Boulder County commissioners have authorized the county attorney’s office to side with Longmont in its legal battle over the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s challenge of the city’s voter-approved fracking ban.
Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Deb Gardner and Elise Jones voted on Thursday to have the county attorney’s staff file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Longmont’s appeal of a Boulder District Court judge’s July ruling that overturned a prohibition against the use of hydraulic fracturing in any oil and gas operations within the city limits.
Assistant county attorney Ben Doyle said one of the issues Longmont proposes raising with the Colorado Court of Appeals is whether District Court Judge D.D. Mallard “applied the proper … test” in ruling that state laws pre-empted Longmont’s ability to regulate oil and gas exploration inside its boundaries.
That, Doyle wrote in a memo to the commissioners, “is a critical question for localities across Colorado.”
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