House Bill 16-1004, sponsored by Rep. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, Rep. Jenni Arndt, D-Fort Collins, and Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, would have empowered a single state bureaucrat to devise and spend undefined taxpayer resources on implementing a state climate change plan. Had the bill passed, Colorado taxpayers could have been responsible for writing a blank check toward funding programs as potentially expensive as they are demonstrably useless in the conversation surrounding global warming.
Kelly Maher, Executive Director of Compass Colorado, applauded the senators who put a stop to the measure:
“In any debate on climate change, it’s important to ask what the proposals would actually achieve. In the case of House Bill 1004, the state would have assigned an unidentified bureaucrat to develop and execute a climate change plan based on the ‘best available science.’
“Beyond the obvious problems with deciding upon which science is ‘the best,’ here’s a spoiler alert: nothing that Colorado could possibly implement would put so much as a dent in global temperatures. Colorado lefties would sooner bankrupt our state in pursuit of unachievable outcomes than they would act as good stewards of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”
Maher continued, “This is why majorities matter. If Democrats held the Senate, they would have rammed this legislation through, hanging Colorado taxpayers out to dry.”
The legislation met its demise in the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
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