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.
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.
This year, with a Democrat-controlled Senate and House, Colorado’s lawmakers expressed optimism about their chances at getting the act passed.
“I feel very confident that we can get it done this year,” Bennet said.
But not all of Colorado’s 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.
She referred to it as a “land grab by Denver’s liberals.”
Hickenlooper, Bennet and Neguse still expressed confidence in the bill’s bipartisan support. Neguse said the act is “overwhelmingly supported” by the public, and that there is support for the act in every county that it would affect.
“One of the great strengths of this bill is that it is so bipartisan and it has such bipartisan support across the Western Slope,” Bennet said. “I believe there has never been a public lands bill that has had as much public process – or as much public buy-in – as this bill, and people understand that it’s critically important to pass it both for the conservation values that it reflects but also for Colorado’s economy.”
Instead, Bennet said the biggest threat to passing the CORE Act is “dysfunction in the Senate.”
“That’s what we have to find a way to overcome; it’s not probably going to be opposition to the CORE Act,” Bennet said.
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.
Conservation Colorado, an advocacy group focused on protecting Colorado’s climate and natural resources, also expressed support for the CORE Act, especially with the new Democratic majority in the Senate and the House.
“Sen. Bennet, Rep. Neguse and countless local leaders have worked for years to craft a strong bill that protects some of Colorado’s most popular, iconic and historic places,” Conservation Colorado’s Executive Director Kelly Nordini said in a statement. “Our new pro-conservation Congressional majority should act swiftly to pass it.”
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’s protections of public lands and designation of Camp Hale as the first-ever National Historic Landscape.
“In 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,” Cooper said.
Grace George is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.
