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Before the funding push: How Colorado’s childcare case is being built
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Before the funding push: How Colorado’s childcare case is being built

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The building of the childcare narrative, ahead of a taxpayer funding push This is a lengthy story, so I want to start with a quick introduction/overview. There is a push to get government to pay for (and/or perhaps operate?) childcare in Colorado. I am sure that the policy moves will be in the legislature and/or on the ballot soon enough, but you and I are lucky enough to be witness to it in its infancy. We are lucky enough to see the narrative being built from the ground up. What I have for you today is a couple of posts falling loosely into the categories of “how do the media work in concert with market research and evaluation consultants to help drive your opinions?” and then “how are the high ups in...
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Enrollment drops but Denver schools keep growing administration
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Enrollment drops but Denver schools keep growing administration

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Denver Public Schools administrative bloat -- with some interesting counterpoint The Gazette article linked first below touches on a subject that I’ve written about multiple times. It’s administrative bloat in schools. It seems as though DPS has gotten its ranks of administrators while at the same time enrollment has fallen. This pattern also seems to be playing out in school districts around the state. Quoting (with link intact) from the article: “This finding [that DPS is beefing up administration while student numbers fall] mirrors a statewide trend identified in a report by the Common Sense Institute (CSI) that found Colorado school districts continued to grow their administrative staff despite declin...
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Climate lawfare: The courtroom battle over Colorado fuel and energy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Climate lawfare: The courtroom battle over Colorado fuel and energy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Climate lawfare The PowerGab video linked below was a great primer on how environmentalists — unable to get done what they want by persuasion and the usual legislative process — are now turning to the courts to pursue their preferred policy. In the case of the video, the policy relates to climate change and fossil fuels. I’ll leave it to you to watch/listen to the discussion in full. It’s worth the time. There are a couple things worth special note. First, the lawsuits here in Colorado (of course) are going after the state’s two remaining refineries. This ought to give you pause. Long a target for shutdown by environmentalists, Colorado’s refineries don’t just make gas for cars. They make diesel for tru...
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Arapahoe County brings gun locks and overdose messaging into child welfare visits
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Arapahoe County brings gun locks and overdose messaging into child welfare visits

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Arapahoe County Child and Family Services, guns, and drugs I wanted to update something I wrote about earlier. The first link below is from January this year and gives you all the detail I could find about a program (funded by the Anschutz Family Foundation) called Safe Starts at Home. I’ll leave it to you to read the newsletter for more, but the upshot is that the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative (FIPI) at CU Medical and Public Health Schools got grant money to develop firearm-safety and drug overdose materials (and training) to follow social workers into homes. The idea being that the material can be handed out and discussed with families when the social worker visits. At the time no one behind this ...
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An open letter to the 10th Circuit on free speech and the First Amendment
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

An open letter to the 10th Circuit on free speech and the First Amendment

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The 10th Circuit of Court of Appeals got it wrong on free speech -- an open letter Similar to what Lincoln said of himself — I’m a slow walker but I don’t walk backwards — I often get busy with life and have to shelve writing projects without letting them go. I wrote back in early May about a decision rendered by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on legislative immunity. That newsletter is linked first below. The second link is to the judge’s decision. At the time, I wrote the clerk of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked how it was that one could send in feedback to the judges on their decision. The clerk said that you can either email them to [email protected], or mail them to the ...
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Colorado seeks feedback from firearms dealers as new regulations take shape
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado seeks feedback from firearms dealers as new regulations take shape

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado Department of Revenue seeks feedback from Firearms Dealers The Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR) was tasked with regulating — on top of the ATF and existing federal regulation — firearms dealers in the state. They are the ones who make the rules to enforce recently passed requirements on Colorado firearm dealers. I got an email from DOR last week announcing an upcoming rulemaking relevant to firearms dealers. The Department has an existing working group which will be doing the rulemaking, but that doesn’t mean you cannot weigh in. You can provide public comment to the group and can also send in written comment. The announcement of the meeting along with all links to draft rules, agendas, ...
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Whoever holds power, Colorado records should remain public
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Whoever holds power, Colorado records should remain public

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project CFOIC updates their CORA/Open Meetings guide CFOIC has been a great help to me in learning how to do public records requests (and they continue to be as I encounter issues with getting records, etc.). They recently updated their excellent guide on open records requests and open meetings law based on recent changes. It’s linked at bottom. If you are doing requests or thinking about it, bookmark it. In the spirit of paying forward the help I received, I am happy to help you in what ways I can if you are thinking of doing some records requests and/or if you have a topic you want to investigate but don’t know where to start. Message me or email through my newsletter. https://coloradofoic.org/op...
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RE-1 Valley’s persistence pays off with proposed $8.4 million BEST grant
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

RE-1 Valley’s persistence pays off with proposed $8.4 million BEST grant

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project RE-1 Valley gets a BEST grant Let’s turn to something local (for me at least): per the article linked first below, RE-1 Valley school district got their long sought-after BEST grant. Before some detail on that, let’s back up a step. In case you weren’t familiar, BEST (Building Excellent Schools Today) grants are money that comes from the state to be used primarily to, quoting their webpage linked second below, “… resolve health, safety, and security issues in Colorado public schools.” It is a competitive grant program, meaning schools from across the state compete for the grants in any given yearly cycle. As a quick side note (more available at the BEST webpage) since it’s been a topic on this page mult...
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Who checks the groups spending Colorado eviction-defense money?
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Who checks the groups spending Colorado eviction-defense money?

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Following up on Community Eviction Defense Project Update as of 6am on 6/8/26: This post was updated to change the statement that CEDP offered per their request this morning. After writing a deep dive on the Community Eviction Defense Project (CEDP), see the first link below, I had a reader mention something on Twitter that I thought worthy of a follow-up. At about the same time, I heard back on an email I’d sent to the Eviction Legal Defense Fund regarding their grants to CEDP (the Fund being a major source of revenue for them). I’ll cover both in this post, starting with the video from Twitter. The second link below is to a Twitter account that shared a video of testimony before the Denver City Co...
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