Opinion: Corporatocracy comes to local government


The Boulder City Council was on the right track Tuesday night when it unanimously approved a one-year fracking moratorium. Whether fracking can be done in a way that is environmentally benign is still an open question, but it is clear that this is not currently occurring on a consistent basis. So hitting the pause button until critical research is completed is the prudent thing to do.
Whether the council will be able to hold that line after the first year is still an open question. It would have been a lot easier if the Legislature had moved forward on some of its fracking bills this session. But that would have required Gov. Hickenlooper to support the citizens rather than the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, neither Tom Tancredo nor Scott Gessler, who are in the running to be his Republican opponent in 2014, represent a sufficient threat at this point to force the governor to shift his allegiance.
Interestingly, new technology is emerging that could reduce fracking’s environmental impact. For example, new membrane filtration hardware could help clean up the water coming back out of wells. Companies are developing a gel made from liquefied petroleum gas and propane to substitute for the water pumped into wells; it dissolves in the oil or gas but does not dissolve salts or clay in the shale, reducing both water use and the contaminant load emerging from the wells. And NREL is involved in a project to take gas from oil wells and convert it into jet fuel. All of this indicates that delay will allow more environmentally sound technology to become available.
But delay is anathema to the companies that see dollar signs in exploiting our finite and non-renewable resources in the fastest and cheapest way. So we can expect to see a lot more political activism by the corporations involved in the oil and gas business. For example, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is saying that they will be running a campaign to reduce the “polarization” around the fracking issue. (Camera, June 5.)
But big business could go much further. The state government is already involved in legal action against Longmont for its fracking ban. Given the number of other communities that are considering bans, these lawsuits could stretch the state’s budget. So I would not be at all surprised to hear, as rumored, that private companies are considering providing funds to the state to support these lawsuits. If this happens, then the law will become just another corporate political tool, without even the pretense of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
This brings me to another event at Tuesday night’s council meeting. I want to acknowledge council member Macon Cowles for his hard work on what I believe will be the crux issue in the energy arena for the foreseeable future – the role of corporate money in local politics. In the 2011 election, we saw our monopoly energy provider Xcel spend almost a million dollars that they acknowledged (and more that occurred before the reporting period started) to try to defeat the ballot measures that authorized the city council to create a municipal electric utility if certain conditions were met. Now Xcel is working, and spending, to put a charter amendment on the ballot that would make it very difficult or impossible to municipalize, even if detailed analysis shows that municipalization could save money for businesses and residents while dramatically reducing GHG emissions. I would expect oil and gas companies to follow suit, putting initiatives on local ballots to reverse elected officials’ decisions or trying to elect council members who think big business made America what it is. (See the Camera June 6, 2013 for this misguided comment.)
I recommend reading an op-ed written by John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Funds, that created the first low cost index funds. (New York Times, May 14, 2011.) Bogle recognizes that corporate money is really shareholder’s money, so shareholders should make the choices about political contributions. He suggests requiring a 75 percent vote of shareholders on such donations, stating, “75 percent is halfway between a simple majority and the standard (under Delaware corporate law) that requires a unanimous shareholder vote to ratify a gift of corporate assets other than for charitable purposes.”
Boulder has been a leader in campaign finance reform. Let’s continue that role and take this next critical step.


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