Caveat homeowner: Lawmakers support fair balance in home transactions

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board
Friday, March 30, 2007

Four years ago, the home-building industry bought some income protection from the state Legislature. This year, lawmakers are trying to nudge the scales back toward a balance between seller and buyer.

Not surprisingly, home builders are displeased. But the industry's financial interests are no longer the Legislature's driving concern.

In 2003, the state Legislature approved a law limiting the ability of home buyers to sue for negligent construction, and sharply limiting the damages the buyers could collect. Under that law — which the home-building interests spent $355,000 lobbying for — home buyers were required to try to cajole home builders into fixing shoddy construction before filing suit.

Apparently to some home builders, those barriers to consumer protection weren't high enough. Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat, says major home builders have been including warranty escape clauses, leaving some home buyers with little or no recourse for faulty construction.

A press release issued Wednesday by state Democrats contrasted home builders' promises in 2003 with their actions in 2007. "With this (2003) law, builders still end up being responsible to fix a problem, and good builders will always do that," Amber Homes President Jim Harmon told Colorado Builder magazine then.

Today, the Dems note, Amber Homes contracts include this clause: "To the fullest extent permitted by law, all other warranties, expressed or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, workmanship and habitability are disclaimed, excluded and waived."

That inconsistency explains the genesis of House Bill 1138, which is sponsored by Pommer and which cleared the state House on Thursday. The bill would, rather modestly, prevent home buyers from being forced to forfeit their right to seek redress for faulty construction.

On Wednesday, Harmon of Amber Homes told the Rocky Mountain News that the central issue (fair warranties) was a ruse. He lambasted the trial lawyers, who he said are behind HB 1138 and are tilting against a "problem that doesn't exist."

If there's no problem, why are some home builders unwilling to warranty their work on basic measures of quality — such as "habitability"?

Rep. Debbie Stafford, an Aurora Republican, was among those supporting the Pommer bill. She did so even though, she alleges, a fellow legislator warned her that she'd be targeted in future elections by the home-building barons.

As Pommer explained this week, HB 1138 is neither anti-builder nor anti-business. "This gives homeowners a fighting chance if they find out that their new home has serious problems," Pommer said. "We're leaving in place the limits on liability that the home builders say they need, but restoring the legal rights homeowners need to protect the huge investment they make in their house."

No "good builder" would object to that. For most people, the purchase of a home is the most significant investment in life. Buyers deserve more than a contractually enshrined caveat emptor.

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board

Big day for renewable energy

Ritter signs bills in Boulder County

By Todd Neff
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Gov. Bill Ritter signed two major energy bills Tuesday, requiring major utilities to boost the electricity they generate through renewable sources and fostering the development of electrical transmission to remote wind farms and future solar-generating stations.

Ritter chose a patch of rocky grassland at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Wind Technology Center in southern Boulder County as the spot for the signing ceremony, his words amplified by electricity from a fuel cell running on wind-generated hydrogen.

"It is a perfect setting to sign these two bills," Ritter said.

House Bill 1281, of which State Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, was a key sponsor, requires large investor-owned utilities such as Xcel Energy to gradually build to 20 percent generation by wind, solar, biomass and other forms of renewable energy by 2020.

The previous standard, passed through Amendment 37 by Colorado voters in November 2004, called for 10 percent generation via renewables by 2015.

Unlike Amendment 37, the new law includes rural electric cooperatives. Their target is lower: 10 percent renewables by 2020. In both cases, home and business electric bills could increase up to 2 percent to pay for renewables.

John Nielsen, energy program director for Boulder environmental policy group Western Resource Advocates — which helped craft the upgraded standard — said bringing in rural electrical cooperatives was a key part of the bill.

"They're brought in at a modest level, and I think they'll be able to push ahead with renewable-energy tech-

nologies in a way they haven't to date," Nielsen said.

Paula Connolly, Xcel Energy's assistant general counsel, said Xcel will have met the Amendment 37 target by the end of this year and that the company aims to beat the new law's timetable also. Xcel and most rural electric cooperatives supported the bill.

Ritter said the new standard will add $2 billion to Colorado's economy.

Will Coyne, program director for Environment Colorado, said the bill will cut soot, smog, mercury and heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions 11 percent by 2020 while creating thousands of jobs and saving 18 billion gallons of water.

Blake Jones, president of Boulder's Namaste Solar Electric, said the bill is great news for the solar industry. Like its predecessor, it requires that 0.8 percent of the state's electricity demand be met with solar energy. The new bill will double the number of solar panels to be installed to meet that demand.

"It means more jobs, and it means we can continue to grow," said Jones, whose company has already grown from three workers to 22 in about two years.

Ritter also signed Senate Bill 100, which lets utilities charge customers for new electricity-transmission capacity as it's built rather than waiting until the new lines begin operation.

Xcel's Connolly said the new transmission law will help solve a chicken-or-egg problem that makes it hard to connect rural and often distant troves of wind or solar energy with the population centers that need the electricity.

"The combination of these two bills will help us build the transmission necessary to these resources so we can get more renewable energy on our system as soon as possible," she said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Todd Neff at (303) 473-1327 or nefft@dailycamera.com.

Energizing the future

Shifting political winds propel higher mandates

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board
Friday, March 16, 2007

There's little doubt now that higher renewable-energy standards will become law in Colorado. That heartening news illustrates how much the political landscape has changed in three years.

In 2004, Colorado voters approved Amendment 37, which requires large utility companies to produce or purchase 10 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2015. The measure passed despite stiff opposition from Xcel Energy, which advertised its green credentials while funneling cash into the anti-37 campaign.

On Thursday, the state Senate gave initial approval to House Bill 1281, which doubles the 10 percent requirement set by Amendment 37. The measure is sponsored by Sen. Gail Schwartz, a Snowmass Village Democrat, and Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat.

HB 1281 imposes a 10-percent standard on smaller utilities, some of which serve rural areas. "These new standards will allow more people across our state to take part in a renewable energy economy," Schwartz said.

Gov. Bill Ritter testified in favor of the bill, a relatively rare move for a governor. But Ritter campaigned on a new-energy economy platform, and HB 1281 is a key component of his plan. "Colorado is poised in so many respects to play a leadership role" in renewable energy, the Associated Press quoted Ritter as saying.

One study suggests that raising the renewable-energy mandate could create 4,100 jobs and boost Colorado's economy by $1.9 billion.

In a Senate committee this week and elsewhere recently, some critics doubted such sunny claims. "I'm concerned that the technology is not good enough yet," said Sen. David Schultheis, the Rocky Mountain News reported. "If it were, the free market would gladly develop it."

The bill, which appears likely to pass, would have been politically untenable in 2004, when Xcel was complaining about "hard wiring" energy mandates into state law. This year, however, Xcel supported the bill.

There could be a short-term cost to consumers as Colorado pursues more renewable energy. But the well-known costs of our energy-guzzling status quo are much greater. It's good to see our state's leaders reaching that conclusion.

Report: More renewable energy helps jobs, wages

The Denver Business Journal - 12:33 PM MST Thursday, February 22, 2007

Boosting the amount of power Colorado's utilities would get from renewable resources from 10 percent to 20 percent would lead to more jobs, higher wages and an increase in the state's gross domestic product, according to a report issued Thursday by the Environment Colorado Research and Policy Center.

HB 1281, sponsored by Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, and Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, would raise the state mandate for using renewable resources to generate electricity to 20 percent by 2020 for large utilities.

The bill, to be considered by the House on Feb. 23, caps the cost of complying with the mandate that utilities can pass along to customers at 2 percent of their electric bills. The report compared the overall effect of the existing mandate on the state's economy -- that utilities get 10 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2015, a mandate voters approved in 2004 -- to the effect of raising the mandate to 20 percent by 2020. The comparison focused on how each policy affects overall spending, water use and air pollution.

The report found that under the higher 20 percent renewable standard, job creation would be 4.3 times higher, wages paid would be 2.2 times higher, and an increase in gross domestic product would be 1.9 times higher than under Amendment 37's lower requirement of 10 percent.

In an statement about the report, Gov. Bill Ritter -- who has backed renewable energy efforts in the state -- said increasing the requirement to 20 percent would raise Colorado's domestic product by $1.9 million, "bring over 4,000 high-paying, high-skilled jobs and over $570 million in wages paid to our state."

The report also said the 20 percent renewable energy goal also would lead to significant reductions of soot, smog, and mercury pollution, as well as 18 billion gallons of water savings by 2020 because wind and solar power uses less water than power generated using fossil fuels.

The rural economy also would benefit, the report said, via payments to farmers for renting land for wind turbines and increasing the property tax base in rural counties.

Imprisoning the budget

As inmate population booms, state faces a crisis

Colorado is taking a hard look at its prison-sentencing system, and not a moment too soon.

Between 1985 and 2005, Colorado's prison population quintupled, rising from 4,000 to 20,000 inmates. Two years from now, the population will probably reach 25,000, meaning the number of prison inmates will have risen more than six times in 24 years. In the same period, the state's entire population rose by only about 1.5 times.

The exploding prison population comes with a significant price tag: It costs between $40,000 and $90,000 to build each new prison bed, and it costs about $26,000 annually to incarcerate each inmate. With 1,000 extra convicts a year, it all adds up.

But it doesn't compute within the confines of the state budget. In 2005, the Colorado Department of Corrections spent about $533 million, up from $57 million in 1985. In short, the cost of state prisons has risen about six times faster than the population that must fund prisons.

Why does state population matter? Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, passed in 1992, limits the growth of state revenue to the rate of inflation plus population growth. It also limits spending growth to no more than 6 percent annually.

Even with the five-year TABOR "time out" voters approved last year, the prison problem will prove difficult to manage. And since the supply of beds is so costly, it only makes sense to consider the demand.

The steady rise of the prison population is partly a product of stiff sentencing laws passed by the Legislature. The effect is a burgeoning population of inmates guilty of committing lower-level drug offenses and other non-violent crimes.

Last week, the Colorado Lawyers Committee released a report recommending the establishment of a sentencing commission, the Rocky Mountain News reported. Sentencing commissions have helped 17 states curb their prison expenditures and add a dose of reason to sentencing guidelines.

Highlighting the commissions' effectiveness, the lawyers' group noted the experience of North Carolina, which, with the help of a sentencing commission, cut its prison population by more than half in four years, the News reported.

The North Carolina Legislature adopted a new sentencing structure that stiffened punishment for violent offenders and encouraged alternative sentences for non-violent criminals. Such a system, the lawyers' group noted, might not be right for Colorado. But we would be remiss if we did not at least explore the options.

Some lawmakers are ready to take up the cause. During last fall's campaign, for instance, State Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat, effectively and chillingly outlined the clear and present need to confront this issue.

Sentencing commissions and sentencing guidelines are not intrinsically captivating. The topics become more compelling when one considers the looming budgetary havoc. When they return to work this week, legislators should confront this issue in earnest.