{"id":48816,"date":"2021-02-04T09:26:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-lawmakers-optimistic-about-core-acts-chances\/"},"modified":"2021-02-04T16:26:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T16:26:23","slug":"colorado-lawmakers-optimistic-about-core-acts-chances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-lawmakers-optimistic-about-core-acts-chances\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado lawmakers optimistic about CORE Act\u2019s chances"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, announced Tuesday they are reintroducing the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, legislation to protect about 400,000 acres of public lands in the state.<\/span>Courtesy of Mason Cummings, The Wilderness Society<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, along with U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, announced the reintroduction of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act in a virtual news conference this week.<\/p>\n

The CORE Act, first introduced in 2019 by Bennet and Neguse, would protect and preserve more than 400,000 acres of public lands in Colorado. The act was passed in the House twice, but it was never passed in the Senate.<\/p>\n

This year, with a Democrat-controlled Senate and House, Colorado\u2019s lawmakers expressed optimism about their chances at getting the act passed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very confident that we can get it done this year,\u201d Bennet said.<\/p>\n

But not all of Colorado\u2019s lawmakers have expressed support for the CORE Act. In July 2020, before taking office, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., expressed opposition to the CORE Act when it passed for the second time in the House.<\/p>\n

She referred to it as a \u201cland grab by Denver\u2019s liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper, Bennet and Neguse still expressed confidence in the bill\u2019s bipartisan support. Neguse said the act is \u201coverwhelmingly supported\u201d by the public, and that there is support for the act in every county that it would affect.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the great strengths of this bill is that it is so bipartisan and it has such bipartisan support across the Western Slope,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cI believe there has never been a public lands bill that has had as much public process \u2013 or as much public buy-in \u2013 as this bill, and people understand that it\u2019s critically important to pass it both for the conservation values that it reflects but also for Colorado\u2019s economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Bennet said the biggest threat to passing the CORE Act is \u201cdysfunction in the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we have to find a way to overcome; it\u2019s not probably going to be opposition to the CORE Act,\u201d Bennet said.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper said he already started talking to fellow senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where the bill will go first for review. It is one of four committees the freshman senator was assigned to Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Conservation Colorado, an advocacy group focused on protecting Colorado\u2019s climate and natural resources, also expressed support for the CORE Act, especially with the new Democratic majority in the Senate and the House.<\/p>\n

\u201cSen. Bennet, Rep. Neguse and countless local leaders have worked for years to craft a strong bill that protects some of Colorado\u2019s most popular, iconic and historic places,\u201d Conservation Colorado\u2019s Executive Director Kelly Nordini said in a statement. \u201cOur new pro-conservation Congressional majority should act swiftly to pass it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The news conference also included Colorado rancher Bill Fales, Gunnison County Commissioner Jonathan Houck, San Miguel County Commissioner Hillary Cooper and Colorado veteran Mike Greenwood, who expressed their support for the CORE Act\u2019s protections of public lands and designation of Camp Hale as the first-ever National Historic Landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the long run, the over-a-decade of discussion or time that this has taken is going to seem like nothing if these lands actually get preserved,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n

Grace George is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bill reintroduced in Democratic-controlled House, Senate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[481,28,193,29,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-gov-john-hickenlooper","tag-headlines","tag-land-use","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48816","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=48816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48816"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}