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Author: Lindy Browning

Court of Appeals vacates contempt conviction against Tina Peters in iPad recording case
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Court of Appeals vacates contempt conviction against Tina Peters in iPad recording case

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice In a court order filed Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, the Court of Appeals ruled that the case against Tina Peters concerning a contempt of court conviction over an iPad recording in Mesa County be vacated. Her attorney John Case said in a written statement, “The Colorado Court of Appeals reversed Tina’s conviction for contempt and vacated the judgment, meaning that the contempt case is over and there will be no retrial. She had been found innocent of recording a judicial proceeding and innocent of lying to Judge Barrett.  The basis of the ruling was that [District Attorney] Dan Rubinstein failed to present sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction.” In response to Case's statement, Rubinstein wrote, “... there is no s...
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Overwhelming ‘wolves are not welcome’ message the result of Garfield Co. ‘come to Jesus’ meeting
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Overwhelming ‘wolves are not welcome’ message the result of Garfield Co. ‘come to Jesus’ meeting

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer. Rocky Mountain Voice More than 300 residents from Garfield, Eagle and Pitkin Counties flocked recently to the New Hope Church in New Castle at the invitation of the Garfield County officials. The purpose of the meeting was to allow them to hear more about the imminent release of up to 15 wolves that are being captured from British Columbia, Canada, and transplanted into their ranching and agricultural community in January 2025. Elected officials in attendance included Garfield County Commissioners Mike Samson, John Martin, Tom Jankowski, former Wildlife Commissioner Russell George, current state Sen. and newly-elected Commissioner Perry Will, newly-elected state Sen. Marc Catlin, and newly-elected U.S. Congressman Jeff Hurd, among others. ...
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Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd will be a vote for energy dominance in Western Colorado
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Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd will be a vote for energy dominance in Western Colorado

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice One of the most repeated campaign promises U.S. Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd made to the people of Colorado's 3rd District was to pursue the Trump agenda of energy dominance.  “We have abundant opportunities in the district for energy development and production. We have coal, oil and gas resources," he said. "We also have large reserves of mined resources, such as uranium and vanadium in Western Colorado, we have it all.” The Trump administration and the majority Republican Congress and Senate, along with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), can have an outsized impact on the goal of energy dominance in the U.S. through reducing regulations on oil, gas and coal on federal lands (BLM). When it comes to private...
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Grand Junction’s 7th Street plan may have city on course for head-on collision with constituents
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Grand Junction’s 7th Street plan may have city on course for head-on collision with constituents

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice As Grand Junction unveils its proposal to make major changes to 7th Street -- citing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists -- more than 200 people attended a meeting of City Council in person or virtually last week with about two-thirds of them vehemently opposed to the direction City Council seems determined to pursue. According to Jim Spehar, a former county commissioner and City Council member, two-thirds of those people were there to protest any more costly changes to Grand Junction roads. Spehar, in an op-ed to the local legacy newspaper, wrote that more than half of the people in attendance were still outraged over the “experimental pilot project” changes made to 4th and 5th Streets earlier in the year.  He advise...
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U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd ready to get to work on border security, immigration in Congress
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U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd ready to get to work on border security, immigration in Congress

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Since the moment Jeff Hurd was declared the winner of Colorado's 3rd District election to the U.S. House, he has been working on putting a finer point on the details of the campaign promises to the people in Southern and Western Colorado who elected him. He is actively thinking about legislation he can write and support, and bad legislation and bureaucratic systems that he can help eliminate that get in the way of prosperity and success for the people in the district, he says. During his campaign, Hurd promised he would work with other members of the Republican Caucus to secure the border. To that end, he has been reviewing legislative measures he could write and support that would promote border security. In additio...
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Modern-day cattle rustlers? In Western Colorado, authorities want to know what happened to 200 head of cattle
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Modern-day cattle rustlers? In Western Colorado, authorities want to know what happened to 200 head of cattle

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Although cattle rustlers are no longer hung in the state of Colorado, the penalty is still pretty high for people who are convicted of stealing cattle.  Yet, in Western Colorado, in a story that sounds as if it came right out of John Dutton's Yellowstone, about 200 head of mostly this year’s calves appear to have been stolen in a major financial loss to ranchers. Cattle rustling is defined as knowingly killing, selling, driving, leading or driving away with cattle that don’t belong to a person, or knowingly purchasing cattle from someone who doesn’t have the legal right to sell them. Western Colorado sheriffs from Montrose, Delta and San Miguel Counties are looking for what they believe to be modern-day cattle r...
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Grand Junction punts again on homeless center to the ire of taxpayers
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Grand Junction punts again on homeless center to the ire of taxpayers

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Downtown residents and businesses continue to be frustrated by the Grand Junction City Council's efforts to find a way to meet the needs of vulnerable homeless people while saying they want to protect the homeowners and businesses from the darker element that lives within the homeless population.  In a recent turn of events, the Council, in an effort to address the violence, crime and exploitation of the area's approximately 2,000 homeless people, created a buffer zone that extends from curb to curb at the property on 261 Ute Avenue. The buffer zone was an attempt to stop the criminal element from dealing drugs and prostitution at the address where the Homeless Resource Center is located. The idea was to give the center...
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Could Polis really align with Trump on anything? He might on cutting from BLM wild horse management budget
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Could Polis really align with Trump on anything? He might on cutting from BLM wild horse management budget

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice In a shocking and unexpected post on Twitter/X, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis posted that he wants the Trump administration to give at least half the funding that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses to manage Colorado wild horses to Colorado. The post came from his personal page, not his official governor's page. Polis wrote, “…the BLM spends $187.8 million dollars a year on the Wild Horse Program, including $8.5 million on the 'inhumane horse roundups', and over $100 million caring for the 60,000 horses in holding facilities. Giv[ing] half that amount to the states with wild horses (like CO) with guardrails for horse treatment, we will efficiently manage the population through birth control, eliminating the need for c...
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Activists still trying to influence CPW over mountain lion hunting, despite ballot box loss
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Activists still trying to influence CPW over mountain lion hunting, despite ballot box loss

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Even after voters rejected a ban on mountain lion hunting, people that supported the ban are continuing to try to influence Colorado wildlife officials into implementing many of the measures that voters rejected in Prop. 127 during the CPW rulemaking and hearings  process. CPW regularly evaluates and updates their data concerning the number of lions that are in specific areas of the state, in order to fulfill the mission of the agency to manage lions for sustainable populations and strike a balance in apex predator and prey numbers, insuring that the prey species are not decimated while maintaining robust lion populations. As a result of the newest studies, a new Eastern Colorado plan was needed, because the previous on...
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Why are Colorado rest stops closed? CDOT blames a lack of funds to reopen
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Why are Colorado rest stops closed? CDOT blames a lack of funds to reopen

By Lindy Browning | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Cass Brock of Pueblo is disappointed, to say the least, concerning access to the multiple rest stops along the Interstate 25 corridor from Denver to the southern part of the state. “I live in Pueblo and we drive I-25 to Denver monthly and also drive south on I-25.  When we drive through other states, their rest areas are and have been reopened for years since Covid restrictions.  Why are Colorado rest areas still closed?  I think it is a disservice to the over the road (OTR) truckers, and our state's residents,” she said in an email to Rocky Mountain Voice staff. According to records posted online, Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) claims there are several reasons that these rest stops are still closed. The s...
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