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Show THE PARK RECORD SAT/SUN/MON/TUES, JULY 29-AUG. 1,2006 A-19 Viewpoints. EDITORIAL ^Drivers dig even deeper to finance big oil companies' profit margin omehow, while Americans have been desperately hunting under their cars' floor mats for spare change to fill their gas tanks, the world's largest oil companies have pocketed record-breaking profits. According to the Associated Press, Exxon Mobil just posted "the second highest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company." And it appears most of the oil companies that have been drilling into our bank accounts this year have enjoyed similar windfalls. Also according to AP, Shell, Conoco, BP and Chevron raked in double-digit profits of between 36 and 65 percent. While the oil tycoons have been plumping up their bottom lines, everyone else, from airlines and trucking companies to school districts, have had to increase fees or beg, borrow and steal from other budget categories to stay in business. Maybe we missed the memo that explained the hike from $2.50 per gallon to $3 was a contribution . to the global oil executives' retirement fund, but, it seems most Americans have been under the general impression that the rising price of gas was directly linked to two unavoidable factors: the war in the S LOVE TO HAVE *HHEM\ COME TEST THE AIR I N HERE AFTER YOU'VE I EATEN AT TACOBELU / Middle East and a looming shortage of oil and gas resources. Apparently the joke is on us - and it is not amusing. It is, however, one more incentive to more seriously consider buying a hybrid car, switching to biodiesel fuel or following Mountain Trails Foundation's advice and parking the car one day a week. Park City Municipal Corporation recently took a big step forward in its commitment to petroleum independence by gassing up its public transit buses with bio-diesel fuel. The city has also been a strong proponent of trail systems and walkable communities. Summit County is getting into the spirit too by working with Park City to provide an expanded bus system. But until regular citizens start throttling back on fuel consumption, it is likely that Exxon execs will continue pumping barrels of cash into their personal war chests and the rest of us will keep paying more to drive our kids to the doctor's office, more for airline tickets to see relatives at Christmas and more for every T-shirt or case of soda that had to be trucked from a warehouse to a retail outlet. JOHN KILBOURN//WWC RECORD GUEST EDITORIAL Resident responds to plaintive question from a developer Stealth campaign could be a threat to democracy By RAY RING This election season in the West already looks as hot as a wildfire running on a dry Wind. High-profile campaigns target congressional seats and governorships. But beware: The most important campaign runs in stealth mode. It's the campaign by libertarians who want to cripple your state and local governments. They're doing it with ballot initiatives, appealing directly to voters. Their goals include limiting taxes in ways that would undermine government services, ousting judges who make unpopular rulings and imposing term limits on legislators. The campaign has local supporters, but it's largely political spin by libertarian activists from outside the region. The campaign's most intrusive arm would strangle land-use regulations. An examination of it reveals the pattern. Libertarians believe many common regu'lations on real estate, such as zoning and subdivision iimits, unfairly reduce property values. They caJl it "regulatory takings." They want governments to compensate ah1 the owners, or back off. It may sound fair enough. But here's how the principle works: If you could fit 20 houses on your land, plus a junkyard and a gravel mine, and the government limits you to six houses, then the government must pay you whatever profit 'you would reap on the rest of the developments. Of course, no government can afford -to pay you, so regulations would be waived and you could do the maximum development, no matter what your neighbors think of it. Libertarians push such regulatory-takings initiatives in Washington, Idaho, Montana, California, Arizona and Nevada. Americans for Limited Government, a Chicago-area group, and the Fund for Democracy, based in New York City, have funneled more than '$2.75 million into the initiatives so far. That money hired petition-circulating companies that got as much as $4 per signature, per'suading registered voters to put the initiatives on the November ballot. To sell the idea, the takings initiatives 'cloak themselves in another issue - the gov' ernment's "eminent domain" power. Governments use eminent domain occasionally to condemn property, forcing the owners to accept a buyout, in order to make new roads, for urban renewal and other projects that benefit the public. Eminent ' domain is the most unpopular government 'power, due to a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ; ruling known as the Kelo case. The court -said a Connecticut city could use eminent domain to condemn a few homes, to make room for a drug manufacturer's plant. That ruling set off anger and hysteria over eminent domain. Taking advantage of it. the initiatives in five states combine limits on eminent domain with the regulatory-takings idea. In the sixth, Washington, the initiative's preamble cites the eminent domain issue. The initiatives have alarmist titles like "Protect Our Homes" and "People's Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land" -- as if the government is about to sweep in with bulldozers everywhere. Yet governments use eminent domain on behalf of developers only a few thousand times per year, nationwide. If the takings principle becomes law, it would choke off governments' ability to pass any new land-use protections from now on, affecting millions of property owners. Libertarians persuaded Oregon voters to approve such an initiative, titled Measure 37, in 2004. Oregon had tough regulations that needed some loosening, but Measure 37 blew huge holes in its system for protecting landscapes, the environment and neighborhoods. . . . ""Now; thousands of Oregohians-have-crises summed up by Renee Ross. Ross lives on 32 acres south of Portland. She thought Measure 37 was a good idea. But two of her neighbors have filed Measure 37 claims: One wants to build houses on 60 acres, and the other wants to dig a gravel mine on 80 acres. Handcuffed by the measure, her county government waived regulations and OK'd both schemes. Ross worries most about the mine. "Our atmosphere is totally peaceful - the birds, the creek rambling through our property," Ross says. "When they start up (the gravel mine), it'll be within 200 feet of our house. They'll be doing blasting, and they'll run a rock-crushing machine. It'll also be trucks backing up - the beep-beep-beep. The sound will echo. We're devastated... We went from having a very strict land-use policy to having no policy. I don't mind if you do whatever you want on your land, as long as it doesn't hurt someone else's life." If you live in any of the states that have takings initiatives, and someday you might want a new regulation to preserve your neighborhood, or to put conditions on a Super Wal-Mart, or to protect stream banks, or to require developers to do anything for open space and affordable housing, you would be wise to vote "no" in November. As with all the different libertarian initiatives, if you side with people who don't believe in government, you'll get a lousy government. Ray Ring is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is the paper's Northern Rockies editor based in Bozeman, Montana. BY KEN WRIGHT "All my life, I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers," said billionaire developer BJ. "Red" McCombs recently, during a forum on his proposed resort atop remote Wolf Creek Pass, in southwestern Colorado. I can answer Mr. McCombs, but first, some history: At issue is a massive project on an in-holding (private land surrounded by public land) that McCombs, co-founder of Clear Channel Communications and former owner of both the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Vikings, acquired in 1986, following a disputed land swap with the Forest Service. The land sits at more than 10300 feet in the eastern San Juan Mountains, and adjacent to the small, familyowned Wolf Creek Ski Area. McCombs' Village at Wolf Creek would house 10,000 skiers and offer nearly 250 million squarefeet of commercial space. The Forest Service originally denied the land exchange but, in a controversial move, reversed its decision two weeks later. ~-McGombs' " question was rhetorical because the forum was boycotted by the only critics of the project invited to speak. State Sen. Jim Isgar and state Rep. Mark Larson had announced they wouldn't attend because no other knowledgeable critics were invited. Opponents, however, were present. A standing-room-only crowd of nearly 300 people listened to the speakers inside; outside, protesters with signs were watched over by police. In the spirit, then, of easing some of the antagonism, I'd like to relieve Mr. McCombs of his life-long befuddlement about hostility to developers. How do we not love thee? Let me count down the ways: 5. You insult us. Let's begin with the forum at which you voiced your bemusement. Left off the list of approved panelists was a representative from Colorado Wild, the environmental group that exposed the intimate collaboration between your employees. Mineral County and the U.S. Forest Service in approving parts of the project. Rep. Larson, who you did invite, has already had a taste of how you operate. In March, when he introduced a statehouse resolution asking Congress to "take notice'1 of local objections to the ski-resort development, your spokesman called him "the coward of the county." 4. Because you not only remind us how much influence money can buy in this country today, you also flaunt it. I'm sorry you dont like Colorado Wild, but we who live here appreciate its willingness to dig out the facts. We also can't afford the lobbying; you can - the kind you engaged in to help get Mark Rey appointed undersecretary of the Interior in charge of the Forest Service, and to get such personal attention from him after his appointment. Or to get Tom DeLay to try to tack an amendment onto a congressional bill bypassing Forest Service approval for an easement across public land for the project Or to give Mineral County officials such helpful guidance in drafting their approval of the project that a district judge overturned the county's approval, calling it "arbitrary and capricious." 3. Because your project harms the public land we live here for, and the non-human life we share this place with. Yes, I realize this is probably something else you've never understood, but we still care about such things. Wolf Creek Pass, where you want to build your "village," is a vital migration corridor for the recently restored lynx and other wildlife between two of the wildest places left in Colorado, the South San Juan Wilderness and the Weminuche Wilderness. 2. Because your bloated project is all wrong for a world of global warming, struggles for oil, and the continuing loss of wild country. Those of us who live in the Four Corners area already bear much of the brunt of resource gluttony. Massive projects such as the Navajo Dam, McPhee Dam and the just-being-built $500 million Animas-La Plata Project deplete our rivers; oil and gas development in the San Juan Basin scars our public lands with roads and pipelines while it sticks noisy gas wells in people's backyards; and four new coal-fired power plants are in various stages of development in a region that suffers from the worst coal-fired power-plant pollution in the country. And the No. 1 reason we dont love you? Your greed. You already have a billion dollars. Why slap together yet another megaresort of second or third homes and glitzy shopping and industrial recreation that will forever alter the land and down-home culture that we love? I'm afraid that I know the answer Because you can. But dont count your local opponents out: We're not going away. Ken Wright is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colo, (hcn.org). He is a writer in Durango, Colo. 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Box 3688, Park City, Utah 84060 PHOTOS BY SCOTT SINE Asked on Main Street, Park City How do you feel about stem cell research? Joe Blonigen "It's important, and the government should increase research any way it can." Casey Pack *Tm for stem cell research. Once we have a big breakthrough, it won't be such a moral issue." Ashley Moldenhauer Kelley and Mark Allied "I havent educated myself on this issue, but I'm a naturalist and feel that Mother Nature should takes its course." "If they use cells that are taken in the right way, then yes, we agree with it, but if abortion as birth control comes into it, then no." |