Congress steps into tower fray

What did opponents expect?

Published December 9, 2006 at midnight

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'Congress has a right to debate, but this last-minute bill is why people hate government."

So pronounced Golden City Manager Mike Bestor upon learning that the U.S. Senate had passed a bill pre-empting local authority on whether a group of TV stations can build a new digital tower on Lookout Mountain.

Bestor has a point: The legislation, which can be portrayed as high-handed, may make some people hate government. But if he wants to know what really makes people hate government, he might first go look in a mirror.

It is Golden, after all, that has threatened the use of eminent domain, the expenditure of $1.68 million of taxes to condemn and acquire private property that is not even contiguous to the city in order to stop construction of the digital tower.

It is Golden that inserted itself into a land-use dispute in which it has no jurisdiction - and then when it looked as if the city wouldn't get its way, resorted to raw government power to bully private companies that historically have been first-rate corporate citizens.

And speaking of why people hate government, here's another reason: It's been more than eight years since those television stations (CBS4, Denver's 7, 9News and Channel 20) asked Jefferson County for permission to replace their current towers with one able to broadcast in high definition. They requested this in order to comply with federal law that mandates a switch from analog to digital broadcasts by early 2009. Since then those stations have endured a mind-boggling series of public hearings, compromises, rejections, approvals and then a reversal of the approvals. And did we mention obstruction in the courts?

Judge Brooke Jackson has tried at times to light a fire under Jeffco commissioners, to no avail. They have yet to settle a matter presented to the judge in May 2005, for example, even though he told them again this spring they had no choice but to "affirm or reject the proposed rezoning."

He directed the board "to proceed with all due speed to bring this matter to a conclusion."

So what did the board do? It is now December and the commissioners still have not acted, perhaps because they have no defensible grounds at this point on which to deny the application.

Can Bestor now begin to understand what makes people hate government?

As we write this, early Friday evening, the House is poised to act on the Senate bill, and as yet we do not know the outcome. But whether this federal legislation passes or not, it is far less of an abuse of government power than the utterly disgraceful spectacle of government indecision, foot-dragging, back-tracking and bullying that has already blighted the lengthy saga of the Lookout Mountain tower.

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