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Colorado’s annual seat belt crackdown returns. The numbers suggest it isn’t working.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s annual seat belt crackdown returns. The numbers suggest it isn’t working.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice "Their lives might have been saved if they invested three seconds in safety and buckled up." Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said that Monday about the 191 Coloradans who died in crashes last year without a seat belt. CDOT's release marked the launch of the state's annual Click It or Ticket enforcement campaign with five years of fatality data. The numbers have not moved. Since 2021, the unbuckled share of passenger vehicle deaths in Colorado has held between 48 percent and 52 percent each year. Through May 18 of this year, 40 unbuckled drivers and passengers have died on Colorado roads, 51 percent of all passenger vehicle fatalities. Across the full five-year period, 1,052 of 2,087 passenger v...
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Jeffco student barred from reading pro-life poem after school calls it “too politically charged”
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Jeffco student barred from reading pro-life poem after school calls it “too politically charged”

By Kelly Notarfrancesco | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Jeffco School District values maintaining schools where “…all students…feel that their voices and perspectives are valued." Yet one 13-year-old 7th grade honors student said she does not feel respected at school, after school officials told her she is not allowed to participate in her class poetry presentation because her submission is “too offensive” and “too politically charged.” The Drake Middle School 7th grader, whose name is being withheld as she is a minor, submitted a poem titled, “A life is a life, no matter how small,” about choosing life over abortion.  Shortly after submitting her poem Monday, the student was approached by her 7th grade Honors English Language Arts teacher Laura Wolf and told she would...
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Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado debated abortion oversight while Lexi’s autopsy stayed redacted

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Taco Tuesdays with her mother. Motorcycle rides with her stepdad. Choir, books and afternoons at the Denver Aquarium. That was the teenager her family remembered. Alexis Arguello was 18 when she died in Fort Collins on Feb. 6, 2025 after a second-trimester abortion. Coincidentally, it was less than a week after her death that Rep. Scott Bottoms introduced a bill for abortion-clinic oversight. A relative of Arguello testified for the bill a month later, even while the portions describing the abortion and related medical complications remained hidden from view. It took an order from a district court judge for the records to be released unredacted.  In the order, St. John emphasized that autopsy reports are public records subject to dis...
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Colorado killed its only data center water bills. Cities are filling the gap themselves.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado killed its only data center water bills. Cities are filling the gap themselves.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado spent a year trying to answer a basic question: should companies building massive AI data centers be required to disclose how much water they use? The answer, as of May 11, was no. Senate Bill 26-102 would have required operators of new large data centers to report annual water use to state health officials. A companion measure, House Bill 26-1030, sought to attract data centers through voluntary tax incentives tied to water efficiency standards. HB26-1030 died in committee on May 7. SB26-102 followed four days later. 238 lobbyists registered positions on one or both bills on behalf of 221 clients, according to Secretary of State records. Five days after the legislature adjourned, Denver City Council unanim...
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Coastal desalination could save Colorado’s water. The pushback? Cost
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Coastal desalination could save Colorado’s water. The pushback? Cost

By Michael J Badagliacco, “MJB” | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s water rights must never become a bargaining chip.  The 1922 Colorado River Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet annually to the Upper Basin, including Colorado, and the same amount to the Lower Basin states. The 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act fixed specific Lower Basin shares: California 4.4 million acre-feet, Arizona 2.8 million acre-feet, and Nevada 0.3 million acre-feet. The 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact later assigned Colorado roughly 51.75% of the Upper Basin’s share, or about 3.86 million acre-feet. The 1964 Arizona v. California Supreme Court decree confirmed federal oversight of these mainstream allocations while highlighting the need for supply solutions beyond repeate...
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Polis explained both commutations in writing. One drew a party revolt.
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Polis explained both commutations in writing. One drew a party revolt.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Democrats organized a censure push over Tina Peters. No comparable campaign emerged over the commutation of Brandin Kreuzer. On the same day Gov. Jared Polis commuted Tina Peters' sentence, he granted clemency to a man convicted of shooting a Douglas County sheriff's deputy during a 2008 crime spree. Peters drew a formal complaint signed by hundreds of Democrats, an impeachment call and a sitting U.S. senator's rebuke. The other commutation drew none of that. No party complaint. No impeachment call. No signature drive. Polis put both of his reasons in writing. Two letters, one day Brandin Kreuzer was charged with attempted first-degree murder of a peace officer and convicted of first-degree assault, along with second-degree kidnappi...
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Nearly 500 Democrats move to censure Polis. His own party meets Wednesday to decide what to do.
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State, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

Nearly 500 Democrats move to censure Polis. His own party meets Wednesday to decide what to do.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The Colorado Democratic Party's central committee meets Wednesday to decide what to do about its own governor. In front of it is a formal complaint, signed by hundreds of Democrats and growing by the hour, asking the party to censure Gov. Jared Polis for commuting Tina Peters' sentence. The signers are not asking a court to undo the commutation. They are not asking the legislature to reverse it. They cannot.  Colorado's constitution gives the governor sole clemency authority, and neither the courts nor the legislature nor the party can take back what Polis already signed. What the signers want is for the party to declare that one of its own governors acted against its interests, to bar him from its marquee events and to say publicly ...
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‘If this bill passes, we’re moving’: How a Colorado veteran became a political voice online
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‘If this bill passes, we’re moving’: How a Colorado veteran became a political voice online

By RMV Staff | Rocky Mountain Voice A Colorado Springs defense worker who never wanted to be in politics now says the only place left to win back gun rights in this state is a federal courtroom — and that the window is open right now. Nicholas, the veteran behind the YouTube channels Big Timber Lodge and Big Timber Armory, told Heidi Ganahl on the latest episode of Unleashed that he spent more than a year building legal packages for the U.S. Department of Justice, asking it to sue Colorado over its firearm laws. In early May, the DOJ filed suit. Colorado’s gun restrictions moved faster than gun owners could fight them in state court, where judges are appointed under Democrat governors. Now the Trump administration’s Justice Department, not a Colorado plaintiff, is suing the st...
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Southwest Colorado’s voice has gone unheard in Denver. Naomi Riess is running to change it.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Southwest Colorado’s voice has gone unheard in Denver. Naomi Riess is running to change it.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The men's room door was locked. The man inside wasn't responding. Naomi Riess's daughter-in-law — who works for the sheriff at the jail — had already recognized him when he walked in. She'd been watching. She called 911 and tried to find the key. Nobody knew where it was. When police arrived, they broke the door down and found him ODing on the floor inside a fentanyl cloud. The first two officers through both had to be Narcanned — one passed out immediately. Her daughter-in-law was third in line. She didn't need Narcan but went to the hospital for a full body detox of her clothing and her body. She had no voice for four days. The man was taken to the hospital and released. It was the weekend and police couldn't reach a...
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The parent-child bond is not the government’s to break
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

The parent-child bond is not the government’s to break

By Colleen Enos | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Each morning you kiss your 12-year-old daughter goodbye while sending her off to school. You trust that her teachers care about her and are nurturing her mind, not hiding things from you. Weeks later, you discover your once-bright child is now anxious, isolated, and medically altered, because her trusted teachers have secretly counselled her to take life-altering hormones while keeping you in the dark—the mother who loved her, sacrificed for her and would lay down your life to protect her.  This scenario isn’t rare; it’s unfolding in schools nationwide. When the state severs the sacred parent-child bond, it doesn’t just break families; it assaults the natural rights that shield every American’s liberty and the rule of ...
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