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Colorado Accountability Project

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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If Polis vetoed it, maybe Colorado should take a closer look
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

If Polis vetoed it, maybe Colorado should take a closer look

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I guess we can’t say Polis never vetoes, it’s just rare. I wanted to share a couple of articles (one by Complete Colorado linked first below and the second by CPR) detailing some vetoes from Governor Polis this legislative session. I’ll leave it to you to poke around in either or both articles, but there are a couple of notable things I wanted to mention. There are some non-surprises such as modifications to the Labor Peace Act. No one figured he’d sign it; he’s been a vocal opponent of such efforts. The legislative Democrats are just biding their time for the next governor anyway. There was one that is an update to an earlier post. HB26-1418 would have put a fee on video game transactions to provide m...
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Colorado’s Second Amendment deserts: Long drives and fewer gun dealers reshape access
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s Second Amendment deserts: Long drives and fewer gun dealers reshape access

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado’s Second Amendment Deserts -- a two part look If you read as much news as I do, it doesn’t take long to note that Colorado is the land of deserts. There is the desert (the literal one) out where I live on the Eastern Plains, but that’s not all. There are food deserts. There are childcare deserts. There are maternal care deserts. Abortion and transgender care deserts. I don’t know that I have ever read about any Second Amendment deserts here in Colorado, however. A natural question is whether there are any. If a [fill in the blank] desert is a geographical region where something is unduly or unnaturally absent, then a Second Amendment desert would be a region in Colorado where people face either...
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Colorado tax data complicates the “fair share” argument
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado tax data complicates the “fair share” argument

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project High Income Coloradans pay an outsized share of income taxes As a follow-up to an earlier newsletter on Colorado’s income tax distribution (the graph headlining this post is from that newsletter), I did a summary op ed for Complete Colorado. That op ed delves into why a progressive income tax in this state would be foolhardy policy. More, including a link to my earlier newsletter with more context and detail, in the link below. https://completecolorado.com/2026/05/21/high-income-coloradans-outsized-share-income-taxes/ A different take on easing the tax burden for low income earners In the first post today, I shared an op ed I wrote which outlines why a progressive income tax (making t...
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Lakewood taxpayers face 30-year shelter obligation after city grant deal
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Lakewood taxpayers face 30-year shelter obligation after city grant deal

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project From a recent edition of the Lakewood Informer (copied here with links intact): “Lakewood purchased 8000 W Colfax Avenue to use as an emergency shelter and Navigation Center using a grant from the state to fund the property purchase and renovation. As a condition to getting the grant, Lakewood committed the property to shelter use for 30 years. No public discussion about this condition occurred when City Council authorized the purchase. At an annual operating cost of $3,000,000, that’s a $90,000,000 commitment that was not disclosed to the public. That makes the Center severely underfunded, with declining neighborhood support, and may be one reason for the proposed city sales tax hike.” This was startling to ...
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How SB19-180 opened the tap: The funding stream behind Colorado’s eviction defense network
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

How SB19-180 opened the tap: The funding stream behind Colorado’s eviction defense network

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project SB19-180: Eviction Legal Defense Fund gets the money going This will be the first part of a twofer on state grant money going to defend people against eviction. This first part will cover the legal background. The second will cover how a nonprofit got in on the ground floor of an initial trickle of state money and soaked up what would eventually become a firehosing of federal money into our state. In the process of that ballooning, one of their own got into the Colorado statehouse where he sits now and is running for reelection. About a year or so prior to COVID being a thing, in Spring 2019, lawmakers passed and the governor signed SB19-180 (linked first below). The bill created a grant fund which would ...
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