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My continued membership in the Colorado Association of Red-bearded Pundits (CARP) is in jeopardy, I learned, unless I apply some henna to my graying whiskers or else apply analysis to the election of last week, which allegedly gave Colorado its first Republican governor in 24 years.
Granted, the letter D
often appeared after Roy
Romer's name, even on ballots, but I can speak from sad
personal experience that typographical errors are not
unknown to the printing industry.
Further, just what would be different about Colorado now if Romer had lost one of his runs for the governor's office? A puppet with a different face dancing at the end of the strings, perhaps, but the same big money pulling the strings.
For a moment, I was heartened when the governor-elect, State Treasurer Bill Owens, said he would use Romer's administration as a model for his own.
It sounded great. With that example, Owens would confound his supporters (in his case, suburban developers and right-minded theocrats), just as Romer betrayed his (working folks and rural residents) over the years.
A few years of Owens imitating Romer, and fast streetcars would be departing every 10 minutes between the state's two largest cities while our public schools would be buried in money.
But the euphoria quickly vanished with another announcement from the Owens office: the first priority is to add some lanes to Interstate 25 between Denver and Castle Rock, the seat of Douglas County, in recent years the fastest-growing of all 3,142 counties in the U.S.
This means that the crushing defeats of Amendments 15 and 16 -- the San Luis Valley water proposals -- are meaningless in the long term.
Those two amendments were put on the ballot by Stockman's Water Co., which proposes to tap the Confined Basin aquifer in the northern San Luis Valley and sell up to 150,000 acre-feet of water a year to Front Range water districts and municipalities.
Stockman's plans were slowed a few years ago by the state legislature, where Rep. Lewis Entz got a bill through banning such projects until some studies could be conducted. Entz, a potato farmer himself from the San Luis Valley, was properly acting on behalf of his constituents, most of whom work with and through the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.
As a tax-supported entity, RGWCD could fight Stockman's in court, but not on the ballot. So the Stockman's strategy was to use the initiative process to pass laws that would bankrupt RGWCD, thereby making it a much weaker opponent in water court.
This Stockman's ploy failed, to the great joy of most of my friends in the San Luis Valley. As much as I would like to share that elation, though, the course ahead teems with sharks and icebergs:
1) I stopped by to hear Bill Owens when he made his campaign-announcement swing around the state. In Salida, he said he could not support a moratorium on further trans-basin water diversions. Colorado needs the utmost flexibility in managing its water resources, he said.
While that might be a responsible position, it's not a heartening one if you just beat back a Stockman's scheme in the San Luis Valley, or you just voted to increase your taxes in Gunnison County to fight a Front Range water raid.
2) Owens's political base is Aurora. He's a suburban
guy, a proud soccer father
who apparently likes the
'burbs and the lifestyle that turns parents into
chauffeurs.
I'll take him at his word that he wants to be the governor of all of Colorado, not just the 'burbs where the majority of Coloradans -- especially Republicans -- live.
But he apparently sees cul-de-sac sprawl, divided highways, big-box retailers, shopping malls and franchise strips as progress, not as scourges and blights that terrify sane people.
3) His first real policy announcement -- adding lanes to I-25 -- means that more commuting is possible from Douglas County, which means more development there, where water is already scarce.
4) As Douglas grows and its wells run dry, its residents will be desperate for water. They're fairly well-heeled, too, in stark contrast to the San Luis Valley, the poorest area of our state.
Gunnison County isn't quite so poor, so the Valley looks like the easier place to defeat in court with the expensive attorneys that Douglas County and its Front Range fellows can afford.
And so, despite the overwhelming defeat of the Stockman's amendments last week, the battle between Stockman's and most of the San Luis Valley has hardly started. The real front in this war isn't even in the Valley; it's along Interstate 25, and Owens has already made it clear who's winning.
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