Some on city council are sad because they don’t make the big bucks. That’s why there’s an outrageous, 600 percent city council pay hike on the ballot right now. But you sometimes have to wonder whether councilors are earning the pay they make now, given their refusal to make the tough but correct calls that will keep the city moving forward.

Calls like drilling rules for the east side of town. After many, many months of study and debate, in which every possible opinion was heard and vetted, some reasonable rules for drilling in city limits were narrowly approved by council last November. But then many more months went by before council, last week, foolishly killed the rules it already approved, leaving the city with no regulations at all.

And get this. The same councilors who put the pay raise on the ballot, and who complain the loudest about the pittance they get for undertaking the labors of Hercules, were the ones who totally wimped out on passing responsible energy rules. Those who want more pay because they supposedly make the tough calls just dropped the ball on one of the biggest decisions they’ll make all year. That undermines one rationale for a pay hike they put on the ballot.

Not to name names, but the five councilors in question are Brandy Williams, Jan Martin, Scott Hente, Val Snider and Lisa Czelatdko. Well, to be fair, Lisa didn’t vote on the energy ordinance the second time around. She seems to be taking a powder on the rest of her term, apparently in silent protest of the sweatshop conditions under which council labors. That meant the Gang of Four — Williams, Martin, Hente and Snider — could kill the ordinance on a tie vote, which they did, after hearing three hours of Chiller Theater-type horror stories about the alleged dangers of hydraulic fracturing.

The ordinance’s death by indecision isn’t the kind of performance that inspires confidence — or that will garner much support for paying council more. Meanwhile, those councilors who opposed putting the pay raise on the ballot — Angela Dougan, Tim Leigh, Merv Bennett and Bernie Herpin — made the really courageous call, by supporting the ordinance, in front of a room full of frackpots with a mob mentality.

There was no use reasoning with the anti-fracking throng, or countering their claptrap with fact and logic.

This is a religious question now — a matter of dogma, in which one side holds as an article of faith that the world will end if America keeps using fossil fuels. And the few who spoke in favor of the ordinance were jeered and hissed as heretics.

Despite all this, I still hoped a majority on council would have the political courage to cut through the fog and make a responsible choice — perhaps as proof that they really were worthy of a pay hike.

But instead of doing the responsible thing for this city, and for the silent majority of energy consumers who were out working that day, the four caved-in, handing another “victory” to the gang of loopy eco-Luddites who’ve been dominating local energy debates up and down the front range.

I’m not completely close-minded on the question of increasing council pay. Nor am I dismissive of the effort the job requires. But the proposed increase ought to be reasonable. This one isn’t. And it ought to be tethered in some tangible way to an updated assessment of council’s new roles and responsibilities. But perhaps the strongest argument against a council pay raise was made by the four councilors who buckled to eco-extremism and flushed months of diligent public process down the drain. That, more than anything, probably just messed up any chance this pay hike proposal will pass.

Paige is a former member of city council and the former editorial page editorat The Gazette. Write him at seanpaige@msn.com.

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