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In April, discounted internet will end for 250,000 low-income households if Congress doesn’t act
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Approved, National, The Colorado Sun

In April, discounted internet will end for 250,000 low-income households if Congress doesn’t act

The Affordable Connectivity Program will stop accepting newcomers Feb. 7. Advocates hope Congress will extend funding. By Tamara Chuang | Colorado Sun The federal subsidy to reduce internet bills for nearly 250,000 Colorado households is winding down and funding is set to run out by April. But the first deadline is Wednesday at 10 p.m. when local internet providers must stop accepting new customers. “We will take applications to the very end,” said Brieana Reed-Harmel, broadband manager at Loveland Pulse, the city’s municipal internet service. “They are still trickling in little by little every day.” Loveland Pulse currently has about 500 low-income customers enrolled in the federal Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, a $14.2 billion program that launched two years ago to ...
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Colorado lawmakers seek to boost condo development by reducing lawsuits over construction errors
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado lawmakers seek to boost condo development by reducing lawsuits over construction errors

Condos are seen as a key way to ease Colorado’s housing affordability crisis, but changing the state’s so-called construction defects laws has been a political third rail By Jesse Paul | Colorado Sun In a bid to spur condominium construction in Colorado, a group of state lawmakers introduced a bill Monday aimed at reducing lawsuits over construction errors by narrowing when they can be filed and by giving builders and homeowners an avenue to make repairs faster and without going to court.  Senate Bill 106, the so-called construction defects measure, is a major part of the affordable housing debate at the Colorado Capitol this year.  Proponents of easing Colorado’s construction defects laws, including Gov. Jared Polis, see the change as a way to persuade...
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Rep. Boebert earns temporary restraining order against her ex-husband, Jayson
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Rep. Boebert earns temporary restraining order against her ex-husband, Jayson

The order applies to the Republican congresswoman and the couple’s three minor children. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday to make the order permanent. By Sandra Fish | The Colorado Sun U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert asked for and received a temporary restraining order Friday against her ex-husband, Jayson Boebert. The order also covers three of the former couple’s four sons.  In requesting the order, the Republican congresswoman filled out a checklist alleging incidents ranging from name calling and harassing phone calls to “abusing children in household” between 2022 and Friday. The most recent incident alleged in the chart was Friday, when the congresswoman claimed there was an instance of “threat by damage to property.” Lauren Boebert indicated on the form that police w...
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Colorado is so behind on processing food assistance benefits that it’s under a federal corrective action plan
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado is so behind on processing food assistance benefits that it’s under a federal corrective action plan

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun Colorado is so slow at processing applications for food assistance that it ranks in the bottom five states and is now under a corrective action plan with the federal government. While some counties in the state are meeting federal requirements, others are far behind, which means Colorado’s average processing times for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are among the worst in the country.  Arapahoe, Denver and Weld counties are processing more than 90% of new applications within required timeframes, but El Paso and Jefferson counties, for example, are seeing success rates around only 50%, according to data obtained by The Colorado Sun.  When it comes to processing renewals on time, Pueblo and El Paso counties ar...
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Unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in Colorado’s GOP primaries this year, federal judge rules
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

Unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in Colorado’s GOP primaries this year, federal judge rules

By Sandra Fish | The Colorado Sun Unaffiliated voters – who make up the largest share of the Colorado's electorate – will still be allowed to participate in the state’s Republican primaries after a federal judge Friday rejected the Colorado GOP’s latest attempt to exclude them. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Philip A. Brimmer found the GOP failed to prove that Colorado’s law allowing unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in partisan primaries violates Republicans’ constitutional rights. He also wrote that the party “presented no evidence suggesting that Colorado’s semi-open primary system causes candidates to moderate or change their policy stances on specific issues.”  The decision may be appealed, though it’s not clear there’s enough time for an appeal to be settled before t...
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1,000 criminal cases may have relied on faulty DNA Testing at Colorado Crime Lab
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Approved, State, The Colorado Sun

1,000 criminal cases may have relied on faulty DNA Testing at Colorado Crime Lab

Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee in January approved a $7.5 million to deal with the fallout of an ongoing probe into a former CBI forensic scientist By Brian Eason | THE COLORADO SUN Colorado district attorneys worry that over 1,000 criminal convictions may have relied on dubious evidence due to “anomalies” discovered in DNA testing by a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist. The Joint Budget Committee last month approved a $7.5 million addition to this year’s state budget to deal with the immediate fallout. And the taxpayer costs are likely to grow, budget documents show. “That’s extremely concerning, and clearly quite a liability for the state,” said Rep. Emily Sirota, D-Denver, a JBC member. Department officials told the JBC the money would onl...
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While Boebert’s fundraising has slowed, she still holds big cash lead in new district
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Approved, National, The Colorado Sun

While Boebert’s fundraising has slowed, she still holds big cash lead in new district

By Sandra Fish | The Colorado Sun Lauren Boebert started the year with a large campaign cash advantage over her Republican primary opponents in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, even as the congresswoman’s fundraising slowed in the last three months of 2023, according to federal campaign finance reports filed Wednesday. Some of Boebert’s opponents in the 4th District, which includes the Eastern Plains and sweeps into Loveland and Douglas County, received financial help from big-name GOP donors, while others injected money into their own campaigns.  The reports, covering federal campaign fundraising and spending from Oct. 1 through the end of the year, are the first filed since U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Windsor Republican who represents the 4th District, announced in November...
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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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