Ray Scott, Senate District 7 Mesa County, responds to an article that appeared in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on the status of the industry.
“… my big concern is if the industry would retract what’s gonna happen with our severance tax for example? Right now, all told, in Colorado we bring at about 31 billion dollars a year from oil and gas activities and that includes severance tax revenues for everything from hotels to restaurants to everything else. If that starts to dwindle how do you backfill that? How do you backfill $31 billion in revenue? If Governor Polis is successful in moving the industry out of the state of Colorado, that’s also about 225,000 jobs. We’ve already seen about a 30% cut in jobs here in Colorado on the oil and gas industry with no end in sight…”
Scott explains how schools and other social programs are very reliant on oil and gas tax revenue. Scott added that the state has population disparity issues and that the east was primarily oil and the west is gas.
The interview continues diving into how extracting the resource or locating it isn’t the issue in the marketplace, rather legislation is.
Scott opines on the environmental issues in the state as well as the root of the activism. Other topics include local control working against the locals, using children in political activism and how to get active and support your local community leaders.
Spread the word. Support the industry. Share the energy.
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