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CoCo’s tax heads to the ballot as backers move to pull Initiative 175
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

CoCo’s tax heads to the ballot as backers move to pull Initiative 175

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice For months, two transportation questions were headed toward the same November ballot, pulling against each other. One would have locked specified vehicle and fuel revenue to roads. The other would raise a new tax to build a train. Within 24 hours, backers moved to pull one as the district referred the other. On Aug. 27, Restore Our Roads announced it would withdraw Initiative 175, the construction-industry measure that would have amended the state constitution to reserve specified vehicle and fuel taxes and fees for roads.  The next day, the Front Range Passenger Rail District board voted 14-1 at the Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo to send its own funding question to voters. It asks for a 0.333% sales...
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Colorado AG Candidate Michael Allen Calls for Full Audit After His Confidential Voter Data Was Accessed
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KOAA News, Approved, State

Colorado AG Candidate Michael Allen Calls for Full Audit After His Confidential Voter Data Was Accessed

By Alasyn Zimmerman | KOAA News Allen is running against Sec. of State Jena Griswold to become Colorado's next Attorney General this Nov. EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KOAA) — Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, who represents El Paso and Teller counties, claimed his information was among 59 confidential voters accessed after information was wrongly made public earlier this month. The Colorado Secretary of State's office announced last week, an update to the state's "Find My Voter Registration" site made 133,000 confidential voters information public, 59 of those were accessed by someone. The voter details include the following: full name birth year voter ID registration status party affiliation residential address Allen is r...
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Proposal to Make Colorado Ballot Measures Easier to Read Reaches November Ballot
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Proposal to Make Colorado Ballot Measures Easier to Read Reaches November Ballot

By Marissa Ventrelli | The Denver Gazette A ballot initiative that would require all ballot measures to be written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level has qualified for the November ballot, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. The measure, backed by the group Advance Colorado, would also prohibit any state law from interfering with the provision by mandating that certain language appear in ballot initiatives. Advance Colorado submitted 176,224 signatures, of which 141,305 were deemed valid, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. To qualify for the ballot, an initiative needs at least 124,238 valid signatures. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE DENVER GAZETTE
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Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit as Colorado School Districts Lack Standing in Transgender Sports Case
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Greeley Tribune, Approved, State

Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit as Colorado School Districts Lack Standing in Transgender Sports Case

By Ann Schimke | Greeley Tribune Federal judge rules districts don’t have standing to sue the state, in part because they aren’t facing clear harm. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by several Colorado school districts and charter schools over policies related to transgender student athletes. Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane ruled Wednesday that the districts and schools don’t have standing to sue the state, in part because they aren’t facing clear harm. The ruling is a win for the state and a loss for the conservative-leaning districts and schools that had challenged the state’s non-discrimination law, specifically its gender identity protections. Kane’s decision affirmed a January recommendation by a magistrate judge, a type...
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Riess: Give rural patients more choices, rural providers more flexibility
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Riess: Give rural patients more choices, rural providers more flexibility

By Naomi Riess | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Healthcare access in rural Colorado is not an abstract policy debate. It is about whether a family can find a primary-care provider, an expectant mother can receive care close to home, or a patient ends up in an emergency room because there was no timely alternative. In Southwest Colorado, we know the problem: too few providers, long waits, financial pressure on clinics and hospitals, and a system too often designed around the Front Range. In 2027, I would pursue a practical, bipartisan Rural Colorado Primary Care Access Act built around four principles: access, provider capacity, sustainability and flexibility. My proposal would build on ideas in HB26-1096, Colorado Medicaid Access to Primary Care Services, considered by th...
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Rural Hospitals Deploy AI to Fight AI as Claim Denials Add Financial Pressure
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Rural Hospitals Deploy AI to Fight AI as Claim Denials Add Financial Pressure

By Thelma Grimes | Colorado Politics Editor’s Note: Colorado’s healthcare system is entering a period of accelerating instability — a “tsunami,” as multiple leaders describe it — driven by collapsing hospital finances, shrinking Medicaid reimbursements, disappearing services and a political fight over who is responsible for this unraveling. Healthcare Freefall is a multipart series examining how Colorado arrived at this moment, what H.R. 1 will do next and why communities across the state are bracing for deeper shocks. Rural hospitals in Colorado say they are being pulled into a technological fight they didn’t choose. Hospitals said insurance companies have deployed artificial intelligence to deny claims faster and more efficiently, and they are scrambling to adopt the...
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Greg Lopez Puts People Over Parties in Unaffiliated Bid for Colorado Governor
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KJCT-TV ABC 8, Approved, State

Greg Lopez Puts People Over Parties in Unaffiliated Bid for Colorado Governor

By Brianna Chappie | KJCT The unaffiliated-party nominee spoke with KKCO prior to his campaign stop in Clifton for Saturday evening. GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KJCT) - In KJCT’s continuing coverage of Colorado’s gubernatorial race, reporter Brianna Chappie spoke with unaffiliated-party nominee candidate, Greg Lopez, ahead of his campaign visit on Saturday. Lopez is an air force veteran, and seasoned politician— having served as mayor for the town of Parker, a Colorado Director for the Small Business Administration (SBA) and recently as a House Representative for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. But now, instead of running as a Republican, Lopez is unaffiliated. “I didn’t leave the Republican party because all Republicans are bad or the Democrats are a...
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Colorado Schools Face New Reality as Student Enrollment Keeps Falling
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado Schools Face New Reality as Student Enrollment Keeps Falling

By Nicole C. Brambila | The Denver Gazette Colorado public schools went from adding roughly 3,500 students a year before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to losing nearly 4,000 students a year afterward. As more than 870,000 Colorado students return to the classroom for another school year, they are part of a shrinking population since enrollment peaked in 2019. Colorado has 40,000 fewer students today than it did at its apex. The Denver Gazette compared districts’ average annual enrollment gains or losses in the five years before and after the pandemic to identify where enrollment trends changed the most. The forces that long fueled Colorado’s enrollment boom — births and migration — have lost momentum. Nationally, enrollment peaked in 2019 with 50.7 millio...
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Gun rights and Phil Weiser: an answer that stops at Heller
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gun rights and Phil Weiser: an answer that stops at Heller

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Does current Attorney General (and candidate for governor) Phil Weiser know there’s been more gun control decisions past Heller? After reading about a curious statement AG Weiser made during the 8/27 gubernatorial debate. That debate in full is linked below. The remarks I reference relate to gun control and begin at about the 52:40 mark in the video when candidate Weiser was asked (quoting from the transcript): “Any laws the legislature has passed you disagree with, and does the state need to go further?” Candidate Weiser goes on to equivocate for some time before pausing and allowing one of the moderators to come back with a follow up, get an actual answer to the question. “And I’ll give you 30 seconds,...
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Another error from Griswold’s office exposes confidential voter records for 11 days
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Another error from Griswold’s office exposes confidential voter records for 11 days

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice For 11 days in August, the profiles of Colorado voters who had specifically asked the state to keep their information hidden were searchable by anyone who knew where to look and had the information the tool required. These are people the state allows to shield their records because they said public disclosure could expose them or a household member to criminal harassment or bodily harm.  On August 14, an update to the Secretary of State's "find my voter registration" tool removed the setting that kept their records out of public view. The office didn't notice until the late afternoon of August 25. Fifty-nine of those profiles were pulled up before anyone caught the mistake. What broke The change was suppo...
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