{"id":25749,"date":"2024-09-11T21:45:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T03:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-joins-six-others-in-lawsuit-against-state\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:26:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:26:23","slug":"montezuma-county-joins-six-others-in-lawsuit-against-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-joins-six-others-in-lawsuit-against-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County joins six others in lawsuit against state"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A Kinder Morgan carbon dioxide pumping plant on Goodman Point, in Montezuma County. (Journal file photo)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Montezuma County recently opted into a lawsuit with six other counties against the state of Colorado, which passed a bill that permitted itself to transfer $25 million of severance tax dollars from local government funds to its general fund in a move to balance its budget.<\/p>\n

Mesa County is spearheading the suit. The other counties involved \u2013 aside from Mesa and Montezuma \u2013 are Douglas, Garfield, Moffat, Montrose and Rio Blanco.<\/p>\n

So far, the counties have filed a complaint.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a request for a declaratory judgment, which essentially asks the court to say whether the state taking this money goes against a statute that says such funds \u201cshall be distributed\u201d to counties impacted by mining operations.<\/p>\n

The counties are focusing on a mandate that says, \u201cSeventy percent of the funds from the local government severance tax fund shall be distributed to those (impacted) political subdivisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s severance tax, enacted in 1977, is collected \u201con the nonrenewable natural resources removed from the soil of (Colorado) and sold for private profit,\u201d according to law that the counties cited.<\/p>\n

The idea was to \u201crecapture a portion of this lost wealth\u201d and \u201cprovide a source of revenue to the state and its political subdivisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s not the first time the state has taken from this fund, it\u2019s the most recent and most significant, said Montezuma County Attorney Ian MacLaren.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have filed if we didn\u2019t think the state taking these steps wasn\u2019t fair,\u201d said MacLaren. \u201cWe rely extensively on capital from that fund.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, severance tax money boosted Montezuma County\u2019s general fund by $619,243, and in 2022, by $521,412.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the amount the state took will exhaust the Local Government Severance Tax Fund.<\/p>\n

What is clear, though, is that all seven counties in the suit have benefited from severance tax dollars in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Plaintiffs will be deprived of critical funds on which they have come to heavily rely, and on which they intended to rely,\u201d as quoted from the filed complaint. \u201cTheir communities will face severe impacts as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

If nothing else, filing in the suit is a strong political statement. In the future, maybe the state will think twice before taking money from the fund, MacLaren said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

counties have joined together since the state took money from the local government severance tax fund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1025,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-law-and-justice","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79079,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25749\/revisions\/79079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25749"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}