The Sun confuses not spending dollars with no cost: moving public land to state parks ain't free. And while we're on it, thoughts on money coming into Colorado ... but not for politics.
Adding state park land without spending a dollar? Perhaps not SPENDING, but don't think it means without cost.
The Sun article linked first below is about a (I get the sense unlikely by reading the article) deal whereby the Colorado Land Board could give some of the land it owns in and around state parks over to Colorado Parks and Wildlife ... and without spending a dollar folks!
Before going forward, let me back up a step for some context.
The Colorado Land Board is a a board in Colorado that is enshrined (and has been since day 1) in the Colorado State Constitution which was to manage the public land Colorado got from the Federal government to keep in trust.
They manage a program where people (ranchers, hunters, oil and gas interests and others) can lease the public lands Colorado has and the lease proceeds go to help pay for Colorado's schools.
More in the second link below if you want it.
The Land Board controls some parcels of land that are adjacent to or within state parks. It has a contract with another, newer, and not constitutionally-created government body, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife system to manage the public lands that are in or around the state parks. Right now, that contract is up for negotiation and extension for a term of 10 years.
This article details how those lands could be sold (for quite a bit of money) by the land board a la a deal happening in Wyoming ... or how those lands could be "sold" to Colorado Parks and Wildlife and thus become state park land instead of land that could be developed.
One gets the sense that this was the point of the article in reading it. That is, the idea is to get the word out about how this contract should be extended so that those public lands could not be sold (and/or presumably leased though there is no mention of leasing in the article--something I'll take up shortly) by the Land Board and would remain untouched conservation land.
To help you see what I'm getting at, I took a screenshot of the article and attached it here, boxing the bits that talk about the prospect of and/or horror involved in the land board selling this land. Pretty sizeable chunk, especially if you ignore the bit boxed in blue since it's background about Wyoming and not Colorado.
All the more striking too since you'll notice something that is not boxed.
There is no comment, not one single word from someone who might get economic benefit from the state leasing the land.
For example, there is no comment from a rancher who might, without putting a single house on it, lease some land near a park, make income for his or her family, provide food to eat, and add to the economy of Colorado.
There is no comment from a guide who would like to lease the land to take hunters on guided hunting trips.
I did write to ask the reporter why there was no such context in the article. I did get an answer back but it wasn't germane to my question. I followed up and got another non-answer so we're left to speculate whether this was considered by the reporter.
My guess is that it wasn't, but without a substantive answer, we don't know much.
Now we arrive back at the line sitting at the top of this post.
As the reporter has it, yes, these lands could be added to our state park system for $0, but do not make the simpleminded mistake that this means it could be done without cost or consequence.
There is a cost and consequence to every decision. It might be that no one is wanting to lease these lands for any economic use (no one is currently leasing them now), but can we be sure that this will remain the case from now til forever?
You also need to consider things like this outside the bubble of what the typical Sun reader wants to read and consider them in the larger context of other policy in this state. How friendly has this state been to oil and gas exploration? How friendly has it been (especially with Polis at the helm) to Ag? What would removing yet more land from ever being used for these kinds of activities do? What message does it send?
https://coloradosun.com/2023/12/08/colorado-state-land-board-parks/
https://slb.colorado.gov/about
Money flowing into Colorado, and not always for politics.
Last Friday I put up two posts. One dealt with the Colorado Times Recorder's hypocrisy and the Sun's transition to a non profit. The other dealt with "Language Justice" at Denver Public Schools.
In reading the Center Square article in the previous post (linked first again below for convenience), I couldn't help but notice that, quoting the article, "The Colorado chapter of the education advocacy organization Stand For Children stated it worked with the Denver school district to get the language justice policy adopted."
Golly, but that name seemed familiar, this Stand for Children. Then I remembered.
It was the same organization I wrote about earlier: the one that the Sun said was funded by non profits but which had at least one dark money group funding it. See the second link below for a look back at my earlier post.
I'm not surprised. When I follow links and read names this is a common occurrence, particularly in Colorado.
And this brings me to the thread running through the posts from Friday: money. Money being donated here, donated there, sometimes in the open, sometimes not.
And this money doesn't always go into politics.
There's money that goes into funding groups that get involved in media, in education, in places that you may not think big outside groups would be poking their noses.
I find this troublesome (and this applies to money coming into conservative and liberal causes); it raises a number of questions for me.
--When it comes to big organizations donating to news media non profits, what is the end goal? Save local news? Save the kind of local news they WANT more of regardless of consumer demand? Look at who is getting the money and from whom and I bet you'll find that liberal-leaning donors don't give to conservative outlets of any size (and vice versa).
--What kind of influence does the money buy with these news organizations and what does it do to their reporting? As I wrote before, the common counterargument is that donations do not influence editorial decisions, but I've lived on this planet long enough to know that money talks. Always has, always will.
--We all know about lobbyists and money's influence in the Assembly, but what about cases like that from Friday's post on Denver Public Schools where an outside donor helped create a proposed policy? Is this okay? Who asked who for the help? Put specifically, how many parents asked for Language Justice prior to Stand For Children stepping in to "help"?
--Further, with regard to outside groups "helping" make policy, is it possible that these outside groups get more influence than parents precisely because of their money? Would what I want (I who pay taxes and will soon have a student in my local district) get drowned out because a national group with deep pockets and a lot of resources wants something?
--I ask similar questions when donors are used to pay for other governmental functions. The article linked third below is an old one but still relevant. Polis has made quite a habit of using donor money to fund offices in the Executive Branch of our state government that neither the Assembly nor us voters got a chance to weigh in on. Is that right? Money has long been used as a lever to control what our government does. If we allow outside groups to directly fund the government, have we not lost influence?
We should be just as worried and just as watchful about money coming into our state for things other than politics as we are about it coming in for politics.
Just because it doesn't go to a candidate or to an issue on the ballot doesn't make it benign.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/colorado/article_13d0ae60-893e-11ee-b736-97b64b2303cc.html
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/todays-theme-what-makes-it-into-the?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://coloradosun.com/2021/11/16/jared-polis-office-private-donors/