Urban Decay, Oil and Gas Taxes, and the Fight for Property Rights

On the July 30, 2025 broadcast, Kim Monson examines how government policies are driving urban decay, crushing Colorado’s energy industry, and eroding property rights from the local level to the federal level, with former state legislator Ramey Johnson, Laramie Energy CEO Bob Boswell, and sixth-generation farmer and rancher Trent Loos. The Psychology of Living in Urban Decay Start listening at 16:00 – Hour 1 Ramey Johnson, former state legislator and Lakewood city councilwoman, sounds the alarm on the psychological toll of watching neighborhoods crumble under failed public policy. Johnson, who grew up in Lakewood, describes a community that has shifted 180 degrees from what she knew, with Colfax Avenue nearing collapse as businesses flee and buildings stand boarded up with broken windows. She cites research showing that residents living amid urban blight experience increased stress, anxiety, depression, and a dangerous phenomenon called degradation desensitization, where people simply accept filth and neglect as the new normal. Johnson traces much of the damage to Governor Polis’s House Bill 1313, which designated a half-mile zone on both sides of light rail corridors for transit-oriented development. Six Colorado cities have sued the governor over the bill, claiming it violates home rule authority, but Lakewood has not joined the suit. Johnson believes the city is intentionally allowing property values to decline along Colfax and 14th Avenue so developers can move in with high-density housing. A Safeway at Garrison and Colfax is closing due to rampant theft, leaving nearby residents without a neighborhood grocery store and creating the very food deserts city officials claim to oppose. “A degradation desensitization, which means that the decay and neglect and filth is basically you’ve just come to accept it as the norm.” Ramey Johnson, Former State Legislator Colorado’s Billion-Dollar Energy Tax Burden Start listening at 32:33 – Hour 1 Bob Boswell, CEO of Laramie Energy, breaks down the staggering tax load Colorado imposes on its oil and gas industry, a burden that totals roughly a billion dollars a year before income taxes. Boswell explains the three main property tax categories: ad valorem taxes at 87.5% of estimated property value, which is three times higher than other businesses and twelve times the residential rate; severance taxes based on production levels; and a mill levy aimed at plugging and abandoning orphan wells. On top of these, the state has layered 23 additional fees, several targeting oil and gas specifically, that Polis’s administration uses to circumvent TABOR protections. The consequences are stark. Colorado is losing major economic opportunities as data centers and AI facilities choose Utah, Wyoming, and Texas over a state weighed down by hostile regulations and excessive taxation. Crusoe, a Denver-based company, recently announced a $1.3 billion project in Wyoming rather than building in Colorado. Meanwhile, the state faces a $1.2 billion budget deficit even as it continues policies that drive the very industry generating those tax revenues out of the state. Boswell argues that the environmental narrative has been weaponized as a tool for political control rather than genuine stewardship, noting that CO2 is nature’s fertilizer and the Earth thrives at 1,000 parts per million. “But these big opportunities data centers are being offered in other states, but not in the state of Colorado because of our repressive regulatory and tax system.” Bob Boswell, CEO of Laramie Energy...