Oil and gas companies are happy in Colorado right now, following Secretary of State Wayne Williams’s declaration that two anti-fracking initiatives, Nos. 75 and 78, didn’t collect enough signatures to meet the 98,000-plus threshold to get on the ballot. The industry, which had already spent over $15 million to defeat the proposed constitutional amendments, was relieved of spending many millions more.

The amendments were apparently in good shape with the public. Floyd Ciruli, prominent Colorado pollster, reported to water interests earlier in the month that initiative 78 on mandatory setbacks stood at 57 percent in favor, 30 percent opposed and 13 percent don’t have an opinion.

Oil and gas is protecting its large investment in the Denver-Julesburg basin, even though some companies are now pulling back. According to The Denver Post, Encana Oil and Gas sold its $900 million holdings in D-J to Crestone Peak Resources last month and PDC Energy is putting $1.5 billion into Texas instead of Colorado.

The industry can now continue its pivot to passing Raise the Bar, the constitutional amendment ballot measure known as No. 96, which would make it tougher to amend the constitution. The Brownstein Hyatt Ballot Initiative Tracker states that initiative 96 “seeks to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution by requiring 55 percent voter approval instead of a simple majority, except for measures that seek to repeal a constitutional provision, and by requiring signatures from 2 percent of the registered electors in each senate district.”

Ciruli polling suggests that Raise the Bar is not a cinch. It’s at 38 percent in favor, 29 percent opposed and 33 percent don’t have an opinion.

The Raise the Bar committee has collected $968,000 and spent $794,000. It pulled in $300,000 from Vital for Colorado in August. Vital’s vision says, “Oil and natural gas are a great opportunity for the state of Colorado, but only if we take advantage of it.” Raise the Bar paid Public Opinion Strategies, a national polling firm with offices in Colorado, $25,500 to figure out where it stands.

The committee also paid TPM – Taylor Petition Management in Colorado Springs – $358,418 to collect over 180,000 petition signatures to get initiative 96 on the ballot.

The anti-fracking committees, Yes for Health and Safety over Fracking (opposed to No. 78) and Yes for Local Control Over Oil and Gas (opposed to No. 75), collected $424,021 for their petition signature collection. Yes for Health and Safety received its biggest contribution from philanthropist J. Christopher Hormel, who gave $50,000. Greenpeace put in $37,396 and Fracking Fund of the New World Foundation and Lush Cosmetics pitched in $25,000 each. Stephen Schutz and Jared Polis put in $25,000 each to the initiative 75 campaign.

Yes for Health and Safety paid Localized Strategies, a petition company from Boulder, $149,015, to gather its signatures. Other organizations such as Greenpeace chipped in volunteer signature gatherers. According to Lynn Bartels, spokesperson at the secretary of state’s office, the Yes for Health and Safety signatures were high quality – they had a much higher than usual validity rate – but still came up insufficient. The anti-fracking committees were outspent roughly 2-to-1 on petition signature collection compared to Raise the Bar.

Even so, Raise the Bar bases its proposed constitutional amendment on the premise that it’s too easy to get constitutional initiatives on the ballot. Yes for Health and Safety over Fracking and Yes for Local Control over Oil and Gas offer the counter argument.