Our media obligingly (and uncritically) forward what they're told about "stakeholder" meetings. Senate President Fenberg misunderstands incentives. Oh those airplanes and their leaded fuels!
Our media obligingly (unquestioningly) forward what they're told about "stakeholder" meetings.
Stakeholder meetings or, as I've heard them derisively called, "fakeholder" meetings, and our state's ever-vigilant media corps.
The Front Range political media are showing again why it is that the general public finds it difficult to trust them, this time by not taking the extra time to follow up on even the most mundane and easily-checked claims made by elected officials.
To wit, 9News' Marshall Zelinger and Channel 7's Colette Bordelon, in their respective links below, did not bother to ask for any details about exactly what kind of stakeholder meetings are happening when the Democrats they interviewed assured them of just how much it was happening.
You know, those silly, trivial little things like, "when" or "how often" or "what ideas specifically are you taking back".
Let me illustrate.
I transcribed a bit from Marshall Zelinger's interview with Fenberg. This discussion starts at about the 19:30 mark in the first link below should you want more context or to watch the interviews in full. In order to save space here, I typed it out and included it as screenshot 1. Take a look at the second question/answer pair, we'll come back to the first pair shortly.
Putting aside an answer that is so cliché-riddled and vague as to be laughable, focus on the part I emphasized by putting in all caps at the beginning to see the claim I reference by President Fenberg: the Democrats have been having lots of conversations and stakeholder meetings.** I didn't transcribe more, but Zellinger didn't ask any sort of follow up on that.
Similarly, from the 7News article that I linked to second below, I pulled a quote and attached it as screenshot 2. Again, you will see more vague language, but not without the promise that these sorts of things have been built around input received from municipalities et al.
Neither of these reporters (nor others in nearly any story I see about these sorts of things) seems to ever be inclined to follow up on claims like this. For the life of my I do not understood why.
First, maybe it's just my untrusting nature, but I'm not the type to believe that the check actually was in the mail until it's in my hand and has cleared the bank.
Second, I've written before (see my recent op ed linked third below) about this pattern with our media. They claim to be alone on the bridge defending freedom and the public's right to know, when often they're just dutifully, lazily, mindlessly writing down what they're told and then moving on.
I decided to do some asking and some looking myself because I'm curious and wanted to share with you. Here is what I have so far. I will update with more as I have more.
I talked to my county commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg. He says Logan County has not been involved in anything and he is unaware of any effort made to include counties (doesn't mean there's no effort, just none he's aware of).
I talked to my state senator Byron Pelton. He passed the following along to me after asking for and receiving a response re. his objections which are listed in the article linked fourth below. Quoting from a communique he received from Chris Piper at the Colorado Energy Office:
"Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were nice. Hey--I wanted to reach out and flag that I know you are very interested, if not concerned, about the rumors that we are working on a renewable energy permitting and siting bill. You had a touch point with Alec and I've seen you quoted in the news article. While the details of our idea are still coming together we will reach out to you and CCI at a minimum once we think we have a beginning document to stakehold."
In other words on what could be a major intrusion by the state into local control, the "conversations" Fenberg mentioned above have not yet even happened. They don't even have any specific policy written down yet.
I also reached out to Senate Minority Leader Lundeen's office and was told in an email that, again quoting,
"Sen Lundeen has not been included in any land use bill discussions. Neither have any of our other caucus members. [I.e. no other Republicans]"
I have some other feelers out there with Colorado Municipal League (they have actually been busy talking to a wide spectrum of people and groups, but weren't able to tell me as of this writing whether those meetings included any state legislators or the governor) and also Colorado Counties Incorporated. There's nothing yet to hang your hat on, but when I have it you will too.
These are not tough questions to ask and I get completely how the politics here work. The vagueness you see in the language above is to be expected. No right-thinking politician will commit him or herself in an interview like these.
I don't, therefore, blame the reporters for not pressing on the vague spots, but for God's sake, it is not challenging or time consuming to ask the simple follow ups I have.
And they're quite illuminating just from a couple hour's work: even the minor results I have so far paint a picture that the Democrats are at least overstating how much involvement anyone outside the party or outside the halls of state power are getting. This is something the electorate should be told.
They also paint the picture of just how unthoughtful these sorts of things are. One of my rules is to avoid blaming a conspiracy for dumbassery, so I am going to assume that the Energy Office doesn't have their ducks in a row, and thus has not (when there's just a few days left til the Assembly starts their work) even begun to consider what they might want to do about something like stepping on whether and how they'd force local governments to site and zone for renewables. This is something the electorate should be told.
Of course, that might take more effort and time than folks like Zellinger and Bordelon want to put in though.
One last thing. I would like to again remind you of the fact that you, despite paying for all of this, despite it affecting you, are not (repeat not) a stakeholder to the Assembly.
See the last screenshot.
**No, I cannot, and will not, be using "stakehold" as a verb. I find it distasteful like a mouth full of castor oil.
https://www.denver7.com/news/politics/colorado-democrat-republican-leaders-share-priorities-for-2024-legislative-session
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/01/01/gaines-coloradans-distrust-of-journalists/
https://www.journal-advocate.com/2023/12/21/state-sen-warns-of-state-encroachment-on-local-land-use-decisions/
Related:
I heard from Colorado Counties Incorporated (CCI) and wanted to update on that. It's a minor update and came without enough time to rewrite, so attached here as related content.
I spoke to Ms. Flenniken at CCI and put to her the same questions I did for others. Her response is below (not a verbatim quote).
She said that CCI has reached out and had meetings with individual legislators. They have also asked to have people from the Assembly come by to meet with them to discuss the coming session by this hasn't happened yet (though it has been promised to happen prior to the session).
Two bits of context are important here.
One, CCI's process, as I understand it, is to try and get a sense of policy first, and then talk to their members (individual counties in Colorado) to get a sense of what the members think and/or want to do. In other words, there may be some delay in the process of getting counties' thoughts to the Assembly members and this delay means time. That is, I don't think it fair to say that no conversations have or will happen--the "yet" (as Ms. Flenniken emphasized) is important and it's only fair to note it.
Two, it's also fair to note the boundaries of what is not said here. If you have a picture in your brain that the counties have been at the table the whole time, that the legislators have been folding in feedback from local governments this whole time and that the policy has their fingerprints on it, you'd best to get your mind right. That, despite the ambiguous and intentionally vague words of politicians like Fenberg (unchallenged by Zellinger), is not the case.
My intuition and what I'm hearing from others tells me that this is policy that is made mostly to suit what the Democrat leadership likes, and it will be quickly waved in front of local governments to ensure that it is technically correct that there were "stakeholder" meetings.
Senate President Fenberg misunderstands incentives.
You may have noted in the previous post that I put up a lengthy quote from an interview between Marshall Zelinger and Senate President Steve Fenberg. I didn't mention the first couplet of that quote.
I'd saved it for now. I reattached the quote for convenience as well as putting a link to the Next interview below. The part I reference again starts at 19:30.
Zellinger asks Fenberg about how the state plans to incentivize what they want out of local communities: building housing (what we can likely assume to be high-density without too much of a stretch) near transit hubs.
This has been a huge push by the Democrats running this state: you see it in so many of their public rhetoric on the topic (see, for example, how housing policy is climate policy). Without going into the wisdom (or not) of such policy, I direct you to the response by Senate President Fenberg, in particular the part I put in all caps for emphasis.
The implication here is clear. There might be some carrots involved, but let's not forget that the state will not be afraid to make sure you can't stop the kinds of policies that they think best:
"... to allow others to build in a way that we think meets the statewide housing goals" doesn't smack of incentivizing after all. It doesn't smack of local control over the process.
Keep your eyes and ears open and speak up this Assembly session. If you don't defend local control from small intrusions, you'll wake up one day to find that Denver and Boulder are running a large part of your life and making sure you live by their values.
My spidey sense is tingling.
The article below is one of those ones that has my spidey sense tingling. I'll leave it to you to read up the details but here are the broad contours, the things that stick out because I'm hearing them elsewhere: a group of folks near Superior are suing JeffCo over their municipal airport over the noise and the leaded fuels.
The leaded fuels ....
the leaded fuels ....
Hmmm. Weren't those mentioned by some Colorado Federal legislators and the Attorney General and EPA recently? See, for example an open letter sent to the AG by some aviation groups which I linked to second below.
The tingling here is the leaded fuels and it's appearance in several places. This will obviously be a push by someone at some point. I can't help but wonder if the state will step up here since the Feds acting will be years away and there are people in liberal enclaves complaining now.
Should be an interesting one to watch. I think it's also a lesson that the time to speak up is as soon as possible when you feel the state's belt tighten around your middle, because by the time you're aware of a push, the Democrat machine has already started to spool up.
https://kdvr.com/news/local/over-400-sue-jefferson-county-over-rocky-mountain-metropolitan-airport/
https://download.aopa.org/advocacy/2023/231019_Joint_Ltr_to_Colorado_Attorney_General_re_Airport_Matters.pdf