Twenty Years Ago This Week: Colorado Senate Majority Leader Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, praised the final approval of House Bill 04-1203 which sought to limit local government’s power to take private property through condemnation or eminent domain.
“Do people exist for government, or vice versa,” Hillman said. “Higher tax revenues for a municipality cannot and should not justify the taking of someone else’s personal property, and if it does then we are all in danger.”
HB-1203, later to be called the ‘Telluride Amendment’, sought to end eminent domain to help a municipality increase tax revenues as well as the condemnation of property in some resort communities for the purpose of converting the land to open space. Telluride had recently sought to condemn 560 acres outside city limits for open space, even though the owner had volunteered the use of his property for hiking trails and parking for the Bluegrass Festival.
“The government that should be protecting our rights has become little more than a glorified real estate agent for the politically powerful,” Hillman said.
But organization Environment Colorado argued that the legislation would hamstring future local government attempts to acquire open space statewide.
According to Joan May of the Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance, the city made several offers to purchase the land from San Miguel Valley Corporation and when these were denied moved forward with plans to use eminent domain and provide the developer with a fair market price of the land.
“The developer, unhappy with the town’s decision, hired a Denver lobbying firm to pass legislation preventing Telluride from condemning the property for open space,” May said. “But I can assure you, the town of Telluride will not give up. The protection of the Valley Floor means everything to this community.”
Ten Years Ago: Construction manager and Lakewood resident Nate Marshall won the coveted House District 23 GOP nomination to run against state Rep. Max Tyler, D-Golden, but in an abrupt, rapid fall from grace, the Jefferson County Republican Party issued a public statement demanding that he end his campaign.
Marshall had secured the party nomination the previous weekend, but it wasn’t until afterward that Jefferson County GOP officials were made aware that Marshall had been charged in an online scam and had long championed white supremacist positions.
“Nate Marshall does not reflect the values of the Republican Party,” said Jefferson County Republican Party Chair Bill Tucker. “We strongly oppose his continued candidacy and demand he end his campaign. The values of the Republican Party — family, community, care and tolerance — are not compatible with Marshall’s views, and we condemn the hateful words and actions associated with him.”
Marshall’s platform as posted in his website included calls to expand the death penalty to anyone found guilty in the “murder of children including negligence and manslaughter” as well as executing death row inmates “by either firing squad or hanging as these methods cannot be challenged by a need to acquire pharmaceuticals from companies opposed to the death penalty.”
Position statements and other information uncovered by the Rocky Mountain Antifascists’s website, indicated Marshall had organized a “recruitment and networking event for white nationalists and neo-Nazis” in Evergreen and posted several hundreds of times to a white supremacists message board, “Stormfront.org.”
In one post on Marshall’s Twitter page he said, “Russia has the right idea when it comes to anti-gay policies,” including links to the European fascist organization, Golden Dawn.
Marshall couldn’t be reached for comment, but Jefferson County Republican Party officials said that he had dropped out of the race the same day they made their public statement.
Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.
