Colorado House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst in the House chamber on opening day. (Brennan Linsley, The Associated Press)
The top Democrat in the General Assembly expressed disappointment Wednesday , saying she is open to an initiative effort to force the issue back to the Colorado ballot.
House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst struck a different tone than the Democratic governor in describing the task force’s report, a day after it voted to advance nine recommendation that avoided many of the thorny issues surrounding oil and gas drilling.
“This may be a matter of cognitive dissonance. I think he may be a little more pleased than I am with the results of the task force,” the Boulder Democrat told The Denver Post in an interview. “I am a little disappointed that we didn’t get further along on the real crux of the issue which is local control — the ability for local residents and property owners and communities to have more of a say on oil and gas development that is very close to them.”
Hickenlooper touted the group’s work in a statement Tuesday, saying the recommendations were “significant in both breadth and the level of consensus they achieved.”
The task force made a recommendation to better involve local governments in the permitting process but the industry led an effort to reject measures to allow localities to put in place rules that go beyond state regulations.
Hullinghorst said the but may have to go to voters to get tougher local control measures approved. A launched Tuesday.
“We may just have to go to an initiative on this I’m not averse to do that,” she said. I don’t think that’s the best solution to any problem to go to an initiative because there are all kinds of unintended consequences. But I think we will all be looking at that.
“We’ve really put a lot of effort and a lot of time into trying to resolve this from a legislative perspective,” she continued. “That’s why sometimes initiatives are important.”
