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April 29, 2016 01:48 PM UTC

Senate GOP Kicks Rural Colorado When Its Down

  • 15 Comments
  • by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Its not news that Colorado’s economic recovery has been uneven.  As the Front Range booms much of the Western Slope has been left behind. Consider this article from the Daily Sentinel, today:

Colorado’s population rate ranked as the nation’s second-fastest in growth in 2014 and 2015, with most of the increases on the Front Range. While the state saw an increase of 101,000 people, most of those people located or were born on the Front Range.

The Front Range’s explosive population growth may not be news to some people, but Mesa County also experienced a modest growth rate of 3 percent, or 456 people, during that time.

That’s important to note because some counties in the state, like Delta County, experienced a population loss those years, said Elizabeth Garner, a demographer for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

And while the article works to put a good spin on that disparity (500 people!) the conclusion is unavoidable, communities in western Colorado that have long been linked to extractive industries are struggling.

For instance, this happened today.

 

 

The silo at Oxbow’s Elk Creek mine, which sat above the former ‘company town’ of Somerset came down.

Although the Oxbow mine was shuttered due to a mine fire (and not due to Democrats as much as some fossil fuel advocates claim otherwise) when it comes to coal the writing is on the wall. And natural gas and oil prices remain depressed. By fits and starts the era of fossil fuels is making way for something different.

This is certainly true in Colorado, where even conservative counties are realizing the key to future economic prosperity is diversifying the economy, not doubling down on the ways of the last century.

So it was rather upsetting, if not altogether surprising, when the Republicans in the Colorado Senate killed, for a second time, a widely supported bill (SB 81) put forward by Sen. Kerry Donovan to aid struggling rural economies with the transition that even they have come to realize is underway.

Why did they kill the bill? According to Sen. Ray Scott because “grants don’t create jobs, people do.”

What, then, is the plan for “economic development” put forward by the Colorado Senate GOP, other than pithy slogans and political barbs?

According to Sean Paige, spokesman for the Colorado Senate GOP, the future for Western Colorado is to double down on the past: “mining, oil and gas, ranching, logging, etc.” he tweeted.

And what would economic development look like otherwise, without putting more eggs into the basket of the dying industries of the past? “Scooping ice cream & pouring lattes 4 eco-elitists”  the well-paid Denverite opined.  Paige also went on to suggest that the Jordan Cove LNG hub, and the Pacific Connector pipeline that would connect the Piceance Basin to it, would be the salvation for all of Western Colorado.

Setting aside the patently offensive notion that folks in western Colorado must either be roughnecks or baristas, let us just consider the proposition that a new gas pipeline from Rifle to Coos Bay would be our economic savior. Or not, since we can just dismiss such a silly notion out-of-hand.

The pipeline itself cannot suspend economic fact, nor remove the glut of natural gas on the market, nor change the fundamental economics that have kept natural gas at record lows for nearly a decade.

It might provide a slight benefit to the counties that are located in the Piceance Basin, but few people — other than oil and gas lobbyists (and their elected officials, apparently) — believe it is any panacea for the overall economy of the Western Slope. Rather economists are clear, communities in western Colorado that have been shackled to boom and bust economies for decades need to diversify away from that past.

Transitioning economies in western Colorado need economic development: broadband, better roads, transportation infrastructure (including public transportation), light manufacturing so we can add value here to what we would otherwise ship away, job training and educational opportunities.

These are all things that could have benefited from Sen. Donavan’s bill–killed by the Colorado Senate GOP. SB 81 had the support of Colorado Counties Incorporated, the Colorado Municipal League, counties and towns up and down the western Slope, local electric coops, and even our large coal utility Tri-State.

So Sean Paige and the Colorado Senate GOP, including Senators Ray Scott and Jerry Sonnenberg, can hide behind rural Colorado as they carry water, and a single tired one-note tune,  for oil, gas and coal–but at this point its about as effective as a two year old playing peekaboo.

Yes, your hands are in front of your face but we can still see you. You would look pretty silly–but for the livelihood of the communities that are under your thumb.

 

 

 

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15 thoughts on “Senate GOP Kicks Rural Colorado When Its Down”

  1. I believe that Charles Wilkinson, professor of law at CU-Boulder, refers to the extractive industries as the "lords of yesterday."  The key for rural communities, as noted by the author, is economic diversification. Sean Paige doesn't get it. But then, he didn't get it either when he was involved in Colorado Springs journalism. 

    1. Diversification is a great thing, I fully support it in almost all things. But make sure to look at your options when it comes to doing so. In Colorado, almost all the options that do not involve O&G or coal or some other extractive industry require a beautiful natural setting, clean air, clean water, fertile soil, etc. All of these are not generally a product of oil and gas drilling. They don't mix.

      The industries mantra now seems to be "all of the above". It has become a phrase used in Hillaries' stump speech. But I say, only as long as absolutely necessary. When I say "diversification", I am talking about using ALL available renewable and sustainable energy sources and getting there as fast as humanly possible. 

      We must push relentlessly to stop using fossil fuel to provide motive force, electricity, and climate control in spaces. The cessation of those three uses would most certainly spell the end of the industry as we know it…please God, let it happen soon. We might get to a point where drilling in the ground to obtain a poisonous liquid, gas, or solid would exist only to provide industrial feedstock. All the while we should be replacing plastics with other options made from sustainable sources.

      We can do this, but it will take a political revolution…..

      1. The Rocky Mountain Institute maintains that the US will still get a substantial portion of its energy requirements in 2050 from natural gas. I don't see solar and wind heating my home in winter (even though I have solar panels on the roof providing some hot water support; double pane windows with southern exposure for passive solar; and I get all my electricity from Xcel's Windsource program). 

        1. RMI also maintains that "sustainable aviation fuels" are a possibility, even though SAF is one of the most technically challenging goals.

          A decade ago, we thought that fossil fuels were going to be the only way to keep commercial air travel and freight going. We thought we'd have to conserve oil so that we could keep on flying. Now, other possibilities are emerging.

           

      1. Penry was Einstein compared to the current crop.  We got Randy BoxofRocks Baumgardner and Ray Doorstop Scott these days, and don't get me started on the Mesa County BoCC.  Word on the street is Scooter McInny has gone cray cray, man actually said the other day that the county paying for the Sheriff is all the economic development the town needs.  

  3. Good job, Pete.  The War on Rural Colorado is self-inflicted. With all the ankle biters we have barking on behalf of us under the Gold Dome (gone are the days of the rural titans that served us well in the State House: Moellenberg, Bledsoe, Anderson to name a few) it’s hard to stay above the noise.

    Too few of our neighbors dare question the propaganda.  I remember the days of Musgrave when a Ft. Morgan shop dared to openly support her opponent.  Before long, the community bankrupted the store. I can't even go to effing mass on Sunday in Wray without some off comment by a local about my politics.

    I'd be repeating myself to go through the viral, cognitive disconnect in Dumphuckistan. I looked at a Facebook post by a relative yesterday still blathering on about Benghazi, indictments, birth certificates.  (Thanks, Buck-aroo, for keeping those fairy tales alive)

    I read with great interest the news release about the Colorado Energy Office getting the $1.1mm grant from USDA to support energy efficiency projects on Colorado dairies.  Good program.  What was most interesting was that Colorado agriculture spends $400 million annually on energy.  That is significant buying power.  Yet, agriculture would eschew the opportunity to look at farmer-owned energy systems because it would mean they would have to challenge the decades-old thinking of their leadership at the local REA.  They'd rather those dollars flow uphill to Wyoming coal plants as opposed to trapping every one of those dollars inside a cooperative established for their benefit and the benefit of their local community.  

    There has been billions sitting in a USDA green fund the entirety of the Obama administration left almost untapped.  God forbid if any of our boot-strappin' pioneers might look at that option; it would be the equivalent of supporting the great hoax by our Kenyan, Muslim POTUS and the Chinese. 

    Our communities want to believe they're independent when they are in fact interdependent.  And yes, that means from time-to-time some high school girl in Wray at Canyon Cafe is going to serve a latte to a Front Range liberal.  Those liberals we're all conditioned to hate by the likes of Brophy and Sonnenberg are the same liberals who buy the green energy from the wind farms in their back yards. 

    We are drowning in opportunity and willful ignorance simultaneously. 

        1. Below is the kind of lying bs we came to expect from our little watermelon farmer. Keep in mind, the Wray School District owns the wind turbine perched up above Wray (900kW nameplate); it provides 100% of the power for the school district and the excess is sold to the city on a long-term, fixed contract (a great deal for Wray).

          His Tweet below is regarding SB-252 that was going to <gasp> put a renewable mandate on Tri-State (the bill that launched the faux War on Rural Colorado campaign financed by Tri-State and the laughable Keep Electricity Affordable crowd).

          Keep in mind Tri-State already had wind farms planned that would put them substantially in compliance with the mandate.  Keep in mind that even if SB-252 caused rates to rise (it didn't), that the Wray schools were insulated from price increases because they owned their generation.  Also, Wray terminated its supply contract with the local REA affiliate and is now part of the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska…a group that provides power for many of Colorado's rural communities and is much more responsive in addressing local community needs (like more green power). 

          So in effect, the Wray School District was going to have zero issues with SB-252. 

          But that didn't keep the lying little schmit from tweeting this…he couldn't help himself:

    2. Michael: maybe you ask your relative, concerned about the 4 deaths in Benghazi, how s/he feels about over 3,000 US dead in an unnecessary war in Iraq? I'm not much of a fan of Donald Trump. But in his politically incorrect way, he's called out Bush/Cheney for their actions in Iraq.

      "the same liberals who buy the green energy……"  I thought I saw a recent quote from a county commish, from Limon, saying that very thing and in a polite way.

      "When they are in fact interdependent….."  It was an uphill battle in the early 2000s, when I was active up in Moffat County, trying to convince the locals that they live in a global economy, for O & G production.  

      1. I've been searching for his quotes during Reagan's Benghazi.  Shockingly, none exist. The US casualty in Iraq is closer to 5,000 – that's not including the 500,000 Iraqi citizens who died while we were 'liberating' them, the environmental catastrophe we left behind or the long-term costs our grandchildren's grandchildren will be paying for.   

        We have to understand that with this crop of FauxLifers, if they are of color and on another continent, they don't count as 'life'. At least he's consistent.  Remember the Colorado leg vote on divestment in companies operating in Darfur during the Genocide?  The single vote against it? "It isn't government's business to tell businesses how to operate? Any guesses who said this?  

        Interesting you brought up Limon/Lincoln County.  When they broke ground on the first wind farm there in 2010, their state senator didn't bother to show for the event. The biggest thing to happen to Lincoln County since the railroad…

        You couldn't make this stuff up. 

        Agriculture makes up about 2% of the population and rural communities about 20% of our national headcount.  We'd starve to death trying to sell our goods to ourselves.  But don't let that fact get in the way of a good ol' liberal routin' at the local cafe each morning.

        Great link on the ag issue: http://grist.org/food/farmers-hold-the-key-to-climate-change-action-in-the-united-states/

        Regarding climate change, there could be no bigger benefactor to mitigation policies.  Yet, try to have a grown-up discussion about agriculture's role in this endeavor with the likes of the Colorado Senate Majority or those in Congress.

        I'll look forward to a 2017 when those with more than two firing neurons control the upper chamber of both the Colorado and US Senate.   

  4. Opportunity is everywhere in rural Colorado, with only people's lack of imagination – and the stuck-in-the-past Republicans – standing in the way. If we can figure out how to get rural residents untangled from the notion that Republicans have the same interests and values they do, we'll be able to make rapid progress.

    1. So very true. The sad thing is many of us ARE aware of this, we are having discussion and have plans on how to diversify. Bills like Donavan's would help – because we need the resources. We have the opportunities, we have the brain power, we have the initiative. And we have Sean Paige, Ray Scott, and BoxofRocks in the way. 

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