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Court rules Teller County sheriff cannot hold illegals in jail under county’s agreement with ICE
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Approved, Local, The Colorado Sun

Court rules Teller County sheriff cannot hold illegals in jail under county’s agreement with ICE

By Olivia Prentzel | The Colorado Sun A Colorado sheriff’s practice of holding undocumented immigrants in jail through an agreement with federal immigration authorities violates state law, the Colorado Court of Appeals found Wednesday, reversing a district judge’s ruling. The decision is the latest turn in a yearslong battle between Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell and the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued him on behalf of five taxpayers arguing that Colorado law forbids the sheriff’s office from detaining people accuse of state crimes who are otherwise eligible for release and then turning them over to ICE officers. The case will return to lower court, the ACLU said Wednesday.  Through the county’s agreement with federal immigration authorities, cal...
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Colorado health officials identify another human case of bird flu in the state
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado health officials identify another human case of bird flu in the state

By John Ingold | The Colorado Sun Colorado health officials on Wednesday announced that a dairy worker in northeastern Colorado contracted bird flu after having close contact with sick cattle. The worker, an adult man, had a mild eye infection. He has since recovered. The human case is the first to be identified in Colorado related to the ongoing outbreak of avian influenza among dairy cattle. The outbreak among Colorado’s dairy herds is now the worst in the nation, with 27 cases having been identified in dairy herds, all in northeastern Colorado. Nationwide, four dairy workers have now tested positive for bird flu after working closely with infected cattle. Eye infections were most common among those workers, possibly due to contact with infected milk during milking operations...
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Tri-State set to pay $70M in aid to Craig, Moffat County to offset closing power plant, coal mines
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Tri-State set to pay $70M in aid to Craig, Moffat County to offset closing power plant, coal mines

By Mark Jaffe | The Colorado Sun Moffat County and the city of Craig are in line for $70 million in aid from the utility shuttering the local power plant and the coal mines that supply it, under a settlement filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Tri-State, which provides wholesale power to 41 rural electric cooperatives in four states, also agreed to locate a new natural gas-fired unit in Moffat County and transfer a water storage right to the county. “This community assistance agreement is a win for our community now and into the future,” Moffat County Commissioner Melody Villard said in an email. The settlement, part of Tri-State’s Electric Resource Plan, must still be approved by the PUC. The electric resource plan lays out the utility’s proposal for deve...
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Colorado now has the worst outbreak of bird flu among dairy cattle in the country
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado now has the worst outbreak of bird flu among dairy cattle in the country

By John Ingold | The Colorado Sun Colorado’s outbreak of bird flu among dairy cattle is now the worst in the country, with more cases in the past month than any other state, according to the latest state and federal data. As of Monday evening, Colorado had identified 26 herds with cases of avian influenza. Of those, 22 were identified within the past month and the herds are still in quarantine. Four other cases were identified earlier and quarantines have since been lifted. All affected herds are in the northeastern part of the state. The rapid and still largely mysterious spread in Colorado — hardly a leading dairy state — contributes to growing concerns that U.S. health authorities are not doing enough to contain the virus. While the threat currently to humans is ge...
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A mysterious monolith appeared in rural Colorado. Do we really want to know where it came from?
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A mysterious monolith appeared in rural Colorado. Do we really want to know where it came from?

By Parker Yamasaki | The Colorado Sun On top of a hill prickly with dry grass and cacti is a four-sided structure that looks like the sky, the hills and the small crowd of people standing next to it, but it’s none of those things. It’s not a riddle, it’s a monolith. Perhaps the 247th spotted worldwide since 2020.  It appeared unexpectedly on Sunday in Bellvue, northwest of Fort Collins, on the expansive property of Rob and Lori Graves, who own Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, a Noosa Yoghurt factory, and the Howling Cow Cafe. A cafe manager spotted the structure in the distance as she arrived at work in the morning, but didn’t think anything of it until a customer came in and asked to be pointed toward “the alien structure.”  The Howling Cow has been part of...
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Kansas forced Colorado to stop irrigating 25,000 acres of farmland. Was it too soon to put them in the same room?
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Kansas forced Colorado to stop irrigating 25,000 acres of farmland. Was it too soon to put them in the same room?

By Tracy Ross | The Colorado Sun Agricultural producers, scientists and policymakers from Colorado and Kansas gathered near the Ogallala Aquifer in Burlington on Wednesday to air their concerns and share ideas for how to survive continued drought. But it was hard to escape the Republican River Basin-shaped elephant in the room.  The group convened at the behest of U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat who chairs the Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources subcommittee, and Roger Marshall, of Kansas, the ranking Republican member of the subcommittee.  The location was poignant because it’s in a region where farmers over recent years have had to shut down their wells and either switch to dryland farming or grazing or stop all agricultural activity...
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Colorado GOP endorsees lose in 14 of 18 primary races, many by big spreads
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado GOP endorsees lose in 14 of 18 primary races, many by big spreads

By Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun Fourteen of the 18 candidates endorsed by the Colorado GOP lost their primary elections Tuesday, most of them by double-digit margins. The results are adding to criticism of state party leadership, including chairman Dave Williams, who were already under fire for making the unorthodox decision to endorse in Republican primaries in the first place.  Williams was among the candidates endorsed by the party who lost their primaries Tuesday. He got walloped by conservative activist and commentator Jeff Crank in the 5th Congressional District.  State Rep. Richard Holtorf, an Akron Republican who lost Tuesday in the six-way GOP primary in the 4th District, said the losses are another sign that Williams needs to be re...
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Elisabeth Epps, Tim Hernández unseated as Democratic legislative primary results are a mixed bag for progressives 
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Elisabeth Epps, Tim Hernández unseated as Democratic legislative primary results are a mixed bag for progressives 

By Brian Eason, Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun Moderate Democrats allied with Gov. Jared Polis won a number of Colorado state legislative primaries Tuesday night, the culmination of a hotly contested election season that pitted progressives against moderates as the future of state policy hung in the balance. In one of the most closely watched races, attorney Sean Camacho defeated incumbent state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a progressive Democrat from Denver whose tumultuous term in office was frequently marked by public squabbles with her colleagues. The Associated Press called the race at 8:20 p.m., and Camacho led with 64% of the vote as of 10:23 p.m. Another Polis-backed candidate, state Rep. Lindsey Daugherty, a moderate Democrat from A...
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Republican Greg Lopez wins special election to serve out Ken Buck’s term in Congress
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Republican Greg Lopez wins special election to serve out Ken Buck’s term in Congress

The last time Lopez, an Air Force veteran and former Democrat, held elected office was in the 1990s, when he served as mayor of Parker By Jesse Paul and Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Republican Greg Lopez easily won the special election Tuesday in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, meaning he’ll serve out the term of former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, which ends in early January.  The Associated Press called the race at 7:34 p.m. when Lopez had 57% of the vote over Democrat Trisha Calvarese, a former speechwriter and congressional staffer.  “Neither of my parents had the opportunity to graduate from high school, and yet, this evening I was elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives,” Lopez said in a written statement. “I ...
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PERA’s investments bounce back in 2023, but the Colorado pension plan nets step backward
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

PERA’s investments bounce back in 2023, but the Colorado pension plan nets step backward

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Colorado’s public employee pension system generated strong investment returns in 2023 — but its finances still deteriorated for the second time in five years as it struggles to bounce back from a miserable 2022. The Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association’s investments grew by 13.4% in 2023, according to its annual financial report released Friday. That matches its 13.4% loss from a year earlier. But because the pension has to average 7.25% returns a year to meet its funding targets, the net result was a step backward for the chronically underfunded pension. PERA’s unfunded debt to members grew by $1.2 billion to $27.5 billion, the report shows. Its funding ratio — the amount of money it has in the bank relative to...
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