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Colorado growth limit defeated but not dead

By Tom Kenworthy
January 7, 2001

Two months ago, by a better than 2-to-1 ratio, Colorado voters rejected a statewide ballot initiative aimed at controlling runaway growth.

But that resounding defeat has hardly ended the argument over sprawl in a booming state with the nation's third-fastest rate of growth over the past decade. If anything, the voters' rejection of Amendment 24 has accelerated the debate over growth management and paved the way for an upcoming legislative session that will be dominated by the issue.

Ironically, the effort to forge a statewide consensus on managing growth is being pushed hard by the same coalition of interests that spent $6 million to defeat the ballot initiative. Having proclaimed Amendment 24 as "too extreme" for Colorado, the homebuilders, developers and real estate agents who killed it are in the position of having to put up a more moderate alternative or face another ballot fight in 2002.

"We'd like to think we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat," says John Fielder, a photographer who helped spearhead support for the plan that would have required cities and counties to develop growth plans and submit them for voter approval.

The determination to enact legislation this year in Colorado is a marked contrast to Arizona, where there is much greater doubt that the Legislature will step in after that state's voters rejected a similar initiative, known as Proposition 202. "Clearly, the issue has not gone away," says Sandy Bahr of the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club that led the fight for growth controls . But whether the Legislature will now fill the vacuum is "still up in the air," she says.

Uncertainty over growth controls also lingers in Oregon, long regarded as a model for comprehensive land-use laws. Voters there approved a new constitutional amendment in November that requires state and local governments to pay land owners when government actions reduce property values. Implementation of the amendment has been blocked by a judge pending legal challenges.

In Colorado, Republican Gov. Bill Owens set the tone immediately after the November election by promising that he would be "busting heads if necessary" to get legislation enacted this year. Owens has laid down four principles for growth legislation:

Cities and counties must develop growth plans that have the force of law to make them harder to change.

Adjacent jurisdictions should coordinate plans.

Some limits should be placed on annexation of undeveloped land by cities.

There should be revenue sharing between wealthy communities and poorer towns, which often bear the costs of services for workers who toil in places such as Aspen but cannot afford to live there.

Led by land-use lawyer Tom Ragonetti, the coalition that defeated Amendment 24 is now circulating drafts of legislation for the opening of the Legislature on Wednesday . It would require most cities and counties to develop plans for future growth.

"What we are trying to do is write a comprehensive and competent growth management act," Ragonetti said. Fielder calls the draft legislation a "reasonable starting point."