Boulder is world-famous for its natural beauty, quality of life and thriving economy. But beneath the surface, the state’s economic development policies are quietly driving a structural crisis — one that local governments cannot fix on their own. For decades, Colorado has followed a formula that treats growth as the measure of success: more jobs, more people, more construction. Yet in a water-stressed, fire-prone, infrastructure-strained state, endless growth is not a strategy. It’s a liability.

At the core of the problem is Colorado’s economic development system, particularly the job-recruitment incentives offered by the Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT). These incentives are designed to bring in high-wage employers — tech, aerospace, bioscience and financial services firms. But these “wins” come with hidden costs. Every new high-wage job attracts additional workers from out of state, which inflates housing demand far beyond what local land, water and infrastructure can support.

And here is the key point: These policies create housing demand that no amount of rezoning, deregulation or local development can ever catch up with. The state generates the demand; local communities are left to manage the consequences.

Those consequences are growing more severe. Our water supplies are shrinking. Our wildfire seasons are longer and more intense. Our roads are crowded, our air quality violates federal standards, and our biodiversity is declining. Yet none of these environmental limits constrain OEDIT’s job-recruitment decisions. The state can promise hundreds or thousands of new jobs without asking whether the receiving community has the water, infrastructure, evacuation capacity or ecological resilience to absorb them.

The fiscal impacts are equally alarming. Growth no longer “pays for itself” — in fact, it increasingly fails to pay for anything. Colorado’s revenue structure, tightly constrained by TABOR, makes it nearly impossible for local governments to keep up with service demands created by rapid population growth. New residents require police, fire, water treatment, road maintenance, transit, parks and human services. But local revenues do not keep pace because:

• Sales tax bases are eroding because of online retail.

• High-income households purchase online rather than locally.

• TABOR prevents revenue from adjusting to population growth.

• Infrastructure maintenance grows more expensive with every new development.

• Sprawl requires permanent long-term service costs that far exceed new revenues.

The result? Local governments face widening structural deficits, even as state leaders insist that communities “build more housing” to accommodate the population growth the state itself incentivized.

This leaves cities and counties trapped. They must manage escalating service burdens and environmental pressures while being accused of obstructing growth. The state creates the problem then blames local governments for the symptoms.

Colorado needs a new approach — one grounded in ecological and fiscal reality. State law must require that economic development policies align with locally assessed environmental and fiscal carrying capacity. This means:

• Conducting water availability and wildfire-risk assessments before offering job incentives.

• Evaluating long-term cost-of-growth impacts on municipal budgets.

• Ensuring school districts, fire districts and utilities confirm adequate capacity.

• Allowing local governments to adopt growth ceilings tied to water, emissions, evacuation capacity and ecological limits.

• Refocusing OEDIT incentives on local business retention, climate-resilient industries and regenerative economic development.

Colorado cannot keep attracting new residents faster than our ecosystems and local governments can sustainably absorb them. A thriving economy must be rooted in long-term stability, community well-being, and environmental integrity — not in a race for perpetual expansion.

It’s time for Colorado to enact economic development policies that keep growth within the environmental carrying capacity limits of the land that sustains us.

Cosima Krueger-Cunningham was born and raised in Boulder.