Momentum mounts behind GOP plan to tap Roan revenue for higher ed

Newspapers from the Front Range to the West Slope are expressing editorial support for a plan by legislative Republicans to use hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from natural-gas drilling to fund the state's colleges and universities.

Meanwhile, the head of the West Slope's influential Club 20 advocacy group says the GOP plan, authored by Sen. Josh Penry, R-Fruita, and Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, is "on the right track"  in looking at ways to invest the revenue from the new drilling leases on Colorado's Roan Plateau.

"It should be on the table," Club 20 Executive Director Reeves Brown said today regarding the Penry-White plan for higher ed. Brown's organization supports drilling on the Roan under a proposal that has been years in the making and was drafted in part by former Colorado House Speaker Russ George, who is also from the West Slope.

George currently serves as transportation chief to Gov. Bill Ritter -- who is attempting to delay drilling -- but helped write the Roan drilling plan when he headed the Department of Natural Resources under former Gov. Bill Owens.

Ritter has met with criticism from Penry and others for trying to get the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls the plateau, to delay drilling. Penry has called the pending proposal for the BLM to grant drilling leases, "the most restrictive, environmentally-minded production

plan in the history of the American West."

Penry and Brown point out that wide-ranging parties were invited to the table years ago to hammer out the compromise proposal for drilling.

"It would be disingenuous for anyone to suggest there hasn’t been adequate opportunity for the public to have input into this plan," Brown said.

Penry and White are proposing to dedicate half of the revenue derived from natural gas production on the Roan to a permanent trust fund for Colorado's colleges and universities. The legislators would dedicate the other half of the revenue from the Roan to a trust fund for energy-impacted communities, with the interest providing a secure revenue stream for West Slope roads and bridges in perpetuity.

Estimates of the windfall that would be paid to the state of Colorado for leasing the Roan range from $500 million to $1 billion.  In addition to that, the state would collect well in excess of $100 million each year for the next 20 to 30 years in mineral royalties and state and local energy taxes, according to industry estimates.

Amid recent calls by the Ritter administration to boost funding to higher ed, newspapers including the Denver Post , the Rocky Mountain News and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel have expressed varying degrees of support for the Penry-White plan to tap into the drilling revenue.

"What started out as a good idea now has momentum across the state," Penry said today. 

Penry has challenged the Ritter administration to work with him on his effort to put drilling revenue to the best use for public policy rather than to persist in the governor's attempts to stall on drilling leases.