Both sides in growth debate might bypass lawmakers
Ballot issues considered by both factions

By Trent Seibert and Jim Hughes
Friday, May 11, 2001

As lawmakers Thursday convened a special session to rein in Colorado's sprawling growth, environmental groups and developers already are contemplating taking the issue straight to voters.

Disappointed with legislators' inability to pass meaningful growth legislation after they promised to do so, citizens who led last year's failed ballot initiative to control growth say they may come back again in November 2002 with another initiative.

And even though the business groups and developers that opposed last year's initiative say they support the legislature, they're considering a ballot issue of their own - promising to make Colorado a national battleground for growth.

"You're going to see $15 million spent on these ballot initiatives," said Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc., a lobbying group for county officials that's been following the growth debate. "Big money is going to pour into this state: money from the national environmental groups, money from the national developers. Colorado will become a battleground."

Some still confident

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are still confident that they can pass growth legislation in this special session that appeases both sides and avoids any ballot initiative.

It's the first special session Gov. Bill Owens has called since he took office in January 1999.

Legislators started work Thursday, with the governor unveiling a plan for a limited growth agreement and Senate Democrats pledging to push their growth plan crafted over the past two months.

Senate President Stan Matsunaka, D-Loveland, said he's going to submit the same plan because Senate leaders had been close to an agreement with developers, homebuilders, environmentalists and others, and could have had a deal if Owens had not interfered before the regular session ended Wednesday.

Matsunaka said the governor made a mistake by stepping in and telling negotiators they only had to agree to end leapfrog annexations, require most counties to do comprehensive plans and set up a dispute-resolution process.

"The minute he said that, the negotiations stopped on the most important part of the bill. That was very disappointing to me," Matsunaka said.

Owens said he was not at fault for the compromise falling apart. He said there had been little agreement on the most controversial part of the Senate's plan, which would have set development limits inside and outside growth boundaries that cities would draw. That would lower land values outside the boundaries, Owens said.

"That's what brought the whole package down," he said.

If no compromise is reached in the special session, which is scheduled to end May 23, voters will almost certainly see ballot issues on growth in 2002.

John Fielder, the nature photographer and publisher who led last year's Amendment 24 growth initiative push, said Thursday that he doubted the special session would yield legislation strong enough to satisfy Colorado environmentalists. If so, his coalition will craft another referendum and try to get it on the 2002 ballot, he said.

"I don't see anything good coming from this, and if in fact it doesn't, (we) will come back with a thoughtful, balanced, reasonable initiative to protect Colorado's future generations from poorly managed growth," he said.

Developer initiative, too

To that, one member of the coalition that last year spent $6 million fighting Amendment 24 said his group was prepared to go back to the people in 2002, too. And this time they'll have an initiative of their own, said Steve Wilson of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver.

He said his group supported House Bill 1225, the bill that failed Wednesday, and also support proposals to be debated in the special session.

"We believe the legislature is the place for this thing to get decided, but we're committed to real and meaningful change," he said. "And we'll do whatever is best to get a real shot (at) balanced growth management."

If that means asking voters to decide between two dueling growth-management ballot questions the next time they go to the polls, that's what will happen, he said.

Amendment 24 would have changed the constitution to require cities and counties to develop growth plans and allow the public to vote on them. Critics said the plan would have all but halted growth in the state and called it "to extreme for Colorado." It lost by a substantial margin on Election Day.

Indeed, Owens and other Colorado politicians actively lobbied against it, but with a promise to citizens: If they voted it down, politicians would come up with growth-management laws of their own.

Since they failed, Owens called back state senators and representatives, pledging that they would stay in Denver until a workable growth measure was found.