Toll road bills debated this week

DENVER — Call it the duel of the toll road bills.

On on side, we have HB1007 from Rep. Marsha Looper, a Calhan Republican. Her bill would clear the titles of property along a proposed toll road path on the eastern plains.

On the other is HB1343, introduced last week by Rep. Debbie Stafford, D-Aurora, and Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock. That bill would not only clear titles but eradicate mention of the toll road proposal from all public records. It also would prevent companies from securing a toll road corridor by claiming they are a railroad company.

Both bills are scheduled to go before a house committee on Tuesday.

First, some background:

In 1976, businessman Ray Wells proposed building a toll bypass from Pueblo to Fort Collins. That’s about as far as things went. Few people, in fact, were even aware of the proposal.

Three decades later, scores of residents discovered they were in the path of this potential toll road, the Prairie Falcon Parkway Express. Tensions heated up between Wells and the property owners who fall within the proposed path of the road.

In 2005, legislators got involved and, in 2006, passed a law that curbed the condemnation powers of private toll road builders while requiring them to serve notice to anyone who could be affected by their plans.

A slew of homeowners along the Front Range then found their titles were clouded by these notices and that they could not sell their homes or portions of their land for their listed value. El Paso County Assessor Mark Lowderman testified before a house committee that the proposed toll road corridor had cut property resale values by as much as 25 percent.

Enter Looper, whose political career started when she pushed for toll road limits as a private citizen. Last year, she introduced a bill that would have made it harder for private toll road companies to proceed with their projects. First it was watered down, then it was killed.

So she came back this year with a measure just to clear titles and give immunity to Wells and county clerks and recorders. But many residents oppose it because they say it doesn’t go far enough.

Toll road builders far prefer Looper’s measure to the Stafford-Wiens bill, which would not provide immunity. The builders say the more-strict measure breaks promises outlined in the 2006 law. So they’re working to kill it.

The provision in the Stafford-Wiens bill that would limit railroad companies’ powers was included because Wells has filed to build a railroad beside his toll road. Under Colorado law, railroads have greater condemnation abilities and other powers over landowners, said Robert Thomasson of the High Plains Coalition for Responsible Transportation Policy.

“We want to make sure that toll road companies can’t back-door what the Legislature took away from them in eminent domain powers by a subterfuge using railroad statutes,” Wiens said.

Kathy Oatis, the lobbyist for the Prairie Falcon Parkway Express, said, however, that Wiens’ bill actually takes away road-building abilities they were allowed to keep under the 2006 legislation. She will fight it vigorously, she said.

“If you agree to something, you don’t change the rules in the middle of the game without bringing everybody together and discussing it,” said Oatis, who said she was denied a place at the table for negotiations on the most recent bill. “If we were doing that to them, they would have every right to be outraged.”

Looper would be fine with the competing bill and is actually rooting for it to succeed. In fact, she’s been holding her bill back until a vote can be taken on the Stafford-Wiens measure. But she doubts that bill can get past both private and governmental opposition.

“If we don’t get a bill passed to deal with the titles, they’re not going to see any relief this year,” the first-term legislator said of residents in her eastern El Paso County district. “Once we clear those titles up, then we can address the overall issues and provisions for toll roads.”

If the more comprehensive bill fails, she said, she hopes property owners can coalesce behind her bill as a compromise.