Jeffco vs. Golden in tower fight
By Bob Ewegen
Denver Post Columnist

A little-noticed decision by the Jefferson County commissioners to oppose Golden’s efforts to condemn the site of a proposed digital broadcast tower on Lookout Mountain may signal the end of one of the longest-running Not In My Back Yard battles in the state.

Golden began eminent-domain proceedings on April 12 to seize the 65-acre site from a broadcasting consortium known as the Lake Cedar Group, ostensibly to preserve it as open space. Unfortunately for Golden, the tower site is well outside Golden’s city limits, and a 2004 state law, HB 1203, forbade municipalities from condemning land outside of their jurisdiction for open space.

For a fine backgrounder on this case, read Jessica Peck Corry’s “Tower Tussle: The Colorado Battle over Extraterritorial Condemnation” at independenceinstitute.org. As Corry notes, Golden’s hope of seizing the tower site relies heavily on a ruling by District Judge Charles Greenacre in a Telluride case that the 2004 law is trumped by the home-rule powers granted cities under Article XX of the Colorado Constitution.

The legal picture changed dramatically, however, when the Jefferson County commissioners voted July 12 to ask the Jefferson County District Court to deny Golden’s condemnation effort. That’s because state law \[38-1-1-(4)(b)(II)\] specifies that cities cannot make extraterritorial condemnations in unincorporated areas without the approval of the county that has lawful jurisdiction over the site.

To be sure, this restriction is part of the same law, known as the “Telluride Amendment” that Judge Greenacre already challenged. But it invokes a completely different legal test than whether the state legislature can tell home- rule cities what to do. In this case, the state law only gives counties a voice when cities leapfrog their jurisdictions and attempt to override county plans.

There were already good reasons to doubt that Greenacre’s ruling would support Golden’s condemnation drive. First, that ruling was never appealed to the state Court of Appeals or Supreme Court, so it has no value as a precedent in Jefferson County. The case became moot when Telluride voters in 2005 rejected a plan to annex nearly 800 acres and preserve most of it as open space.

But the most important distinction between Telluride and Golden is that San Miguel County had neither opposed nor supported the condemnation drive at the time of Greenacre’s ruling. Thus, the county veto provision in the state law did not come into play.

As Corry notes, Greenacre’s ruling relied on state constitutional language that home-rule charters “and the ordinances made pursuant thereto in such matters shall supercede within the territorial limits and other jurisdiction of said city or town any law of the state in conflict therein.” (Emphasis added.)

Simply put, the broadcasting tower site is indisputably outside the territorial limits of Golden - and indisputably within the jurisdiction of Jefferson County. It’s one thing to say, as the Colorado Supreme Court did, that the state can’t override a home-rule city on a purely local issue such as Denver’s ban on certain semi-automatic weapons. It’s quite another to say that the state can’t guarantee a county’s power to protect its own interests against a raid by a city.

And, unquestionably, Jefferson County will lose both tax revenue and open space if Golden succeeds in condemning Lake Cedar Group’s property. The consortium, representing channels 4, 7, 9 and 20, has already agreed to tear down its existing towers on Lookout Mountain, restore the 74-acre site that now hosts them, and turn the land into open space under county control.

Jeffco not only gets free open space, but Lake Cedar must maintain the property - and continue paying property taxes to the county and school district. If Golden condemns the adjacent 65-acre digital tower site, Jeffco loses its free 74 acres - and Golden won’t pay any taxes to offset the costs that its new park will inevitably impose upon Jefferson County.

Golden and others of the NIMBY persuasion have stalled the digital broadcast towers on Lookout Mountain for 10 years. But if the court upholds Jeffco’s power to veto Golden’s extraterritorial condemnation, this long battle could be entering its endgame.

Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is The Denver Post’s deputy editorial page editor. He has written on state and local government since 1963.

One soccer mom’s take on the drug war
By Jessica Peck Corry

I hope my daughter will never smoke marijuana. Regardless of whether she does one day, I know one thing for sure: Keeping it illegal can only harm her future.

Since 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has spent more than $2 billion in taxpayer dollars on twin advertising campaigns seeking to discourage marijuana use. The first speaks to parents, calling them the “Anti-Drug.” It fails before it begins. Good parents are going to talk to their children about drugs. All the feel-good ads in the world aren’t going to get indifferent parents to engage in such an awkward but essential dialogue.

The second campaign fails as well. In these, youthful but sophisticated graphics tell kids not to use marijuana. If there is one sure way to get adolescents to smoke pot, tell them that the government and their parents don’t want them to. In fact, a recently published national study indicates that after viewing commercials for this campaign, young people were more likely to exhibit positive responses about the drug.

Politicians whisper quietly behind closed doors about the insanity of the drug war. Neither party, however, has had the courage to take a stand against prohibition publicly. Just imagine if the $2 billion invested in these ads - or the billions more spent prosecuting peaceful marijuana users every year - had been diverted instead into tuition grants for needy students or back to taxpaying parents who could directly invest in college funds.

Earlier this year, many Colorado Republicans - myself included - expressed outrage against a new statewide smoking ban, saying it runs contrary to our American ethos of individual rights, private property rights, and personal responsibility. But where is the GOP’s outrage now as the government spends billions to tell people they can’t make the decision to use marijuana, a drug proven to be less harmful than cigarettes?

Democrats are no less guilty. They silently watch as our government’s addiction to prohibition becomes a national epidemic, taking money out of the pockets of working families and sending thousands behind bars every year.

Both parties do nothing because they believe in the same urban myth. They know they must get the “soccer mom” vote if they want to win, but they are confused on how to achieve this. Their logic goes like this: Moms don’t like drugs. Moms don’t want their kids to use drugs. Do not advocate legalization or decriminalization if you want moms to vote for your party.

This strategy is tied to reliable studies demonstrating that women are now the decisionmakers in most American families. Just as mom decides which brand of toilet paper to buy for her family, she increasingly plays decisionmaker when it comes to voting. Democrats and Republicans alike believe they would gain nothing by advocating an end to prohibition, but both have failed to consider that they might just gain votes if they could learn to speak to mothers about drugs in a way that they could relate to.

Parents across America are trying to find a way to fund college. By legalizing marijuana, taxing it, and turning this revenue into college scholarships and treatment programs, the future of every child could be just a little bit brighter.

Compare this with the system we have now. Marijuana prohibition, violated by millions every year, has become the laughing stock of American public policy. Kids have seen first-hand that it’s not as damaging as they’ve been led to believe. In the process, they begin to believe that some laws aren’t meant to be obeyed. This is by far prohibition’s most damaging side effect and only makes the job of being a mom that much tougher.

When I sit my daughter down to talk about marijuana, I’m not going to sugar-coat the facts. Marijuana can be addictive and destructive - just as alcohol can be - when abused. I’m going to let her know that life is exciting enough without turning to drugs for fun. She will learn that every law should be respected and that she should work to change those she believes are unjust.

At the end of the day, our government knows it cannot enforce marijuana prohibition. In the absence of being able to do so, it sends the damaging message to our young people that marijuana should be illegal simply because “I’m the government, and I said so.” Moms know better - and may ultimately be the single key to bringing sanity back to American drug policy.

Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute, where she specializes in civil rights, higher education, and land use policy. This column originally appeared in The Denver Post on June 28, 2006.