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Federal judge dismisses drug company’s suit challenging Colorado prescription affordability board
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Federal judge dismisses drug company’s suit challenging Colorado prescription affordability board

By John Ingold | The Colorado Sun A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit filed by the pharmaceutical company Amgen challenging the authority of a Colorado board that seeks to rein in high-priced prescription drugs. U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang ruled Friday that Amgen had not shown it has or likely will suffer harm from the board’s actions. As a result, she granted the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but she did so “without prejudice” — meaning Amgen could sue again if it can later show harm. “The economic injuries alleged by Amgen are too speculative and too attenuated to support standing in this case,” Wang wrote in her order. The case involved a relatively obscure body known as the Colorado Prescription Drug Affordability Board, or PDAB, which has the authority...
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Lawmakers propose risky PERA maneuver for voter-approved police funding amid budget shortfall
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Lawmakers propose risky PERA maneuver for voter-approved police funding amid budget shortfall

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Something’s missing from the Colorado state budget proposal — and it’s a biggie. The Joint Budget Committee last week finalized its budget package without deciding what to do about Proposition 130: the voter-approved requirement that the state spend $350 million to support law enforcement. But the six-member panel does have the makings of a plan. The JBC was briefed last week on a draft bill to dole out the $350 million in regular installments over the next 10 years. If only it were that simple. READ FULL ARTICLE ON THE COLORADO SUN
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Rural Colorado school districts that once served students online could see brunt of major state budget cuts
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Rural Colorado school districts that once served students online could see brunt of major state budget cuts

By Erica Breunlin | The Colorado Sun As Colorado lawmakers try to solve a state budget crisis, Gov. Jared Polis’ office is advocating for a new set of changes to student averaging that would significantly impact a handful of rural school districts and charter schools that found a lifeline for their budgets by enrolling online homeschool students. Vilas School District RE-5, in far southeastern Colorado, along with Plainview School District Re-2, about 100 miles to the north, and three Colorado Early Colleges campuses in recent years ran online enrichment programs for homeschool students with help from an outside vendor. Those programs — which the districts and charter schools no longer operate — emerged during the pandemic, when the Colorado Department of Education relaxed rules a...
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Did Boulder County ban firearms on hiking trails? 
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Approved, Local, The Colorado Sun

Did Boulder County ban firearms on hiking trails? 

By Por Jaijongkit | The Colorado Sun Firearms and projectile weapons including paintball guns and slingshots are prohibited in all parks and open space in unincorporated Boulder County.  Open and concealed carry of firearms are also prohibited in other “sensitive” public areas including hospitals, county government buildings, child care centers and polling places. The ordinance says the presence of firearms in those locations poses unreasonable risks of gun violence.  A person can generally be charged only if these locations post signs regarding the prohibition. A conviction is punishable by up to 364 days in jail. Boulder County also prohibits the sale of firearms to people younger than 21 and has a 10-day waiting period for gun sales. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COL...
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Colorado lawmakers delay budget introduction as they agonize over final cuts
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado lawmakers delay budget introduction as they agonize over final cuts

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Over and over last week, Colorado budget writers kept getting mired in the same debates. Is a $21 million program that allows recent high school graduates to enroll in free college-level classes worth the cost? Can the state afford to continue paying bonuses to nurses at its understaffed mental health facilities? What about in jails, where the state has a long backlog of inmates awaiting mental health evaluations in order to stand trial? Should the state keep providing free lunches to school kids, whether or not their parents are truly in financial need? What if doing so means less money for their classroom teachers — over 1,000 of whom were just across the street Thursday to protest proposed cuts to public education? Acr...
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Meet the dogs of the Colorado Capitol. Like, literal dogs.
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Meet the dogs of the Colorado Capitol. Like, literal dogs.

ByJesse Paul, Andrea Kramar and Carly Rose | The Colorado Sun The state Capitol often feels like a dog-eat-dog pressure cooker. But it can also be a dog-meet-dog paradise. In true Colorado fashion, some lawmakers and even Gov. Jared Polis frequently bring their dogs to work at the seat of power in Denver. While the state Capitol isn’t officially a pet-friendly workplace, there’s an unspoken allowance for the dogs belonging to lawmakers and staff — so long as the four-legged friends don’t disrupt daily proceedings and keep to private offices. The pups provide much-needed relief in times of tension in the legislature. Despite their occasional potty accidents and nipping, they’ve also inspired several bills. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Senate Democrats — including Colorado’s John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet — refuse to go along with GOP spending plan
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State, The Colorado Sun, Top Stories

Senate Democrats — including Colorado’s John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet — refuse to go along with GOP spending plan

By Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press via The Colorado Sun WASHINGTON — A day before a shutdown deadline, Senate Democrats are mounting a last-ditch protest over a Republican-led government funding bill that already passed the House but failed to slap any limits on President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to gut federal operations. Senate Democrats are under intense pressure to do whatever they can to stop the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is taking a wrecking ball to long-established government agencies by purging thousands of federal workers from jobs. U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, said Wednesday during a virtual town hall he would vote against the Republican bill and vote “no” on the Senate...
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“Education desert” bill would let charters open without school board approval in underperforming areas
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun, Top Stories

“Education desert” bill would let charters open without school board approval in underperforming areas

By Erica Breunlin | The Colorado Sun New charter schools authorized by the Colorado Charter School Institute would be allowed to open in communities with low-performing schools — possibly without approval from local school boards — under legislation that Colorado Senate President James Coleman is considering introducing at the Capitol this year. Coleman, a Denver Democrat, is also exploring the prospect of giving Colorado school districts “the option to solicit proposals from their communities for new quality schools,” including traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, innovation schools or “other innovative education models.” The key factor in opening new schools in areas with struggling schools, Coleman said, would be “demonstrated community demand from acros...
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Colorado lawmakers funded an office to handle complaints against judges. No one set it up.
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado lawmakers funded an office to handle complaints against judges. No one set it up.

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun In the wake of an alleged blackmail and harassment scandal that roiled the state judicial branch, the Colorado legislature in 2023 created an independent office to help ensure it didn’t happen again. But two years later, the ombudsman office still doesn’t exist — and it’s not clear why. The apparent oversight came to light this week when a legislative budget staffer — looking line by line for things to cut from the state’s operating budget to close a $1.2 billion shortfall — discovered an oddity: a $400,000 budget for an agency that had no employees, hadn’t made a budget request and didn’t appear to exist anywhere but on paper. “This independent agency does not exist,” Craig Harper, the legislative budget staff director told the Joint Budg...
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Universal preschool bill dies as some Colorado programs still complain of bumps
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Universal preschool bill dies as some Colorado programs still complain of bumps

By Ann Schimke | Chalkbeat Colorado via The Colorado Sun Colorado’s $344 million universal preschool program is popular among families, but some providers say they’re still wrestling with problems that make it hard for families to secure seats or for preschools to sustain themselves financially. Some preschool directors want greater access to the state’s preschool sign-up system. Others want to be paid by the state before kids step into their classrooms — not a month later. Some providers also want more leeway on preschool class sizes, which the state will cap at 20 by 2026 for most preschools. These are a few of the sticking points that remain a year and a half after the rocky launch of universal preschool. State lawmakers proposed a bill meant to address these and other issues, ...
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