The petition was filed by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association(COGA) and signed by 55 local business owner in the Fort Collinsarea. Or at least that’s what the lobbyists claimed.
After the city's lawmakers voted 5-2 to ban hydraulic fracturinginside city limits on February 19, three businesses listed amongthe signatories voiced their curiosity about how their names, insome cases misspelled, ended up on a petition they neversupported.
Further investigation revealed that almost half of thesignatures were fabricated or signed on behalf of business ownersand not their businesses. Some signatories claimed they neverendorsed fracking, knew nothing about the petition, or were misledand didn’t know they were signing it as an individual.
The signatures were collected by EIS Solutions, an energyconsulting firm based hundreds of miles away in Grand Junction.
An EIS Solutions spokesman said the company “went topains” to ask the people if they could speak on behalf of theirrespective business, while the COGA spokesperson said people“obviously knew” what they were doing when they signed the‘Vote NO on the Fort Collins Fracking Ban’ petition.
The owner of Anders’ Auto Glass business, Tamara Olivett,obviously didn’t.
“I don’t even know what fracking is,” Olivett toldcoloradoan.com.
COGA was quick to announce that they acknowledged some“mistakes in the collection of signatures.” In several casesCOGA was even unable to identify signatories in order to contactthem to verify their intentions.
Citing these mistakes in an email to the Fort Collins citycouncil, COGA's president and CEO said the lobby group wanted to“withdraw that petition from the record.”
But once a petition is part of the public record, it can’t bewithdrawn or removed.
“We’re not giving it back,” said Rita Harris, FortCollins' deputy city clerk.
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