Governor Jared Polis is brazenly and unselfconsciously hypocritical. While he blathers on in social media and elsewhere about the “Free State of Colorado,” while he rails about federal overreach into state affairs, he’s just as busy doing to locals what he claims Trump does to Colorado. One might even argue worse.
His assault on citizens’ initiative when it comes to land use is a prime example.
Recently there was a flurry of articles featuring Polis crowing about local government compliance with state law on housing and density. “Compliance” is an apt word here, with its authoritarian tones. Polis has not been shy about using state power to cram down on local governments and recalcitrant citizens. He has done it by asking his cronies at the Public Utilities Commission to override local control of power line siting. He’s done it with his executive orders withholding state money for cities that don’t fall in line with his ideas about zoning, transit, and density mandates.
Many of Polis’ efforts have resulted in lawsuits by local governments. I wish those efforts well. I personally think the state is way overreaching here.
What makes Polis worse than Trump in this regard is that he and his fellow Democrats in the legislature put their heavy hand on you as a citizen. It’s a whole different problem when state government makes it harder to exercise your rights to citizens’ initiative, as guaranteed in the Colorado Constitution.
Spotlight on Littleton
As I mentioned in an earlier piece on Greeley’s shenanigans, Coloradans who don’t like what their local governments do (or don’t do) can “talk back” via the initiative process. Just like in Greeley, some Littleton residents, not happy with what their city council is doing with zoning, did that very thing, gathering enough signatures to get on the ballot to make their case that the council’s move is not the right one.
Unlike in Greeley, however, folks in Littleton are fighting not just city hall, they’re also having to work against a headwind coming from Polis and the legislature. House Bill 25-1093, appropriately titled “Limitations on Local Anti-Growth Land Use Policies,” is designed to, you guessed it, limit local resistance to Polis’ land use mandates. The law isn’t targeted at local governments, but rather at you, the citizen.
If you don’t like Polis’ housing density mandates, and run a citizen’s initiative to stop them coming to your town, or to modify how your city approaches the mandates, HB 1093 allows your local government to (quoting the bill’s fiscal note): “… seek a judicial determination of the legality of the measure that proposes to restrict or limit the development or use of land” prior to your measure reaching the ballot.
While what the bill actually calls for seems mild–one could just imagine Polis giving his avuncular chuckle before blathering on about the bill only asking for judicial review–the intent is clear enough that Littleton’s own city attorney said the quiet part out loud: “The intent of that legislation, when it was adopted at the state was to prohibit certain ballot questions, certain questions from making the ballot.”
While citizens’ initiatives at the state level have become multi-million dollar affairs, with paid signature gatherers and consultants, getting on the ballot at the local level is still within the reach of a group of dedicated volunteers with a shoestring budget. The difficulty scales with population, since all the rules key off the number of voters in a given municipality.
Measures like HB 1093, while not an explicit prohibition, does raise the price of poker on local land use initiatives. It is a stumbling block, one more hurdle to make anyone think twice. It’s an intentional hindrance disguised as “judicial review.”
This is particularly the case when you look at how its inaugural use in Littleton has gone. City council’s timing was no accident. There is nothing in the law with regard to when the judicial review must happen, but Littleton sought it right before ballots went out. Just as the Littleton citizen’s group began their final lap and push to get their measure certified, the city ran in and shoved them off the track.
To their credit, Littleton’s city government has since dropped their request for judicial review, citing the fact that as of October 13 ballots were already out to voters. The city made the right choice, albeit a delayed one, but the problem facing you and I remains. The state law is still in effect, waiting for another city to kneecap its own voters.
What does it say about your policy if the way you get it over the finish line is to bully anyone who opposes you? What does it say about a city like Littleton that would consider, even briefly, ignoring the concerns of many of their citizens just to avoid losing that sweet, sweet state government money? Nothing complimentary, that’s for sure.
Colorado is a big state with lots of diverse opinions and experiences. If Polis weren’t a hypocrite, he would hold to his own words of a “Colorado for all,” recognizing not only that we should all have a voice, but that our voices and experiences mean we just might have solutions to problems that he didn’t think of.
