Re: May 25 editorial.
The editorial, which lauded Gov. Hickenlooper’s dismissive response to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s warning about the EPA’s so-called Clean Energy Plan, was strangely contradictory.
On the one hand, editors argue that it’s wrongheaded to follow McConnell’s advice, because that invites the federal agency to write Colorado’s plan. Yet the editors admit that the EPA “is indeed asserting a dramatic expansion of its regulatory authority” — an expansion so dubious, in fact, that even liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe calls it “constitutionally reckless.”
Hickenlooper says in his brush-off of McConnell that it would be “irresponsible to ignore federal law.” But that is the central issue: Is it “law”? Tribe and many other experts say Congress never authorized the EPA to conduct rulemaking of this character under the Clean Air Act. Thirteen state attorneys general — including neighboring states Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming — have challenged the EPA’s rulemaking as unlawful. So the legitimacy of this evolving “law” is very much in doubt.
Club 20, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and over a dozen other state business groups endorsed SB 258, which would have required the state’s EPA-compliance plan to be submitted to both the PUC and the legislature for review and approval. Were all these concerned stakeholders also being “irresponsible”?
The governor’s own appointees said in December’s letter to the EPA that the state will need an extension on the unworkable timetable. If the EPA final rule scheduled for release in June disregards the state’s criticisms and requested modifications, will the governor then call the EPA rule “irresponsible” and join the 13-state lawsuit?
If the legions of legal, academic and business critics of the EPA plan are even half correct, then the governor should reconsider his support for the EPA’s reckless proposal.
State Sen. John Cooke is a Republican from Greeley.
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