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Colorado Democrats launch second attempt to allow more accessory dwelling units to ease housing crisis
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado Democrats launch second attempt to allow more accessory dwelling units to ease housing crisis

By Brian Eason and Jesse Paul Single-family homeowners in the most populous parts of Colorado would be allowed to build accessory dwelling units on their properties under a bill introduced Tuesday in the legislature aiming to override local zoning rules in areas that currently prohibit them. House Bill 1152 is the first of several marquee bills that Democrats at the Capitol, in partnership with Gov. Jared Polis, are expected to introduce this year that would target city and county land use regulations in an effort to tackle Colorado’s affordable housing crisis.  A similar push last year ended in a political dumpster fire for the governor when he tried to pack an array of changes into one measure that ultimately failed after weeks of animosity between him and local leader...
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Colorado may become the 3rd state to drop its medical aid-in-dying residency requirement
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado may become the 3rd state to drop its medical aid-in-dying residency requirement

Senate Bill 68 would also shorten the mandatory waiting period for people seeking to end their lives to 48 hours from 15 days. Additionally, it would let advanced practice registered nurses prescribe aid-in-dying medication. By Jesse Paul | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Colorado may become the third state to allow out-of-state residents to receive medical aid in dying through a bill that would also shorten the mandatory waiting period for people seeking to end their lives. Senate Bill 68, which was introduced in the legislature on Jan. 22, would shrink the waiting period to 48 hours from 15 days and also let advanced practice registered nurses, in addition to doctors, prescribe aid-in-dying medication.  The bill comes eight years after Colorado voters overwhelmingly approv...
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Rose Pugliese elected new leader of Colorado House GOP caucus following Mike Lynch’s resignation
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Rose Pugliese elected new leader of Colorado House GOP caucus following Mike Lynch’s resignation

Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican, is in just her second year as a state representative, but she had been serving as assistant minority leader in the House By Jesse Paul | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Republicans in the Colorado House of Representatives on Thursday elected a first-term lawmaker from Colorado Springs to be their new leader, replacing Mike Lynch, who stepped down from his leadership role a day earlier following revelations about his 2022 arrest on suspicion of drunken driving.  Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican, is in just her second year as a state representative, but she had been serving as assistant minority leader in the House. She beat out state Reps. Matt Soper, R-Delta, and Ken DeGraaf, R-Colorado Springs, for the job in two rou...
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Top Republican in Colorado House steps down from leadership a week after news about his 2022 DUI arrest
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Top Republican in Colorado House steps down from leadership a week after news about his 2022 DUI arrest

House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, announced his decision in an emotional speech on the House floor as his ouster appeared imminent By Brian Eason and Jesse Paul | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN The top Republican in the Colorado House of Representatives resigned from his leadership post Wednesday morning as his ouster appeared imminent a week after revelations that he was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of drunken driving. House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, announced his decision in an emotional speech on the House floor.  “I am stepping down because it is the right thing to do — because I have become a distraction for my caucus and that is getting in the way of the hard work that we have to do in this building,” Lynch said.  Lynch...
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Colorado has the nation’s third-longest waitlist for people charged with crimes and ordered into psychiatric treatment
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado has the nation’s third-longest waitlist for people charged with crimes and ordered into psychiatric treatment

The number of state-run psychiatric beds for people who are civilly committed or ordered by the criminal justice system shrunk by 20% in seven years, according to a new report By Jennifer Brown | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Colorado has for years been short on in-patient psychiatric beds for people with severe mental illness, creating a backlog that means people wait months for care and sit in jail instead of a hospital. The last time the national Treatment Advocacy Center released a status report on the psychiatric bed shortage, Colorado placed 34th among states with 543 beds.  It’s only gotten worse in the past seven years, according to the center’s latest analysis, released Wednesday and based on 2023 data.  The number of psychiatric beds at Colorado...
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Governor removes Democrat from board that blocked Douglas County’s property tax cut, replaces him with Republican
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Governor removes Democrat from board that blocked Douglas County’s property tax cut, replaces him with Republican

Jared Polis took Bernie Buescher off the State Board of Equalization, giving Republicans a majority on the panel that reviews local property tax decisions By Jesse Paul | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Jared Polis removed a Democrat he appointed to a state board that reviews local property tax decisions after the panel in December unanimously rejected Douglas County’s attempt to offer a $28 million tax break to homeowners. The governor blasted the State Board of Equalization’s decision at the time, and then last week took former Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buescher off the panel and replaced him with Richard Sokol, an Englewood Republican, who sits on the board for South Metro Fire Rescue.  Polis’ swap not only sends another message about his dislike for the State Board o...
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Top Republican in Colorado House narrowly survives vote to remove him following revelation about his 2022 DUI arrest
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Top Republican in Colorado House narrowly survives vote to remove him following revelation about his 2022 DUI arrest

By Brian Eason and Jesse Paul | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Colorado House Minority Leader Mike Lynch on Monday narrowly survived a vote to remove him as the leader of the chamber’s 19-member Republican caucus after it was made public last week that he was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and possessing a gun while intoxicated. The vote of no confidence was split 9-9, with one lawmaker absent and Lynch voting to keep his post. In ties, the vote fails. During the tense caucus meeting in a Capitol committee room, Lynch rejected calls from some members of his caucus to resign his post. The Wellington lawmaker defended his tenure, saying the caucus has had more cohesion under his leadership than it had in the past. “If I believed that this event,...
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Colorado officials thought they had 3 more years to spend $1.5B in federal COVID aid. They have 11 months.
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado officials thought they had 3 more years to spend $1.5B in federal COVID aid. They have 11 months.

By Brian Eason | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Colorado state budget writers are in a race against the clock to spend $1.5 billion in leftover federal pandemic aid before the end of 2024 thanks to new guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department. The deadline is two full years sooner than state lawmakers and Polis administration officials had expected. That has set off a mad scramble to rewrite the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, to allow the state to spend federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars faster than lawmakers intended. The time crunch arose from shifting guidance from federal officials on how they define “obligated,” a term that doesn’t exist in state law. Federal law has long required ARPA recipients to “obligate” all of their funding by th...
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On a dead-end street in north Denver, migrants are surviving winter with the help of an army of volunteers
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Approved, Downtown Denver, Local, The Colorado Sun

On a dead-end street in north Denver, migrants are surviving winter with the help of an army of volunteers

By Jennifer Brown | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN Footprints in the snow lead from the sidewalk to a path through the weeds, opening to a field that is almost invisible from the road.  North of Interstate 70, in a part of Denver filled mostly with warehouses and gas stations, the tents are flapping relentlessly in the wind. About 10 migrants from South America hunkered down here during four days of subzero temperatures, and the volunteers who brought them heaters and propane, hot meals and fresh water, are prepared to help hundreds more as Denver pushes migrants out of their city-provided hotel rooms in the coming weeks.  The dozen or so brightly colored tents were mostly concealed from view by the field’s dirt mounds, despite that they were just across the South Platte River from...
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How Colorado voters are reacting to Lauren Boebert’s congressional district swap
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

How Colorado voters are reacting to Lauren Boebert’s congressional district swap

By Jesse Bedayn, The Associated Press/Report for America | SOURCE: THE COLORADO SUN LAST CHANCE — Fleeing a tough reelection bid in the district where she lives, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is moving from the mountains to the plains, in the hopes of finding conservative pastures green enough to salvage her place in Congress. To win, she’ll have to convince a new swath of voters that her brand of white-hot, far-right political activism — built on divisive one-liners and partisan ferocity in the U.S. House — is more needed in Washington than the home-grown Republicans she now faces in the primary. While Boebert’s new district voted for President Donald Trump by a nearly 20 percentage point margin in 2020, more than double the margin in her old district, and some Republic...
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