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Polis launches economic council as Colorado businesses warn competitiveness is slipping
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Polis launches economic council as Colorado businesses warn competitiveness is slipping

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com Gov. Jared Polis has launched an economic council as Colorado businesses cite rising costs, complex rules, and an unforgiving cost of living. The Denver Gazette reports that Gov. Jared Polis has rolled out a new public-private council aimed at improving Colorado’s affordability and economic competitiveness. The council is supposed to study the state’s business climate, benchmark Colorado against competitors, and recommend policy, regulatory, and legislative changes. Very serious people will gather around very serious tables and produce, one assumes, a very serious PDF. The timing is not exactly subtle. Colorado has fallen out of CNBC’s top 10 states for business, business leaders are increasingly pessimistic, and employers ar...
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RTD faces $250M deficit as taxpayers ask where the money went
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

RTD faces $250M deficit as taxpayers ask where the money went

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com RTD may have real financial trouble, but riders and taxpayers deserve plain answers before service cuts or another ballot ask. Here is a sentence every taxpayer understands: Great, so I may get less service and still be asked for more money. That is the kitchen-table translation of RTD’s latest problem. Denver7 reports that the Regional Transportation District board is looking at ways to close a $250 million budget deficit, including possible service reductions and a future ballot measure for more revenue. RTD says it has been operating at a deficit since federal COVID-19 relief money ran out in 2024, and the current path is not sustainable. Well, yes. Temporary money has a bad habit of being temporary. I reali...
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Colorado needs a smarter answer on data centers than yes or no
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado needs a smarter answer on data centers than yes or no

By Scott James | Commentary, Scott's Sheet Colorado can welcome data centers, but only with honest math on water, power, rates, and who pays when the press release meets the utility bill. Most normal people do not wake up worried about data centers. They wake up worried about the mortgage, the water bill, the power bill, the kids, the roads, and whether the internet will freeze right as the Broncos line up on fourth and short. Then somebody says “data center,” and the room divides almost immediately. One side acts like every giant project is economic manna from heaven. The other side acts like a server farm is Mordor with better landscaping. Somewhere between NIMBY and corporate shill, there is a principled yes. Colorado ought to find it. Big Pivots argues that...
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Local control or state mandate: Colorado bill would override city prostitution laws
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Local control or state mandate: Colorado bill would override city prostitution laws

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com The Colorado General Assembly wants to decriminalize commercial sex and block every city and county from prohibiting it. That is not reform. It is a statewide power grab dressed up as enlightenment. There are bad bills. There are misguided bills. And then there are bills that crawl out of the Capitol smelling like moral decay wrapped in legislative arrogance. This one is the latter. Under the gleaming gold dome of the Colorado State Capitol, Democrats in the Colorado General Assembly have decided that commercial sex is now so enlightened, so elevated, so philosophically superior that no city, no county, no community in the entire state of Colorado may forbid it. SB26-097 not only decriminalizes consensual...
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When policy hits home: The people paying the price for Colorado planning
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When policy hits home: The people paying the price for Colorado planning

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com What all these laws, rules, “roadmaps,” and captured processes are doing to the people who actually live here. We’ve spent four chapters documenting the system: Part 1: How Colorado got quietly rewired. Part 2: The rule that choked our roads. Part 3: The advocacy-industrial complex behind it. Part 4: How “public comment” became a choreographed performance. Today, we end where this story always should have begun. Not in the Capitol.Not in a CDOT Zoom room.Not in Boulder conference halls.Not in 200-page policy PDFs. But in the real lives of the people who live with the consequences. Because none of this – none of it – is theoretical. These aren’t abstract “policy disagreements.”These are i...
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Inside the structure of Colorado’s Democrat-advocacy complex
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Inside the structure of Colorado’s Democrat-advocacy complex

By Scott K. James | Commentary, Scott’s Sheet How a Small Circle of Nonprofits, Appointees & Climate Advocates Took the Reins Friday, we broke down the rule that choked our highways. Today, we lift the curtain on the people and organizations pulling the levers. This isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s process. It’s not “secret cabal.” It’s perfectly public what they do — just rarely examined. 1. Meet the Architects Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) – Executive Director Elise S. Jones. Based in Boulder. Works in six-state region promoting decarbonization, clean transportation, smart land use. (SWEEP) Colorado Energy Office (CEO) – Executive Director Will Toor. Oversees state’s energy & transportation-electrification ag...
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The highway rule few Coloradans know is steering road projects
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The highway rule few Coloradans know is steering road projects

By Scott James | Commentary, Scott K. James Colorado’s GHG rule quietly reshaped every major highway decision, forcing climate math over real-world mobility. Part 2 exposes how it happened Yesterday, in Part 1, we traced how Colorado got quietly rewired: from voters rejecting Prop 112… to SB19-181 passing anyway… to statewide GHG targets… to “roadmaps” that turned climate goals into marching orders… to SB21-260, welding transportation funding to climate policy. Today isn’t about another bill. Today is about one rule – written in the middle of COVID, on glitchy Zoom calls and muted microphones – that quietly changed how every major transportation decision in Colorado gets made: The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Transportation Planning St...
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How climate policy became the steering wheel of Colorado government
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ScottKJames.com, Approved, Commentary, State

How climate policy became the steering wheel of Colorado government

By Scott James | Commentary, Scott K. James In part 1 of my five-part series, I reveal how climate mandates quietly reshaped Colorado’s laws, roads, and local control – without a vote from the people. Yesterday, I told you the truth about where I am – not as an elected official, not as a partisan, not as a policy wonk, but as a human being who loves this state enough to lose sleep over it. If you missed it, you can read that emotional prologue here. That was the heart.Today begins the head. Today marks the first installment of the five-part series I promised – not ranting, not rumor, not political theater, but the receipts. The real sequence of events, the policies, the bills, the rules, the decisions, and the machinery that fundamentally reshap...
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Drawing Nearer to God, Part 3: The Bible, daily bread, not a buffet line
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Drawing Nearer to God, Part 3: The Bible, daily bread, not a buffet line

By Scott K. James | Commentary, ScottKJames.com Bible reading isn’t a buffet. God gives us daily bread – just enough light for the next step. Even one verse can draw us closer to Him. This is Part Three of my seven-part Drawing Nearer to God series. I heard my pastor talk about “drawing nearer to God,” and I found myself wondering - how do I actually do that? So I did what I always do: I started digging, Googling, and writing. Now I’m sharing what I’ve discovered along the way. Here’s my confession: when it comes to reading the Bible, I’ve always felt like I’m supposed to eat a buffet but end up grabbing a granola bar. You know the feeling. Somebody at church brags about finishing the Bible in a year. Another friend quotes entire Psalms like he’s got the thing tattooed on his brai...
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