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Sengenberger: Weiser’s CU intervention reveals his true priorities
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denvergazette.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Sengenberger: Weiser’s CU intervention reveals his true priorities

By Jimmy Sengenberger | Commentary, Denver Gazette On Sunday, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser picked a fight he shouldn’t have. In a thread on X, Weiser — a Democrat running for governor — defended CU Regent Wanda James by blasting her colleagues for recently censuring and sanctioning her in a bipartisan vote. The board had censured James, who is a pot shop proprietor, after she tried to discredit and defund the university’s award-winning “Tea on THC” awareness campaign. It educates the public on the risks of marijuana use for kids, including during pregnancy. James, a Democrat who boasts of being the nation’s first Black owner of a legal retail marijuana business, had demanded earlier this year that the campaign’s website be “taken down immediately” over “racist” illustr...
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Gaines: Bureaucrats are making the rules—and you’re paying for it
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Bureaucrats are making the rules—and you’re paying for it

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Rulemaking in Colorado.** Rulemaking is the process by which our legislature delegates the task of regulating specific actions and behaviors. In a rough sense it works like this. Say the legislature wants to make a law so that building owners don't scrimp on elevator expenses to the detriment of public safety. The legislature, rather than directly telling landlords what to do, will task an executive agency with a general set of constraints, telling the agency to come up with rules and regulations that "protect the public safety" or other such phrases. The executive agency then sets the actual policy: what does safety look like for elevators, how is it checked? If this strikes you as not being too far from having u...
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CPW Confirms More Wolf Packs While Keeping Ranchers in the Dark
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State, Approved, The Colorado Sun

CPW Confirms More Wolf Packs While Keeping Ranchers in the Dark

By Scott Franz | The Colorado Sun Colorado’s wolf population grew this spring with the formation of three new packs. The state designated the new wolf families as the One Ear Pack in Jackson County, the King Mountain Pack in Routt County and the Three Creeks Pack in Rio Blanco County. They join the Copper Creek pack, which formed in Grand County last year and was moved to Pitkin County in January. The new pack designations were mentioned in a “wolf update” slideshow presentation, which was included in the online agenda for an upcoming Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting on Thursday. CPW has not announced how many pups have been confirmed in each of the new packs. Last year, the agency did not name the Copper Creek pack until pups were confirmed. Earlier this year, CPW s...
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Colorado Sues Trump Admin Over Withheld Funds Due to “Failure to Deliver”
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State, Approved, The Colorado Sun

Colorado Sues Trump Admin Over Withheld Funds Due to “Failure to Deliver”

By Erica Breunlin | The Colorado Sun Colorado has joined 23 other states and Washington, D.C., in suing the Trump administration over its decision to freeze $6.8 billion in grant funding that helps school districts across the country operate after-school programs, train teachers, and boost resources and support for kids with significant learning needs. That money includes an estimated $80 million that would have flowed to Colorado school districts, which now face uncertainty about the level of staffing and programs they will be able to offer this next school year — about a month away for many districts. Colorado is one of four states leading the lawsuit, according to Attorney General Phil Weiser. They filed the lawsuit Monday, naming the U.S. Department of Education, Education Sec...
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Colorado’s Housing Crisis: Not Enough Homes Fuels Third-Highest Rent in America
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State, Approved, denvergazette.com

Colorado’s Housing Crisis: Not Enough Homes Fuels Third-Highest Rent in America

By Marissa Ventrelli | The Denver Gazette Colorado had the third highest rent and fifth highest home prices in 2023, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis from a zoning group. Compiled by a group called National Zoning Atlas, the analysis examined zoning codes in all 334 of Colorado's jurisdictions to assess how zoning affects housing affordability in the state. Of those 334 jurisdictions, 275 have zoning codes — but not all are openly available to the public, the analysis said. "Affordable" housing has been a top priority of Gov. Jared Polis since he was first elected in 2019, a goal shared by policymakers, though they often sharpy differ how to achieve that aim. Some push for greater density as a solution to many of the state's urban problems. In Denver, that reason...
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The COvid Chronicles June 16-23, 2020: Social justice got a platform—police got massive reform
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

The COvid Chronicles June 16-23, 2020: Social justice got a platform—police got massive reform

By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board In this ninth chapter of The COvid Chronicles, summer arrived—but sanity didn’t. Looking back at our COVID-19 history is painful. But as Spanish-American philosopher put it, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Approaching the summer solstice, Colorado entered a new phase—shaped not just by COVID-19, but by weeks of racial unrest.  Early tremors signaled what was coming. Inflation began to stir.  Ever-libertarian Gov. Jared Polis sermonized about how Coloradans needed the right “responsibility, behavior and will” to earn their freedoms back. CU Boulder, shrine of elite enlightenment, spoke solemnly of COVID safety out of one side of its mouth and pledged allegiance to the state’s racial reckoning out ...
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17 Colorado sheriffs to Polis: Fix inmate transfer crisis straining local jails
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denvergazette.com, Approved, State

17 Colorado sheriffs to Polis: Fix inmate transfer crisis straining local jails

By Marissa Ventrelli | Denver Gazette A coalition of 17 county sheriffs urged Gov. Jared Polis to resolve the Department of Corrections' backlog in inmate transfers and increase what the local officials described as the state's inadequate reimbursement rate for housing inmates in county jails. Current conditions are unsustainable according the group. In a letter signed by the sheriffs of El Paso, Douglas, Pueblo, and other counties, the group warned that prolonged delays in transferring of DOC-sentenced inmates from county jails into state custody, combined with what they called an "outdated and underfunded" per diem reimbursement rate, is creating a fiscal and public safety crisis.  "County jails were never designed — or funded — to house state inmates for extended periods,”...
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Feds unfreeze $4M for Upper Colorado River Basin watershed restoration
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Feds unfreeze $4M for Upper Colorado River Basin watershed restoration

By Jerd Smith | Colorado Sun The cash will allow work in fire-damaged watersheds and the Kawuneeche Valley in Rocky Mountain National Park to continue Millions of dollars in federal funding have been released to continue restoring lands and streams in the fire-scarred Upper Colorado River Basin watershed in and around Grand Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. The roughly $4 million was frozen in February and was released in April, according to Northern Water, a major Colorado water provider and one of the agencies that coordinate with the federal government and agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service to conduct the work.  Esther Vincent, Northern Water’s director of environmental services, said the federal government gave no reason for the  freeze and release of funds....
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Gazette editorial board: Why taxing servers and medics is political malpractice
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denvergazette.com, Approved, Commentary, State

Gazette editorial board: Why taxing servers and medics is political malpractice

The Gazette editorial board | Commentary, Denver Gazette You’d think our state’s ruling Democrats would be doing their level best to win back the working class in advance of next year’s national midterm election. It will be a referendum, after all, on the Trump presidency and congressional Republicans — who won power last year with the support of workers long deemed the sole domain of the Democratic Party. Yet, Colorado’s Legislature and Gov. Jared Polis decided to gut-punch Colorado workers, instead — by essentially taxing their hard-earned overtime wages. That provision was buried in an obscure, wide-ranging bill innocuously titled, “Tax Expenditure Adjustment,” which lawmakers passed this spring. Polis signed it into law in May. The state’s overtime tax is intended to offset fe...
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Gaines: Watch the framing—Karlik’s slant and Polis’ quiet appointments
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Watch the framing—Karlik’s slant and Polis’ quiet appointments

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado Politics' Karlik lets his bias slip (again). Colorado Politics judicial reporter Michael Karlik is back at it (see the first link below for an earlier post about his reporting). If it's not using his pen to question the motives of a conservative judge, it's tossing softballs at a liberal judge rather than challenging him. It's framing his questions in such a way as to clearly indicate what the point of the whole endeavor has been. The Colorado Politics article linked second below is a Q and A Karlik had with retired judge John Leopold** to discuss Leopold's signing an amicus brief about the arrests of Minnesota Judge Hannah Dugan. She was the one who hustled someone ICE had a warrant for out the back door whe...
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