Campaign finance reports are the subject of this story from the Rocky Mountain News [September 16, 2003, "Big donations come racing in to back video lottery terminals"].

Ed Quillen tries to put the Referendum A discussion in perspective in today's Denver Post [September 16, 2003, "Listen to Ref. A backers"]. From the column, "Before the election, there's no way to know what projects Referendum A would finance - presumably they're among the 600-plus proposed water developments on file with the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. The implication from Referendum A supporters is that if we don't use all our Colorado River water in the very near future, then California will devise a way to take it permanently. That was the fear in 1922, and that's why the Colorado River Compact was negotiated and approved by seven states and the U.S. Congress. It meant, and presumably still means, that Colorado doesn't have to race to build water projects just to protect its share of the river."

Here's a story from the Rocky Mountain News [September 16, 2003, "Water compensation"] dealing with the subject of mitigation. The lack of guaranteed mitigation in the referendum is the rallying point for opponents. The Rocky quotes Greg Walcher, head of Colorado's Department of Natural Resources, as saying, ""In the Colorado I grew up in, a deal's a deal, a person's word is their bond and a handshake is their contract. There's a couple of people who want to scare everyone that there's a conspiracy under every rock. You have to trust not only words on paper, but the hearts of the people who are going to implement this."

Back in the '70's when I was in graduate school in Montana my Business Law professor taught us, "I know that this is the West and a man's word is good enough. Nonetheless, get it in a contract."
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