Radical bill seeks to regulate trains | Colorado Springs Gazette

After plotting to ban millions of guns for "safety," a handful of radical legislative Democrats hope to control trains. They have no such authority and might as well pine for Jim Crow laws.

The Colorado Senate’s Transportation and Energy Committee today will hear House Bill 1030, titled “Railroad Safety Requirements.” The bill tries to do something never attempted in another state, probably because it is so patently illegal.

The bill calls for “limiting the maximum length of a train operating in the state,” to 8,500 feet. It demands a slate of other “safety” regulations, including a provision that authorizes a designated union representative to investigate mishaps. It authorizes new fines that would fund safety for a “passenger rails system” pipe dream.

All of this was concocted by union bosses, who fund Democratic campaigns, to give them more power and control over what they don’t own.

The ramifications are substantial. The Colorado Department of Transportation reports that rail in Colorado, mostly freight, supports 14,477 jobs, $1.1 billion in employee compensation, and $445 million in annual taxes. Each rail job supports another 4.5 jobs.

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Given the primary role trains have played in Colorado’s survival and growth, it seems a bad idea to impose hostile regulations on the industry. Imagine Union Pacific or BNSF rolling up to the Colorado border and having to unhitch 500-feet of cars. They would move heaven and earth to avoid Colorado.

The anti-train law would hurt Colorado rail workers — not to mention the economy. Yes, trains still transport coal through Colorado. They also take windmill parts to and from CS Wind America in Pueblo. They transport aerospace and medical supplies, food, livestock and just about everything else important to Colorado’s import/export markets.

Transportation of goods and commodities is so vital to the country’s economic welfare that our laws clearly forbid what Democrats want with HB 1030.

“The power over commerce with foreign nations and among the several states is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government,” explains the 1824 landmark ruling in Gibbons v. Ogden.

The Constitution could not be clearer, stating that Congress shall have the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.”

The courts, starting with the Gibbons ruling, consider “navigation” and “transportation” as inseparable from “commerce.”

“The power of Congress, then, comprehends navigation within the limits of every state in the Union so far as that navigation may be, in any manner, connected with commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, or with the Indian tribes,” the Gibbons ruling states.

Indirectly, this ridiculous bill affronts the basis of civil rights enforcement. Courts rely heavily on the Commerce Clause, challenged by this bill, to uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The voluminous testimony presents overwhelming evidence that discrimination by hotels and motels impedes interstate travel,” states the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), which forced places of public accommodation to stop excluding Blacks.

If mom & pop motels are “interstate commerce,” trains probably match the concept.

Colorado has a history of breaking federal law, whether it is enacting Amendment 2, scorning the Second Amendment, or taking free speech from wedding artists. Don’t think for a moment these ill-informed extremists can control each train that crosses our state line, even if they claim its for “safety.”

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board