It was 43 years ago when Gov. Dick Lamm announced an executive branch initiative he was launching at the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) to create a “Human Settlements Policy” for Colorado. Although specifics were a little vague at the outset, his goal was to corral runaway growth along the Front Range. The Department was to catalog and coordinate zoning, transportation (mostly highway construction) projects, school expansion, water supplies and utility infrastructure with an aim of constraining urban sprawl. The mere threat of state land use mandates imposed across a traditionally “local control” polity alarmed Republican majorities at the state legislature. An interim study committee was empowered to investigate precisely what the Lamm was up to, chaired by Rep. Anne Gorsuch of Denver.

Following perfunctory public hearings that provided a platform for both proponents and opponents, urban planners and environmentalists cheered on Lamm’s initiative while local elected officials, realtors and homebuilders howled their objections. Then Gorsuch began to order in DOLA employees. Her interrogations focused on identifying precisely what each individual dedicated in their daily schedules to support the Human Settlements project. These witnesses were not arrogant, deep-state bureaucrats but frightened civil servants who wondered whether their jobs were suddenly at risk. Gorsuch was quick to confirm their worst fears. In response to a mid-level, planning division staffer, she indicated her purpose was to determine how much should be cut from the departmental appropriation the following year – to eliminate “…your waste of taxpayers’ money.”

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It is fantasy novelist Terry Brooks who revised one of the world’s hundred most famous quotes by observing, “those who ignore the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them in the future, but no one believes it.” This insight applies to Gov. Jared Polis and Senate Bill 213. This 2023 legislation is not designed to contain housing growth so much as it is a roadmap to assure a sufficient portion of all new housing qualifies as affordable. Dick Lamm later admitted his choice of vocabulary had generated an ominous, Big Brother tone for what he felt was a modest effort to err on the side of caution. The governor never anticipated he was waving a red flag before the enraged bulls of municipal governance. Although the Polis bill has been characterized as a relatively anodyne reform of planning rules, its 150 pages of provisions has the stench of a Soviet era, five-year planning document produced in the Kremlin.

The additional 50-plus pages of amendments adopted in Senate committee last week seem unlikely to make anyone more or less comfortable with the bill’s contents. Polis has assembled an impressive coalition of supporters, including developers, realtors (although their allegiance sounds squishy), homeless advocates and urban planners. In order to enlist housing developers, the governor was willing to trade away a basket full of the permitting restrictions and local requirements that annoy them. Doubtlessly, most of these hurdles are little more than petty nuisances that act to delay projects, however worthy. Nonetheless, his legislation fails to define, mandate or establish specific fiscal markers for affordability raising the suspicion the entire exercise is more performative than serious.

There is substantial reason to believe the recent run-up in Colorado’s real estate values has rendered affordability unachievable without a funding mechanism which overtly subsidizes entry-level housing units, as distasteful as such intervention is for free market zealots. Furthermore, resistance to the burdensome maze of compliance plans required in SB-213 is not likely to vanish behind a thrum of muted grumbling. We only need look at California where Senate Bills 9 and 10 imposed similar statewide mandates on local government planners in 2021. Recent polling finds 65% of voters support their repeal in 2024. An immediate attempt to repeal them in 2022 was only thwarted by COVID-19 restrictions that thwarted petitioning, an obstacle also encountered by several Colorado initiative campaigns, driving the cost of a single valid signature to $16 in a state where a million signatures are needed to reach the ballot. Colorado won’t have to wait three years to see a repeal of SB-213 on its ballot. Election law specifically allows voters to rapidly overturn statutes approved by the legislature.

In the former San Jose Mercury News, once the fifth-largest paper in America and today a free daily handout, a recent column reported, “Single-family zoning likely to be restored in California.” Thomas Elias wrote, “immediately after state legislators passed the landmark Senate Bills 9 & 10 in 2021 – taking most local land-use decisions away from city councils and county supervisors – resentful local officials vowed to run a referendum campaign and kill those new laws.” In California these resentful local officials are mostly Democrats. A shortage of construction workers and the fact that few developers can see a path to earning a profit have limited the impact of California’s land-use restrictions. This pause has not cooled the desire to strangle this legislative infant in its cradle.

Dennis Richards, a long-serving San Francisco planning commissioner, is quoted as saying, “taking this field (land-use control) away from local government is a way of wiping out democracy.” That stings! Next year, Jon Caldara and the Independence Institute may find itself naming a Colorado Democrat as their annual “Californian of the Year” and mean it as a compliment. Increased density is seemingly inevitable but it remains unpopular in existing neighborhoods. Democrats have the votes to muscle SB-213 through both legislative chambers and forward it to Polis, who is actively prodding them to do so. Once it reaches the House, it’s unlikely to be stopped. The Senate, however, could still steer the entire proposition back to the drawing board.

Proponents claim they held extensive stakeholder meetings as they developed this legislation but precious few participants, other than supporters, can be identified. Homebuilders, who understand what it takes to turn a profit, remain on the fence. Conversion of vacant commercial spaces is expensive, yet several communities have started this ball rolling with tax incentives offered to owners currently losing their shirts attempting to maintain and preserve empty buildings. A little creativity could go a long way toward swiftly bringing affordable housing to market. Nothing worthwhile ever emerged from Colorado’s Human Settlement discussions nor does it appear likely to result from diligent jumping through the compliance hoops set forth in SB 213.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.