were 10 applicants, but all of the money went to one place. To be fair, there is some question about whether this bill actually got around the Federal problem it was trying to address. There is some possibility that the funds will have to be repaid, and the structure of the program at the “University” will make it easier to refund the money should it become necessary.

Homework

Sentinel Story About Grant

Bill Authorizing Mineral Lease Boards

The Colorado Joint Budget committee was in town to tour local facilities that may be axed by them during the next round of budget cuts: Rifle Correctional Facility, Rifle area state parks, the Regional Center, Colorado Mesa University, and the Colorado forensics lab in Grand Junction.

I don’t know how many jobs are at each of those facilities, but I do know that cuts in state spending to any or all of them is going to result in the loss of good paying jobs in Western Colorado, thus increasing local unemployment. But we’ll lose more than jobs.

If there is no forensics lab in Grand Junction, or if the lab is privatized adding the burden of profit to the work it does, we will lose justice. As evidence is transferred from one police department to a forensic lab, the possibility of losing control of the evidence always exists. If evidence is examined here on the Western Slope, transfer risk is minimized. It doesn’t take a huge imagination to see that transferring evidence to Denver elevates the risk that it might be contaminated, lost, or compromised by its handling. Humans make mistakes, and 240 extra miles, whether it is in the air or by ground transportation offers lots of room for human error.

Colorado Mesa University isn’t going to close because of budget cuts, but access to it by the families living in Mesa County will be limited. Because of mandates that direct money to K-12 before any goes to higher education, tuition has been the only funding source available to fill the funding gaps for the university. Tuition is already out of reach of many local families because of the low wages (or non-existent in the case of the unemployed) prevalent in the valley. Increases in tuition will mean that attending Colorado Mesa University will cost as much as major private universities, all of which have better academic programs than our local university. If you are going to go into debt for a college education, you may as well pick the school that will get you in the doors of major corporations.

Tim Foster recognizes this threat. According to Sentinel reporter Charles Ashby, “He said it seems inevitable the state won’t be able to afford continued funding of colleges and universities, particularly given federal and voter- approved spending mandates that have increasingly limited the Legislature’s control over what it must fund.” Foster couldn’t bring himself to call the problem by its name: TABOR.

It is time for us to have a real conversation about TABOR and how it is destroying Colorado. We’ve reached the point where the state can no longer provide justice and a world class education to its citizens. What other rights are we going to give up before we admit that TABOR sucks?

Homework

Joint Budget Committee Tours Targeted Local Facilities

Foster Floats Endowment Idea

Lessons from Colorado for States Considering TABOR