WTP launches ConsumerEnergyChoice.com
Popular measure would restore consumer choice stripped from Amendment 37

DENVER – A Denver-based grassroots group will launch ConsumerEnergyChoice.com Friday promoting a measure on the November ballot restoring the right of utility customers to choose between affordable traditional or higher-priced experimental energy sources. Western Tradition Partnership and its citizen allies and will begin collecting the 76,000 ballot signatures to place it on the ballot.

 “Voters don’t like the fact environmentalists lied to them and set up a no-choice, no-competition market tilted to more expensive energy,” said Dan Fuchs, WTP Director of Government Relations and a former Montana state legislator.  “We’re looking forward to collecting signatures above and beyond what we need, and then let the people decide.  This is not the year you want to be on the side of mandate-happy politicians and their backroom deals.”

“When consumers can freely choose their energy in an open market, everyone wins,” said Fuchs.  “Opposing consumer choice only leads to higher prices, less efficient energy and backroom deals for connected lobbyists.  People should choose their energy, not politicians.”

The “Consumer Choice in Energy” initiative was submitted by Parker resident Bob Kennedy and Greeley resident Kent Overturf.  Western Tradition Partnership (WTP,) a Denver-based citizens’ grassroots group promoting affordable energy, property rights and job security in the West, has been drafting the ballot language for a year and is working with citizens to pass it.

If approved, the initiative allows utility’s customers to submit a petition requesting an election among customers on whether to opt out of so-called “renewable energy standards, a right promised to voters as a condition of Amendment 37, passed by a narrow 52 to 48 percent margin in 2004.  It required many Colorado utilities to get three percent of their electricity from renewable energy resources by 2007 and ten percent by 2015 and won passage after voters were assured price increased would be capped and customers could vote to opt their utility out of the system.  Soon after, environmentalists pressured legislators to hike the price cap, increase the renewable standard and eliminate the right of consumers to opt out.

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