energy
A ballot initiative that would have given communities sweeping powers over oil drilling and other industrial activity was pulled Monday for a lack of supporting signatures, sponsors said.
Initiative 75 would have added the so-called Community Rights Amendment to the state constitution, but to get it on the ballot required 86,105 valid signatures — a rule of thumb is that 125,000 signatures need to be gathered to meet the requirement.
“With just nine weeks to get 125,000 signatures and lacking hundreds of thousands in funding, we knew we faced an uphill battle for 2014,” the sponsors said in a statement. “We took a tally this week and now know that we’re going to be well short of where we need to be.”
Former Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo plans to push at least two Colorado ballot initiatives for the 2010 ballot. One initiative will deal with immigration reform and the other with energy policy. His non-profit think tank also plans to pursue future efforts to legalize drugs through the ballot initiative.
Critics of a ballot measure being pushed by Pacifig Gas & Electric say that it could kill government-run power systems. The measure, which is collecting petition signatures, would require a 2/3 majority vote before a community choice aggregation power system could be set up or extended to new customers.