Much to the disappointment of environmentalists, high-profile anti-sprawl ballot measures in Colorado and Arizona were defeated in yesterday’s election. A proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution that would have put dramatic constraints on development, requiring cities and counties to develop growth plans and let the public vote on them, was rejected by a margin of about 2-to-1. A June poll of Colorado voters put support for the measure, Amendment 24, at 78 percent, but that number plummeted after developers poured $6 million into an advertising blitz against the measure. Proposition 202 in Arizona, which would have required most urban areas to set up growth boundaries and all cities, town, and counties to adopt voter-approved growth-management plans, was also defeated by a margin of more than 2-to-1. And in Maine, for the third time in four years, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have restricted logging and clear-cutting.
