June 05, 2010 10:39 PM UTC

Dan Maes for Sycophant (w/poll)

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• by: ClubTwitty

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Supplicant gubernatorial candidate seeks industry Sugar Daddy–your wishes are my command!  We have been a very very bad state. Groveling included.

Dan Maes thinks the job of a Governor is to ‘beg industry for forgiveness.’

This is not an off-handed comment by Maes, but an oft-stated plank in his bid to defeat Bill Ritter (he describes it as his ‘number two priority’ and regularly states that ‘Ritter has got to go.’).  

Colorado’s oil and gas regulations require–among other things–that:

*companies properly dispose of their pit liners;

*that a chemical inventory be kept for each well site documenting which chemicals are being used in the process;

*that the Colorado Division of Wildlife be consulted when development is proposed in specific, mapped sensitive habitats;

*that companies plan for the area they want to develop (Geographic Area Plan) rather than well-by-well; and,

*that affected property owners have better recourse.  

The energy industry, of course, never left the state.  As it did across the Mountain West it laid off workers, laid down rigs and shut in wells–to preserve it’s profit margins when prices dropped.  

Natural gas is glutted. Larger (pdf), less expensive plays have recently come online closer to the market and closer to infrastructure that delivers the resource to that market.  

But similar to his pledge to ‘end government waste,’ Maes offers no specifics on which rules he feels ‘chased the industry from the state.’  

Is it maintaining an inventory of toxic chemicals? Allowing for more input and involvement by private property owners getting their surface drilled, often against their wishes?  Perhaps requiring that other state agencies exercise better oversight in their obligation to protect the pubic trust?  

Who knows–by all indications not even Dan, or if he does he’s not telling.  One must suppose its whatever industry tells him as he begs forgiveness for living in a state where elected leaders dare put our water, land and people first.

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