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Colorado Officials Block GOP Pick for House Seat Over Vacancy Rule Dispute
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Colorado Officials Block GOP Pick for House Seat Over Vacancy Rule Dispute

By Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office told the GOP vacancy committee in House District 14 that its members did not get 10 days of notice ahead of making their appointment as is required by state law. State elections officials Monday rejected a Republican vacancy committee’s pick for a seat in the Colorado legislature, finding that the panel didn’t follow state law in making the selection.  The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office told the GOP vacancy committee in House District 14 that its members did not get 10 days of notice ahead the gathering to make their appointment as is required by state law. The committee was picking a replacement for former House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese. She resigned Sept. 15. The vacancy vote was he...
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Colorado certifies light ballot: Two statewide measures on TABOR refunds and high-earner deductions
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado certifies light ballot: Two statewide measures on TABOR refunds and high-earner deductions

By Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado DENVER — Colorado voters will be getting a break from a long list of statewide questions this November, after Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced she had certified the 2025 ballot with only two measures going in front of all voters in the state. Voters will however still have their fair share of things to vote on closer to home as many city council and school board seats are up for grabs, as well as new local tax asks and extensions of existing taxes around the state. This year is an odd year election, meaning ballot measures are, for the most part, limited under state law to fiscal issues related to the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). The two measures that will appear were both referred by the legislature this S...
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Hundreds lose jobs after global pharmaceutical company closes two Colorado facilities
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Fox31, Approved, State

Hundreds lose jobs after global pharmaceutical company closes two Colorado facilities

By Heather Willard | FOX31 Denver DENVER (KDVR) — A global contract development and manufacturing organization with headquarters in Seattle has announced the closure of its Boulder and Longmont locations, resulting in hundreds of laid-off workers in Colorado. AGC Biologics filed a WARN Notice with the state of Colorado on Sept. 16 about the closure of its Boulder and Longmont facilities, as well as the impact on employees who support those facilities from afar. On its website, the company says that it provides pharmaceutical development and manufacturing services for protein-based biologics, cell and gene therapies and messenger RNA. It boasts eight locations across the world, including in Japan, Denmark, Italy and Germany, but will drop to six after the two Colorado loc...
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Summer school session: Lawmakers flunk budget basics—less tax revenue and more deficits to come
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denvergazette.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Summer school session: Lawmakers flunk budget basics—less tax revenue and more deficits to come

By Gazette editorial board | Commentary, Denver Gazette Like slacker students who flunked a course and had to make it up in summer school, Colorado state lawmakers who were summoned back to the Capitol last month — to patch a gaping hole in the current state budget — knew they had gathered under a stigma. Convened by Gov. Jared Polis, they sullenly filed into the building with their heads down. It was nothing to be proud of. And when they had wrapped up the session days later, there was little to celebrate. They knew they were doing makeup work, atoning for their behavior during the regular session — and the session before that, and the one before that. And while they tried to blame Colorado’s fiscal straits on some of the other kids in class — the president and the Republican Con...
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Beyond the Rhetoric: Choosing Reason Over Ideology in Colorado’s School Elections
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Beyond the Rhetoric: Choosing Reason Over Ideology in Colorado’s School Elections

By Laureen Boll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice If you’re reading this article with ease, consider yourself lucky. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 28% of adults in the US have low literacy skills, struggling with tasks like understanding complex texts or making inferences. Sadly, that’s a more favorable statistic than what we see in Colorado’s youth. Per the latest Colorado Department of Education statistics, 42% of 11th grade students have low literacy skills.  Our public education system is failing too many kids. School board elections in Colorado are happening November 4th, which begs the question: should we continue to fight for public education and its mission to prepare students for active citizenship, economic self-sufficiency, and pers...
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Colorado veterans gain support as $21M in federal grants awarded
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Fox31, Approved, State

Colorado veterans gain support as $21M in federal grants awarded

By: Parker Gordon | FOX31 Denver DENVER (KDVR) —  The Department of Veterans Affairs announced over $21 million in grants will be awarded to two Colorado organizations to help veterans in the state “who are homeless or at-risk of becoming homeless.” The department said Thursday that the recipients of the grants are Rocky Mountain Human Services, awarded over $9 million, and the Volunteers of America Colorado Branch, awarded over $11 million. According to the VA, the grants will fund the two organizations throughout the 2026 fiscal year as they provide supportive services to veterans, including housing and housing counseling, health care, financial planning services, childcare and transportation. “Supportive services like childcare, housing counseling and financia...
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Ballot initiative filed to give priority to roads over transit funding in Colorado
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Fox31, Approved, State

Ballot initiative filed to give priority to roads over transit funding in Colorado

By: Gabrielle Franklin | FOX31 Denver DENVER (KDVR) — The 2026 midterm elections are still over a year away, but people are already preparing for them. Several ballot Initiatives have been filed in hopes of bringing them to voters next year. Some big business groups in the state say it’s high time for Colorado to do something about its raggedy roads. They are looking into a proposal that would dedicate more money to solving the problem. “We did support Senate Bill 260 back in 2021 because it was the best deal available; that we could get some money into our highway system. We would be in worse shape today had we not passed Senate Bill 260 back in 2021, but looking over the last three of four years, it has not been enough,” said Tony Milo, CEO of the Colorado Contractors ...
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Front Range Water Providers Clash Over Shoshone Rights
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Front Range Water Providers Clash Over Shoshone Rights

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics A million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River — and the efforts by Western Slope water partners to keep it there — became the subject of a recent two-day hearing that could decide just who gets water and how much. One of the major points of tension is the objection by several water providers — not to the deal, per se, between a subsidiary of Xcel Energy and the Colorado River Water Conservation District and its 32 partners — to keep the water in the river that flows through the Public Service Company of Colorado’s Shoshone hydropower plant six miles east of Glenwood Springs in the Colorado River. Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo), the Xcel subsidiary, would still retain lease rights for that water, according to the deal. Rat...
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Do your rights end at my property—or has Colorado left public access unclear?
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GregWalcher.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Do your rights end at my property—or has Colorado left public access unclear?

By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com John B. Finch, a 19th Century prohibition activist, originated the expression, “your right to swing your arm ends just where my nose begins.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes often used similar analogies to argue that personal freedoms do not extend to injuring the safety or property of others. Yet he also upheld limitations on property rights when their exercise would harm the community. That legal dichotomy is at the heart of a long-simmering Colorado dispute, whether one has the right to float on streams that cross private property. It is the subject of “Public Resources on Private Property: Why the right to float is complicated and how Colorado addresses it,” a new report from the Common Sense Institute, which I co-authored with one of m...
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House Minority Leader Caldwell rebukes Democrats’ online comments about Charlie Kirk, urges post deletion
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

House Minority Leader Caldwell rebukes Democrats’ online comments about Charlie Kirk, urges post deletion

By Marissa Ventrelli | Colorado Politics The new Republican leader of the Colorado House sharply criticized Democrats over recent comments about conversative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this month during an event at a university in Utah. In a letter to the House speaker and the majority leader, Jarvis Caldwell, R-Colorado Springs, asked that the chamber reaffirm its commitment to “non-violent civil discourse” and condemn “demeaning characterization of private citizens, especially following a tragic death.” Caldwell also asked House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran to direct certain Democrats to remove their posts on social media and notify a state employee’s supervisors to determine whether the person’s conduct is allowed under the s...
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