< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
No matter how sensible something is, our legislature can find a way to be against it.
Recall that we're supposed to be conserving water. Now consider what happened a couple of weeks ago when Rep. Paul Weissmann, a bartender from Louisvlle, introduced a bill that might have saved some water.
It seems that in certain real-estate developments,
Highlands Ranch among them, there are restrictive
covenants
which require homeowners to maintain thirsty
bluegrass lawns.
Weissmann's bill, HB-1120, provided that Any
restrictive covenant or amendment thereto that prohibits or
limits the use of xeriscape or that requires cultivated
vegetation to include turf grass is hereby declared
contrary to public policy and on that basis shall be void
and unenforceable.
Basically, it empowered property owners. The local Covenant Enforcement Committee might be able to silence your wind chimes, seize your plastic flowers or remove your offensive clothesline, but you would be able to plant fescue or buffalo grass, if you were so inclined.
Weissmann's bill didn't mandate sensible foliage -- it just allowed you to plant it, even if that violated a restrictive covenant adopted back when Colorado had enough water for such conspicuous consumption.
Who could be against letting people plant lawns that use
less water? Rep. Ted Harvey, a Republican from Highlands
Ranch: Philosophically, I don't believe it's the state's
role to get involved in this. It's a decision made by
private landowners.
That statement falls somewhere beyond stupid. Weissmann's bill would have given private landowners more power to make decisions. As for whether it's part of the state's role, our constitution says the waters of Colorado belong to the people -- who presumably act through the state government.
Weissmann's water-saving bill was tabled
indefinitely
by a committee. The vote was 8-5, right
along party lines. So much for saving water -- we've just
learned that, in the eyes of Colorado Republicans, it's
more important that all lawns in certain developments
retain the proper shade and density of green, drought or no
drought.
We'll learn more in the near future, since Weissmann has just introduced another bill that applies common sense to water in Colorado.
Scattered around our state are more than 50 entities
known as water conservancy districts.
Some of them
are major enterprises, like Northern Colorado WCD (operates
the Colorado-Big Thompson project) and Southeastern
Colorado WCD (operates the Fryingpan-Arkansas project).
Some don't do much of anything, and others enable sprawl by
supplying water to rural subdivisions.
But they all have something in common. They collect taxes and operate in the name of the public -- but they are not accountable to the public. Their boards are not elected; they're appointed by district-court judges.
(To be precise, almost all directors are appointed by judges. It is possible to petition for an election, which has happened five or six times since statehood.)
HB 1195, sponsored by Weissmann in the House and Ken Gordon in the Senate, would make water conservancy districts operate like other special districts in Colorado -- with elected boards accountable to the public.
Granted, that's no guarantee of perfection. We elect school boards, then discover school districts in major financial trouble, and the same might be said about hospital districts, fire-protection districts, sanitation districts and the like. But at least the power is in the hands of voting citizens, not appointed judges, and we can clean house when we deem it appropriate.
It's safe to predict that this bill will be killed by our Republican legislature. Even so, it's fun to speculate about what reasons they will provide.
Will they tell us, as former Sen. Fred Anderson of Loveland once did, that if you require people to run for offices, then there are good people do not want to go through that process?
Or will they claim that water is just too important to be left to the masses, who can't even be entrusted with the power to plant fescue in certain subdivisions.
Perhaps they'll just say that they're happy with having judges appoint the President of the U.S., and so they don't see a problem with water conservancy district directors.
Whatever excuse they come up with this time around, we can be sure of one thing. We'll learn what they really think about us.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >