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Author: Cory Gaines

Gaines: Colorado Democrats blew the budget and now they want your TABOR refunds
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Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Gaines: Colorado Democrats blew the budget and now they want your TABOR refunds

By Cory Gaines | Colorado Accountability Project Colorado Democrats made a hash of the state's finances, but they want YOU to pay to fix it. In this post I want to flesh out some of the many assaults on TABOR and fiscal responsibility the Democrats are cooking up for this legislative session. The previous two posts were all about financial problems in this state. Problems that arose from mismanagement of state rules and money. Problems that arose from out of control spending. Problems that arose from politicians not being willing to do what families are forced to do every single day: adjust their spending to their income and choose among priorities. In this final post of the series, I want to outline some of the ways in which Colorado Democrats--the party that has completely ru...
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Gaines: Journalists conflate all ‘immigrants’ in deportation reporting
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Commentary, completecolorado.com

Gaines: Journalists conflate all ‘immigrants’ in deportation reporting

By Cory Gaines | Complete Colorado As an undergrad, I worked many a job, often alongside people who were not born here in the United States.  Some were here legally, some not.  They comprised a variety of ages, life experiences, dreams, fears,  etc.–just as you’d expect with any other group of humans. They were not a uniform mass of humanity.  Why then, do some Colorado journalists seem so eager to make them one? Immigration has been a big story here in Colorado.  All the more so lately as President Trump has ramped up enforcement of federal immigration laws.  Many in Colorado’s left-leaning press have risen to the challenge of reporting on it.  Breathless, dramatic stories abound, with an extra special focus on those who might garner the most sympathy.  Not pr...
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Gaines: The newest use for AI? Summarizing bills so they can be understood
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Gaines: The newest use for AI? Summarizing bills so they can be understood

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project In last year's legislative session there were 705 bills introduced, with 525 passed.  I’ve not seen anything official, but the rumors I have heard have it that there are currently 200 bills in the queue for the 75th Legislature this year, with a prediction that the total number of bills could hit 600 to 700 by May. What spurred my looking at bill numbers this year was an email forwarded from a friend.  It was a marketing email by Colorado Capitol Watch (CCW), a group that bills itself as the “the premier” bill and legislator tracking site for Colorado.  The email offered a novel service:  using AI to make summaries of legislation.   Members of CCW are entitled to use their AI tool to h...
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Gaines: You paid about $24.5 million in tax dollars to Denver to address the city’s homelessness
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Approved, Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary

Gaines: You paid about $24.5 million in tax dollars to Denver to address the city’s homelessness

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project A CORA request came back recently (part of digging into a reader question) that illustrates the importance of paying attention to what your legislature is doing — in particular, paying attention to those seemingly-unimportant, unsexy bills. The reader had asked how much money Denver has spent on homelessness. I'm not even going to pretend that I can find or relate a full accounting to you. Not only are there different streams of money, how you do the counting matters. I've seen headlines that put the number at $155 million spent by Denver. Okay. Personal experience, making repeated requests to Denver officials for information on the topic have gone unanswered. Let's go with that number, though I wonder whether the lack o...
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Gaines: A legislative directory to reach anyone in the 75th session
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Gaines: A legislative directory to reach anyone in the 75th session

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project A reader was kind enough to make a directory of legislators in an Excel Spreadsheet. It's linked below and feel free to make a local copy (and share). Sheet 1 is senators, sheet 2 is representatives. It lists phones, emails, committee memberships, party affiliation, and district. The other quite helpful thing here is that you can copy and paste the emails. I have more than once used this spreadsheet to email every. single. legislator. It's even got some "hidden tabs" with voting machine passwords!** A great big thanks to the person — what must have been a lot of time to produce this and share it! **It doesn't. I don't have the kind of political juice to avoid any sort of legal entanglement that comes with tha...
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Gaines: You, too, can file a campaign finance complaint against someone
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Gaines: You, too, can file a campaign finance complaint against someone

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice You may not have known this before, but you have the ability to accuse someone in this state of a campaign finance law violation.  You don’t have to be a witness at a trial.  In fact, once you make the accusation, you are essentially out of the process.  You will get notifications from the secretary of state’s office about the progress of the complaint, but you don’t do anything other than swear out a complaint.   You also don’t have to have an intimate knowledge of campaign finance law.  I’m not urging you to make wild, uneducated accusations here, but you don’t need to be a lawyer or an expert.  Many of the rules around campaign finance are pretty straightforward, thus finding violations d...
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Gaines: The people doing ag in this state need to speak up for each other
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Approved, Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary

Gaines: The people doing ag in this state need to speak up for each other

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Whether you run cattle on the Western Slope of Colorado or you grow forage on the Plains, there are precious few people in Colorado in Production Ag, while there seems a never-ending list of advocates — paid, volunteer, and sometimes from out of state — who are speaking up in support of things that either have the potential to harm producers or that will most assuredly harm them. Listen to any CPW commissioners meeting and you’ll have no trouble at all seeing what I mean. I have heard from people in the past that testifying is a challenge because of jobs, lack of technology, and lack of know how. I understand the constraints and so I made this quick guide to help ease some of those problems, to help you find ways t...
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Gaines: Educate yourself, Logan County, a Metro District may be coming
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Approved, Commentary, Local

Gaines: Educate yourself, Logan County, a Metro District may be coming

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Sage Pointe, a neighborhood just outside of Sterling, Colo., in Logan County, might have a Metro District coming. Since such things might be new to a lot of people out here; I thought it worth taking a minute to hit the high notes on Metro Districts. Before anything else, let me take a second to say that nothing of what I write below should be taken as an accusation against anyone in Sage Pointe, nor as any sort of alarm call. Metro Districts have been and can be problematic, but they don't have to be as long as you're informed. The Journal-Advocate article linked here details a recent decision by Logan County Commissioners that allows Sage Pointe residents to circulate petitions in their neighborhood, and, if s...
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Gaines: Recalling drones of our own in Eastern Colorado and a ‘nothing to see here’ response
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Gaines: Recalling drones of our own in Eastern Colorado and a ‘nothing to see here’ response

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Maintaining a healthy skepticism can be a challenge.  So many things these days are there to monetize your attention, and all too often the people generating the eye-catching content on social media (and sometimes in regular media) are none too picky about grabbing you without exaggerating or, sadly, making things up.   If you don't want to be fooled or led around by the nose, you're wise to keep your wits about you.  Watch for wild claims and remember that big claims need big evidence.  Take a second before reacting, open a new browser window, and then search for something you just read.  Go and read the primary source material for things people insist are true. There is a balance here, ...
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Gaines: Yes, oppose anti-2A legislation, but don’t forget to support state and local pro-gun orgs
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Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Gaines: Yes, oppose anti-2A legislation, but don’t forget to support state and local pro-gun orgs

By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice The recent election results for Proposition KK (the state excise tax on guns and ammunition) were disappointing, but not altogether a surprise.  By this point, Colorado gun owners and those that support the 2nd Amendment are becoming accustomed to annual encroachments on that right, the one new detail here being that it's now clear that the liberal districts along the Front Range, Interstate 70 and in the Southwest corner of the state are following the lead of those they sent to the state capitol. What can you do if you are one of those gun owners or 2A supporters?  What can you do if you're concerned about fundamental Constitutional rights? Over the last two or three years, it's become increasingl...
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