Nothing—and everything. Buying and selling gas for cooking and heating is already legal in Colorado today. This measure does something profoundly unnecessary by permanently locking a special right for one industry into our constitution, something no other state has done.

However, 82 is a constitutional change, making it effectively permanent. That means that our ability to safeguard our water from toxics like benzene, and commonsense rules that limit methane gas fracking near our homes and schools—even standard gas safety and inspection requirements—all would be threatened by new corporate-friendly and permanent laws.

And, it hands monopoly utilities a tool they can use to justify raising our bills to pay for new pipelines and infrastructure, and for things we didn’t ask for and don’t want, like hookups for massive new data centers. 

It’s one industry getting to permanently write itself out of accountability using our state constitution as a shield, and nothing like it exists in any other state constitution.

Advance Colorado is the dark money group behind this measure, and a number of other measures on the ballot this year. In 2022 alone, roughly $9 million of the $11 million moving through Advance Colorado’s network was anonymous.

Their funding is so opaque that a local news outlet did a deep dive into their funding network. Independent reporting has traced its money through pass-through nonprofits back to billionaire donors including Phil Anschutz.

Advance Colorado also funds a think tank called the Common Sense Institute, which produces research supporting its initiatives, and Anschutz's own newspapers then cover that research as if it were independent. 

It’s worth asking what their billionaire backers think they’re going to get out of it.

No state has ever put a right to methane gas into its constitution. 27 states restrict local governments from limiting gas use, but every one of those laws is statutory, passed by a legislature, and nearly all are in Republican-led states. So, this would be a new chapter for Colorado, and a terrible precedent for our state to set, given that this model could have ripple effects in other states with similar citizen initiative pathways to the ballot. 

Buying and selling natural gas is already legal in Colorado, and people's utility bills are still too high regardless. Nothing in Amendment 82 requires any company to lower prices. Consumer choice is not impaired right now. 

What it actually does is give monopoly utility companies a new constitutional "right to sell" that they will use to justify raising your gas and electric bills further, to pay for new pipelines and hookups that may serve someone else entirely, or things you didn’t ask for and don’t want – such as massive new data centers.

This measure isn't about your stove. You can cook and heat with gas today, and voting no on Amendment 82 does nothing to change that. That’s because Amendment 82 is not a fight over whether we like natural gas or should use natural gas.

Nothing about voting no changes anyone's ability to connect to gas or keep using it. The actual effect of a yes vote is the opposite of "choice": it locks in cost-sharing obligations that customers currently have no say over, including paying for gas infrastructure expansions that serve someone else entirely. What it’s actually about is whether one corporate interest should be able to write special “rights” for itself into our state constitution, permanently.

Proponents say 82 gives consumers freedom to choose their own fuel. It’s actually the opposite. 82 moves decisions away from cities, counties, local governments, fire chiefs, and property owners, and into a courtroom in Denver to decide what a constitutional “right to sell” really means.

In practical terms — no. This is a constitutional amendment, so the legislature can't simply repeal it. Fixing it should things go wrong would require another statewide ballot measure that clears the same 55% threshold this one needs to pass.

That's exactly the risk. Writing a permanent right for one industry into our constitution is a lasting change that's nearly impossible to undo later. Voting no now is the one real opportunity to stop this before it's locked in for good.