Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

State

Colorado Democrats Push Prison Release Measures As Capacity Pressures Mount
No Comments
CBS Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Democrats Push Prison Release Measures As Capacity Pressures Mount

By Shaun Boyd | CBS Colorado Three months after the legislative Joint Budget Committee approved emergency funding for nearly 1,000 more beds in Colorado's prisons, the system is already near capacity again. Gov. Jared Polis asked the committee for up to $200 million to reopen a private prison. It set aside about $6 million to partially reopen the facility but, it will cost another $40 million a year to operate it. That's a non-starter for many Democrats who have introduced bills aimed at lowering the prison population instead. State analysis shows that while admissions have been constant, releases are down. State Rep. Jennifer Bacon says the Parole Board has released only 29 inmates this year out of nearly 240 who are past their parole e...
Read More
Colorado Bill Could Lock Xcel Customers Into Decades Of Power Plant Costs
No Comments
The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado Bill Could Lock Xcel Customers Into Decades Of Power Plant Costs

By Scott Weiser | The Denver Gazette State regulators would gain expanded power to order Xcel Energy to finance major costs for its chronically troubled Comanche 3 coal plant through bonds backed by a decades-long charge on every customer’s monthly electric bill. House Bill 26-1326, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission sunset bill that cleared its first committee on April 23, would let the PUC direct investor-owned utilities to use securitization under 2019’s Colorado Energy Impact Bond Act. The measure continues the PUC through 2037 while expanding its authority beyond voluntary utility applications. Securitization allows a utility to issue bonds backed by a decades-long charge on ratepayer bills. The charge stays on every bill, with periodic adjustments, only unt...
Read More
Colorado Supreme Court Limits Reach Of Insurance Consumer Protections
No Comments
The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado Supreme Court Limits Reach Of Insurance Consumer Protections

By Michael Karlik | The Denver Gazette The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the legislature’s consumer protections requiring insurance companies to take certain steps before they allege a policyholder failed to cooperate do not apply to any obligation specifically laid out in the policy. In 2020, the legislature changed state law to limit insurance companies’ ability to assert a failure-to-cooperate defense when they are sued for withholding benefits. Among other things, an insurer must give a policyholder time to address any specifically identified failures to cooperate in the claim investigation. Plaintiff Anthony Wenzell and the groups supporting him argued the law captures an insurer’s allegation of noncooperation across the board, including ob...
Read More
If the state can take property without a conviction, no property is safe
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

If the state can take property without a conviction, no property is safe

By Rep. Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Civil asset forfeiture began as a narrow exception in colonial maritime law, not as a general tool of domestic policing. In those early admiralty cases, the government often had jurisdiction over the ship or cargo, but not over the owner. The vessel might be in port, but the owner could be overseas, unknown, or beyond the reach of the court. In that circumstance, proceeding against the property itself—an action in rem—was often the only practical way to enforce customs law.  Justice Neil Gorsuch recently highlighted this history in his concurrence in Culley v. Marshall and asked the obvious question: if the government today has full jurisdiction over the person—if it can arrest, charge, and prosecute them directly—...
Read More
Trump’s DOJ joins xAI suit against Colorado AI law as Weiser agrees to halt enforcement
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Trump’s DOJ joins xAI suit against Colorado AI law as Weiser agrees to halt enforcement

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The Colorado attorney general agreed last week to stop enforcing the state's landmark artificial intelligence law. Not because a court told him to. Because he agreed to it himself. That voluntary freeze, formalized in a joint filing with plaintiff xAI LLC, came the same afternoon the U.S. Department of Justice moved to join the lawsuit challenging SB24-205 — Colorado's AI consumer protection law set to take effect June 30.  Chief Judge Daniel D. Domenico granted both the intervention and the standstill within hours. The scheduling conference set for June 16 is gone. Case deadlines are suspended. The courtroom is waiting on a legislature that has 16 days left in its session and a replacement bill that still hasn't ...
Read More
Counties forced to pay: State landfill mandates come without funding
No Comments
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Counties forced to pay: State landfill mandates come without funding

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Funded mandates on county landfills? One of the consistent complaints coming out of municipal and local governments is the sheer number of unfunded mandates our state government puts on them. For some context on that, I link to an Advance Colorado report on them first below. Not all mandates come from the state legislature either. Sometimes they come from one of the copious unelected boards running more of the state than they should. A recent decision by the unelected Air Quality Control Council imposed significant costs on smaller, municipal landfills regarding methane controls. As usual, this mandate did not come with any dollars to help fund it. My state senator, B Pelton, has put forward a bi...
Read More
Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid
No Comments
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun Tri-State still doesn’t want to burn fuel at the northwestern Colorado plant, but is under emergency federal orders. A reluctant Tri-State Generation and Transmission is now burning coal and sending electricity out onto the grid from its Craig Unit 1, after the Western power grid authority said potential for outages at other plants meant the northwestern Colorado power is needed to balance regional resources.  Tri-State had long planned to shutter Craig 1 for good at the end of 2025, but federal emergency orders from the Trump administration required the co-op to instead to keep the generating unit in good repair and available to operate. Craig 1 had been available but idle in the first months of 2026, while Tri-State, the Col...
Read More
Concerns Mount Over Transparency And Authority In State Capitol
No Comments
The Denver Gazette, Approved, Commentary, State

Concerns Mount Over Transparency And Authority In State Capitol

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, The Denver Gazette The great 19th-century historian Lord Acton said it best: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Acton was building on the teachings of his mentor, Homer Simpson, who put it more plainly: “The more power you have, the more you can mess things up. Woo-hoo!” And many in Colorado’s political elite have studied under the original oracle of power, Eric Cartman: “Respect my authoritah!” If there were a motto for the progressive machine that now rules Colorado, it would be simple: “Because we f***ing can, that’s why.” Ethics don’t matter. Consistency doesn’t matter. Respecting the will of the people, or even the institution of democracy itself, doesn’t matter. Raw political power to im...
Read More
Colorado Primary Battles Intensify As Voters Face Crowded 2026 Ballots
No Comments
Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Primary Battles Intensify As Voters Face Crowded 2026 Ballots

By Ernest Luning | Colorado Politics With just over two months to go until ballots are counted in Colorado’s primary, candidates are squaring off in high-stakes contests for their party’s nominations in statewide and congressional races approaching the midterm election. For the first time in memory, state voters will have the chance to elect an entire new slate of state-level executive officials — from governor and attorney general to secretary of state and state treasurer — since those offices’ Democratic incumbents all face term limits. At the same time, Democrats will decide which candidate to nominate in the state’s marquee U.S. House race, where the Republican incumbent in the 8th Congressional District is facing three potential challengers in what’s expected to b...
Read More
Polis Orders Review After State Agency Misses Red Flags In Hiring Process
No Comments
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Polis Orders Review After State Agency Misses Red Flags In Hiring Process

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun The former regional executive director of CASA of Adams and Broomfield counties was hired by the state Behavioral Health Administration in November. The state Behavioral Health Administration, which lost its first two commissioners amid allegations of mismanagement, hired a deputy commissioner without checking with the nonprofit where she had worked for 12 years or learning she was under investigation for stealing $99,000 in a tuition-reimbursement scheme, The Colorado Sun has learned. Lindsay Salas, who was hired in November as a deputy behavioral health commissioner at the 4-year-old state agency, worked there until Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office revealed this week that Salas doctored tuition reimbursement records to take...
Read More

FD863768-0ACF-495E-9D21-2EF784DFFA6B[1]

Join us at RMV's Freedom Festival

Click Here for Tickets!

This will close in 0 seconds