When Richard Conlin signed the tunnel environmental impact statement last year, McGinn threw a legal fit. Now that City Attorney Pete Holmes has raised legal questions about McGinn’s anti-tunnel initiative, is McGinn still obsessed with going by the book?

Remember when Mayor Mike McGinn was very very serious about the city charter. This was back in September when he denounced city council president Richard Conlin for signing off  on the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) agreement with the state on the controversial $4.2 billion deep bore tunnel.

At the time, McGinn said:

“We are a nation of laws and the city charter is our constitution,” McGinn said. “This is just really fundamental. It doesn’t work that if you really really love a project [Conlin is a tunnel fan], that you get to just ignore the law. The charter is still the charter.”

I wonder if McGinn feels the same way now that City Attorney Pete Holmes has come out against the anti-tunnel initiative on legal grounds, filing a lawsuit that, citing state law and the city ordinance, says: "[the referendum] may not be placed upon the ballot because it is beyond the scope of the local referendum power."

I strongly support the idea that the public should get to vote on the tunnel—as a Monday Elway poll showed they wanted to do. But I also believe that a vote should be done legally.

28,000 signatures or not, it gets pretty scary when people start scoffing at the law in the name of popular opinion. It reminds me of Mississippi's reaction to Brown vs. Board of Ed.

Erica is at McGinn's press conference right now. She plans to ask him about this .