LEGISLATIVE GOALS FOR SPECIAL SESSION

The Colorado General Assembly is reconvening to deal with growth, re-districting, and cervical cancer. Our issue is growth. During both the main legislative session and the first special session, the legislature wrestled with 90 page, complex growth bills. In the short 20-day session beginning this week, Audubon hopes to narrow our battle to an understandable list. We need for our members to communicate these concepts to their own legislators.

Audubon wants the Colorado legislature to pass legislation requiring cities and counties above a threshold size to adopt comprehensive plans that include an explicit environmental quality element. We want the plans to be enforceable, and we would like to see urban level development concentrated in urban areas.

KEEP IT SIMPLE.

ACHIEVE THE ACHIEVABLE.

As the legislature convenes this second extraordinary session, Audubon of Colorado hopes to achieve some critical incremental steps forward. While incremental progress is the goal, remember that there must be real and significant progress.  The state board adopted a proposal to seek legislation, which requires                           

CITIES AND COUNTIES MUST ADOPT ENFORCEABLE COMPREHENSIVE PLANS WITH A REPRESENTATIVE LIST OF MANDATORY ELEMENTS

Among the mandatory elements:

1. AN EXPLICIT ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ELEMENT which unequivocally includes protections of wildlife habitat, declining species, water quality, streams, lakes, wetlands and riparian areas.

2. ENFORCEABILITY

The plans must mean something, and not be nebulous. Plans must be more than vision statements. The new state law must specify that regulations to implement the comprehensive plan must be adopted by a date certain. Legislation should also contain prohibitions against changing the plans at a whim -particularly contemporaneously with development applications.

3. WE WOULD LIKE TO ALSO SEE A LAND USE ELEMENT which specifies that urban level development should only occur in designated areas which are contiguous and compatible with existing urbanized areas.

TAKE NO STEPS BACKWARD

Equally important, Audubon of Colorado will fight hard to ensure that Colorado does not take away any existing local tools or authorities to protect the environment and our quality of life. We will oppose any takings as well as any legislation restricting local governments current existing environmental authorities such as 1041 authority, environmental conditions on development and local wetlands protections.

For example:

NO NEW TAKINGS STANDARDS

Growth should pay its own way. We support impact fees, which help to offset the costs of growth. But we oppose impact fees that would establish a "takings" standard for impact fees. Unfortunately, the governor's call solicits legislation for impact fees that meet a takings standard. (Nexus and proportionality) That would be a step backwards from existing law for municipalities.  No court has applied the DOLAN and NOLLAN standards to legislatively adopted and generally applicable impact fees. To the contrary, the courts have said just the opposite. The takings standard created by the US Supreme Court in those two land mark cases do NOT apply to the payment of money.

NO PRESUMPTION OF BUILDABILITY

A critical fight in the main session was whether or not Colorado should create sacrifice areas where local governments would essentially be forced to "just say yes."  No state in the United States provides for such sweeping developer protections. Such a "presumption of buildability" is an assault on local control. We have no desire to be the first that does.  Local governments must maintain the ability to impose necessary environmental conditions on a proposed development. ("Site specific conditions")

Audubon hopes that we will achieve enforceable mandatory comprehensive planning with strong and explicit environmental provisions. While we would like to achieve more, we will count the session as a success if in these next 2 weeks, we can do this much and take no steps backwards.

Audubon acknowledges that environmentally explicit, enforceable, comprehensive land use plans are not a total solution. More steps need to be taken. We will support all good growth legislation and oppose all legislation that weakens environmental protections. We will continue to work for additional safeguards until Colorado ultimately achieves a comprehensive smart growth agenda.