Forty Years Ago This Week: Candidate for Denver mayor Monte Pascoe launched an attack against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that officials were using their power and positions to “politically punish” Coloradans.

Holding a press conference inside the EPA building in Denver, Pascoe singled out EPA administrator Anne Burford and regional director Steve Durham as the two primarily responsible for rejecting Denver’s clean air program and imposing financial sanctions.

At the start of the year the EPA had threatened to withhold $78 million in grants because of the city’s failure to comply with EPA’s clean air standards. Pascoe told the assembled press that his campaign had spent weeks investigating why the city’s plan was rejected and said that there was no valid reason why the EPA did so.

As former director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, Pascoe said that the EPA had a history of weakening clean air standards, as similar air quality plans in other areas had been approved by the EPA. Pascoe had also been summoned to testify the next day before the Colorado Air Pollution Control Commission where he said he would discuss several improvements that could be made to Denver’s plan.

But Judy Herb, director of public affairs for the regional EPA, rejected Pascoe’s allegations, stating that another 11 similar clean-air plans had been rejected, adding, “Denver is not being singled out.”

“Monte Pascoe, as well as other candidates for mayor,” Herb said, “are using this issue to enhance their own candidacies, and I am weary of playing their games.”

The following day Anne Burford resigned her position.

Herb told The Colorado Statesman in a follow-up interview that one of Pascoe’s campaign staffers had misrepresented herself to security officers in order to secure use of the building and to convince them “that the standard press office upstairs wasn’t large enough.”

Pascoe was in violation of EPA rules, Herb said, which only allow EPA sanctioned events to be held in the building.

Herb added that she was caught off-guard by Burford’s resignation, as Durham had dined with Burford just the night before in Washington D.C. and had not indicated to her that there were any issues.

“He said things were getting better,” Herb said, “and he would know.”

Thirty Years Ago: Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Sen. Mike Feeley, D-Lakewood, said that they were hopeful that their House Bill 93-1209 would finally make it to the floor of the Senate for discussion after unanimously passing both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

DeGette and Feeley’s bill, modeled after a Denver City Ordinance, would require people standing near health clinics in Colorado to stay at least eight feet away from anyone entering or leaving unless invited closer and imposed a class 3 misdemeanor if convicted.

The bill, DeGette said, was specifically targeted toward protestors at abortion clinics.

While the writing of the bill was innocuous enough, members of Colorado’s pro-life community argued that the eight-foot exclusion zone or “bubble” interfered with their freedom to give information about abortion to patients entering and leaving abortion clinics and that the law was unnecessary.

“This bill is just protecting Colorado abortionists from losing business,” testified Jeanne Hill a self-described sidewalk counsellor, during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Freshman representative DeGette shot back that “These women are already going through emotional turmoil … and all the patient has to do is to indicate to the protestor that she wants to look at information. What this bill does is set certain standards of deportment. In Denver, the protestors know all about the eight-foot limit and never violate it.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.