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Inside the Golden Range project: How public land and taxpayer dollars shape affordable housing
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Inside the Golden Range project: How public land and taxpayer dollars shape affordable housing

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Seeing an “affordable housing” project from the inside. I wrote about a project to build so-called affordable housing on a weird little quadrangle of land up near Golden, the Golden Range project. The newsletter from March of this year is linked first below if you’d like to go review. After talking to their media person, I set a reminder to follow up later in this year to see about any new developments. The project was just in its infancy when I wrote about it before. If it was in its infancy in March, it’s now in its toddlerhood. We are still a long ways from the end, but I have some updates to share. As the title of this post suggests, this will be one of multiple updates on this project; its a great...
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Colorado’s renewable milestone deserves a reality check
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s renewable milestone deserves a reality check

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Sarah Montalbano, the author of the Complete Colorado piece below makes a great point in her article about renewables. In response to a recent article by fellow energy writer Allen Best, see the second link below, about Colorado hitting an energy milestone of “More than half the state’s electricity came from wind, solar and hydro during the first months of 2026”, Montalbano notes that perhaps it’s not time for celebrating yet. Quoting from her Complete piece, “The trouble is that this jubilant announcement of a ‘majority’ renewables power grid owes more to a stark drop in coal-fired generation than the wind and solar that was added. Percentages rely on both the numerator — how much wind, solar, and hydropower...
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How a youth trap shooting story became a debate over gun policy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

How a youth trap shooting story became a debate over gun policy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The Colorado Sun article linked first below is nominally about high school kids, trap shooting, and teaching young ones how to be responsible around guns. The subhead illustrates pretty well: “Schools in mostly rural counties are building high school shooting teams that teach kids discipline, focus, camaraderie — and most important, how to handle a gun safely.” Perfectly fine topic. I like the topic, and I like that the Sun is looking outside the metro area to bring interesting stories back to that region, something that they do regularly if I’m going to be fair to them. If the Sun reporter stayed with the topic of the subhead, if she had focused on what is an unusual sport and how it’s helping youngsters...
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Colorado wants your input on where affordable housing tax credits go
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado wants your input on where affordable housing tax credits go

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority is accepting public comment on proposed changes that will help determine how affordable housing tax credits are awarded across the state. In the commentary below, Cory Gaines argues Coloradans should pay closer attention to the Qualified Allocation Plan, the document that guides those funding decisions and influences which housing projects receive state-supported financing. Colorado Housing and Finance Authority wants comments on where they distribute housing money I do a weekly sweep of public notices for my town and often share them. This one actually applies to the whole state, so I'm sharing it as a full on post. Before looking at what this is in friendlier, l...
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Otero County’s Wild & Scenic River fight offers a warning for Colorado
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Otero County’s Wild & Scenic River fight offers a warning for Colorado

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Federal land designations, with Otero County as an example I had a reader share the first link below with me recently. It’s an editorial appearing on the Colorado News Your Way site about a proposed federal land designation, specifically about a Wild & Scenic River designation proposed for the Purgatoire River and Pickett Wire Canyon by the Forest Service as a part of the Cimarron & Comanche National Grasslands revised management plan. Let’s back up a step and quickly talk about federal land designations. The second link below is to a Congress.gov explainer on the topic. You’re welcome to poke around in there for more detail, but for our purposes, it’s enough to know that federal land designations aff...
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Who’s shaping Colorado’s outdoors? An examination of Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Who’s shaping Colorado’s outdoors? An examination of Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy CPW recently released “Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy.” The first link below takes you to their landing page from which you can download the report itself. Covering this in detail is not feasible here, as the executive summary of the strategy (see the second link below) is 16 pages long. What I wanted to aim for, then, is to give you a jumping off point along with a nodding familiarity with what the report is intended to do, who participated, and the process by which it was made. This will also tie into the second post today: this strategy is reflective of a larger push to rewire our state wildlife and land use policy. If I had to do a one-sentence summary of the Strategy, it ...
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Who’s guiding Colorado’s Medicaid Commission? A closer look at the panel shaping future policy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Who’s guiding Colorado’s Medicaid Commission? A closer look at the panel shaping future policy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Meet the Medicaid Commission and their newly-hired advisor. Medicaid is a big line item in the state’s budget. It’s gotten so big, and eaten up so much of our state’s money, that our legislature has gathered up a commission. SB26-187 (linked first below) creates a (quoting from the bill summary): “… commission on Medicaid (commission) to develop recommendations regarding implementation of new federal Medicaid policy changes that go into effect in 2026, 2027, and 2028 and to support Coloradans impacted by those policy changes.” This commission will meet a few times and prepare a report to be used by the legislature in the 2027 session. Quoting from the bill’s fiscal note: “Between May 13, 2026, and December...
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Who will shape Colorado’s 2030 census? Nonprofit funding raises questions
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Who will shape Colorado’s 2030 census? Nonprofit funding raises questions

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project And a nonprofit shall lead them.... The Sky Hi article linked first below details how the State of Colorado plans to get out there ahead of the 2030 census to make sure we get all the “hard to count” residents we can. The census is critically important to our state. So many things from political representation to federal money to state programs run off the data the census produces. It’s probably not a surprise, then, that the state wants to get out there and make sure we count as many people as possible. And as you can see by checking a nearby calendar, we’re starting early. These counting efforts are not new. I wrote a newsletter back in 2025 (see the second link below if you want the context), covering h...
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Weiser talks about his Trump lawsuits. Here’s what he doesn’t talk about.
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Weiser talks about his Trump lawsuits. Here’s what he doesn’t talk about.

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Phil Weiser likes to talk about his Trump suits, but only some things. The article (lament?) linked first below covers territory I know all too well, having trod it more than once. Our Attorney General loves to tout his fighting style, bragging about his Trump-lawsuit spree, but he doesn’t want to share all the details. As his office has done in the past, when you go looking for records, they throw up roadblocks and jack up the price to drive those pesky questions away. Some non-contiguous quotes from the article flesh this out: “Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has filed dozens of lawsuits against the federal government, priding himself on his ability to fight and win cases against the Trump Admi...
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Are Colorado DOR employees letting personal gun control views shape official messaging?
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Are Colorado DOR employees letting personal gun control views shape official messaging?

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I hesitate to be too strong in my contention, and I hesitate to use the phrase “deep state,” but I am beginning to get an intuition that employees at the Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR) are letting their values on gun control mix in with their jobs. Even this scaled-down wording is a pretty big accusation, so let me defend why I’m starting to feel this way. The first and most obvious is their list of weapons you’ll need a government permission slip to buy under SB25-003 (something I’ve covered multiple times in the past, but if you’d like to see a recent discussion between Jon Caldara and Ray Elliott of the Colorado State Shooting Association on the topic, see “Related” below). The second part goes all th...
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