By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
Who gets stuck with the bill for the “Just Transition”? You.
There’s a lot of detail in the Sun article linked below about various communities and how they feel as if Colorado’s “Just Transition” for coal-fired power plants isn’t too just for them.
I don’t blame them. With a vote and the swipe of a pen, Colorado Democrats have hamstrung communities that were built around coal-fired power plants in the name of their arbitrary climate mandates. Quoting the article:
“Colorado’s push to close all its coal-fired power plants by 2031 — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — is creating a major economic threat to communities that have relied on jobs and taxes from those plants and the mines that feed them.”*
I will leave it to you to read up on that part of the story. It is detail I’ve covered before, but worth either learning or brushing up on.
What I want to focus on in this post is the other side of the “Just Transition” coin. You see (and here I’m not saying this is wrong or bad on the part of the communities affected), Just Transition means money. It’s money to replace economic activity that will no longer happen due to the actions and choices of policymakers in this state.
Where will that come from? Who pays the check Colorado Democrats wrote?
You will. You will if you are a rate payer for these utilities.
Quoting again:
“’This essentially is money being collected from all the Public Service ratepayers as part of their revenue requirement and being distributed to these communities rather than money coming from shareholders or the Public Service Company,’ [Public Utilities Commission] commissioner Megan Gilman said during the hearings. ‘It is actually the ratepayers using the vehicle of Public Service paying these communities,’ Gilman said.”
It’s worth sharing some (understandable) frustration from one of the local county commissioners whose district will be affected by shutdowns in response to this. Quoting again:
“Routt County’s [Commissioner Sonja] Macys sees it differently. ‘I guess my question would be, how is that a consideration?’ she said. ‘How is that in a just transition solicitation there is a consideration for rate payers who do not reside within the communities that are impacted by these power plants? The Xcel ratepayer on the Front Range is benefiting from the power generated by these communities that they have now chosen to abandon,’ Macys said. Three of the four coal communities don’t even get their electricity from Xcel Energy.”
I don’t blame Commissioner Macys here. Part of the issue is obviously that the hearings on Just Transition ought to be focused on the communities affected.
There is a larger theme underlying this, however. The whole mess here is bad for all. Yes, the hearings ought to focus on the communities, but we need to remember that no one gets out clean.
We need to remember, not the division, but the way in which a government intrusion like this to dislocate entire industries and communities will harm the whole state.
They (the government) aren’t the ones who will suffer.
They (the government) aren’t the ones who will pay more for the decision.
What’s needed are unity and memory. Memory to assign the blame where it should sit: not with Xcel customers, not entirely with the Public Utilities Commission (the unelected board carefully chosen to be the deciding body to shield the elected Democrats), but mainly with the Democrats who voted for this policy.**
Keep your focus on the ones who are the ultimate cause of your getting stuck with the bill.
*Note how Sun author Jaffe here uses a general “Colorado’s” as his descriptor. It wasn’t Colorado that voted this in Jaffe. It was Colorado Democrats.
**Quick note here: “moderate” Colorado Democrat (now Senator, then Representative) Dylan Roberts voted for this. You may like how he occasionally gives Polis a love tap about wolves, but don’t let that blind you to his quite progressive voting record in total.
https://coloradosun.com/2025/12/23/just-transitions-coal-power-mines-moffat-routt-pueblo/
CPR’s “Silent Recession” s big on Trump’s policy, short on state/local policy.
Colorado Public Radio’s Silent Recession series (see the first link below for the articles written thus far) aims to answer the question: is Colorado heading into a recession? In typical public media style, they add that saucy little line to the subhead of their first installment–“And the answer is complicated”.
What doesn’t seem to be complicated to them, however, is just how much Donald Trump is driving things. Over and over again, you’ll see that it’s Trump. I mean, let’s be honest here, we knew this all along. We knew it before word one was typed in the series, it’s Trump.
The first effort in the series (linked second below for convenience) sets the tone. Straight out of the gate we get an extended quote from the head of the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting, Mark Ferrandino. Quoting with links intact:
“Colorado’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting puts the odds of a recession starting sometime next year at 50 percent, according to a forecast from budget chief Mark Ferrandino. The analysis, presented to state lawmakers in September, points to President Donald Trump’s tariffs as the biggest risk pushing recession odds higher. Tariffs are hitting broad swathes of the economy in Colorado. Construction, agriculture and advanced manufacturing, like aerospace, are directly in the crosshairs of Trump’s trade war. At the same time, the uncertainty caused by the constantly shifting approach to tariffs is a problem for virtually every business. Trump’s signature economic policy is being challenged in court by a group of states and small businesses. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case last week and a ruling could come within weeks. In the meantime, businesses are already starting to pass higher import taxes on to their customers, the Colorado budgeting office forecast notes. The office expects shoppers to start pulling back at the start of next year, which will have ripple effects on business profits and hiring plans. Other potential drags on the state’s economy include federal immigration policy and slowing tourism if overseas visitors decide not to travel to the U.S., the forecast notes.”
The observant reader will note no mention of the fact that Ferrandino is a former Democratic state legislator and Democratic political appointee to his current position.
While the entire series doesn’t follow in the footsteps of this first salvo–Trump isn’t in every article–you will see him pop up over and over.
See for example, the bit under the heading “Some point to Trump” in the article linked third below.
See for example, the fascination with immigration and tarriffs in the conversation between CPR’s Ryan Warner and CU’s Bryan Lewandowski (Executive Director of the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business) linked fourth below.
And of course, Trump is all over the article “Federal economic policies stir up an unusual level of impact on the ground in Colorado” linked fifth below.
Don’t misunderstand me. It’s foolish to think Donald Trump has had no effect on the economy. He has, and not all of it positive in my view.
It’s also worth noting some of the times that CPR reporters allude to other causes. See for example, the bit under the heading “Another State Shortfall Looms” in the sixth link below. You also get an entire sentence (“While state and local policies also factor in, there has been an unusual level of impact coming from federal policies.”) from the fifth link below.
That latter brings me to the point. While the problems do involve Trump, the amount of attention paid to him and his policies is outsized. Paragraphs on Trump, an occasional nibble about state/local policies, and a complete lack of mention of problems Trump inherited don’t paint an accurate picture of reality.
Notably absent, for example are specific state policies that cause economic harm. State policies like an increased number and size of fees. State policies like those that drive higher energy costs. State policies like those that over-regulate businesses and put penalties on economic expansion.
This isn’t unique to CPR either. Other lefty outfits like the Colorado Sun are in on the game. The seventh link below is to a contemporaneous article about Trump’s tariffs and leans heavily on discussion from a Colorado Business Economic Outlook and Forum put on by CU’s Leeds School of Business.
I linked to an online brochure from that forum eighth below because what I wanted you to note was just how little of that conference was about tariffs and Trump, and how much was about the state.
How many years now has the media (local and national) leaned on Trump for page clicks? More than a little. It’s almost expected out of the left leaning press outlets anymore.
Besides this being another case of press bias to remind them of while they tell us they’re not biased, this has another effect. The media tell us over and over about how they’re here to hold our elected officials accountable.
The problem is that while they’re more than adequately doing this with Trump, their outsized attention there means less for the locals who are as much a part of the problem as the President of the United States.
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.
