Published in the Denver Post on March 24th, 2019

Re: “Does proposed oil and gas reform go too far or not far enough?” March 17 commentaries by Jon Caldara and Simon Moya Smith

I write in reply to Jon Caldara’s Sunday column on SB-181. There are serious issues here. My comments are not intended to demean Weld County. Mr Caldara calls the bill “an existential threat to Weld County”. He then compares that threat to the “vague, macro-level romantic way the Boulder mafia running Colorado’s government talks about global climate change”.

I will bet there is much more real science data backing climate change than there is data on the economic demise of Weld County – unless the data is paid for by the oil and gas industry. Mr Caldara uses the same arguments paid for by oil and gas to defeat Prop. 112. And that money is out in force again to defeat SB-181, I hear. SB-181 gives local control to Weld County. So will Weld County not get to decide what happens in Weld County under SB-181?

Marc Alston, Denver