This November, the Colorado voters will decide on a ballot initiative called Amendment 82. Despite its anodyne name, this initiative would radically change state policy for the worse. Amendment 82 would enshrine into the state Constitution the enforceable and perpetual right to buy and sell natural gas in Colorado, representing the wholesale capture of a state constitution by one industry.

The initiative is backed by Advance Colorado, a dark money group, backed by anonymous donors, that seeks to manipulate Colorado’s ballot initiatives to advance corporate and billionaire interests.

Amendment 82 is one such effort, and it’s breathtaking in its audacity. No other state carves out such special treatment for a single industry in its constitution. No other state constitution intervenes so forcefully to grant an industry the perpetual right to sell its products in order to make a profit. It would be the first time that US voters in any state enshrined such a blatant giveaway to an industry into its constitution.

If the industry succeeds with their effort in Colorado, they will not stop there—other states will clearly become targets for the next constitutional giveaway to the industry.

Amendment 82 invents a solution to a problem that simply does not exist. Buying and selling natural gas remains legal in Colorado—and is something that a majority of Coloradans do every day. Nothing on the horizon seeks to change that.

What Amendment 82 will do, however, is make sensible, reasonable, and necessary regulation protecting our air, water, and environment from the impacts of this industry nearly impossible.

Efforts to stop gas companies from fracking near homes and schools are at risk of being rolled back, because the industry will argue these rules infringe on their right to sell natural gas.

Regulations to limit the amount of toxins that the oil and gas industry can dump into a community’s air and water become impotent for fear that enforcement will infringe on the right to sell natural gas.

A town’s ordinance that regulates the use of methane camp stoves in times of high fire risk could now be overturned........

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