Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

Tag: Unelected Boards

Open letter warns HB26-1065 expands unelected power and state control
No Comments
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Open letter warns HB26-1065 expands unelected power and state control

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project An open email to the sponsors of HB26-1065 and the House Finance Committee Members In keeping with earlier posts, I have been watching affordable housing legislation this session. One of the bills that came up in an earlier post is HB26-1065. I link to that bill first below. Mild in the impact, especially compared with efforts that take away local control and further reinforce the NGO/nonprofit/government complex, this bill is still concerning in what it sets up. My open letter to the committee is copied below the link. If it’s helpful to you in advocating on this issue, please feel free to use any part or the whole. Before I get to my email (and testimony if I can make the hearing) howe...
Read More
Who decides where power lines go in Colorado? Meet CETA, the unelected authority
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Who decides where power lines go in Colorado? Meet CETA, the unelected authority

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Worried about land use for energy infrastructure? Save some time to watch CETA. There has been a lot of attention paid to Xcel Energy and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) over where and how electric infrastructure will run in this state.See, for example, Polis encouraging his cronies at the PUC to take up the appeal over Xcel's Power Pathway through Elbert and El Paso in an October 2025 newsletter linked first below for an example.There is another unelected board in this state that does similar work with far less news coverage, however.The second link below is to a 2021 bill (SB21-072) that does a whole lot of things.Screenshot 1 (from the bill's fiscal note) shows you what this bill does with regard to...
Read More
Colorado’s Quiet Shift From Elections to Appointments
No Comments
Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s Quiet Shift From Elections to Appointments

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado Remember during COVID, when the people screaming the loudest for government-mandated jabs were the very same people chanting “my body, my choice” when it came to abortion — I mean, “women’s health care”? They’re also the folks who insist a 12-year-old is far too young to get a tattoo, but perfectly mature enough to make irreversible “gender-affirming” medical decisions. The technical term for this is cognitive dissonance. In Colorado, we just call it public policy. Fighting tyranny by ending elections Now, as the new year dawns and another legislative session lurches to life, prepare yourself for the mother of all contradictions: “I will fight Trump’s assault on democracy,” followed immediately by, “and on an...
Read More
Gaines: Colorado’s unelected boards hold the real power—and it’s hurting rural counties
No Comments
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State, Substack

Gaines: Colorado’s unelected boards hold the real power—and it’s hurting rural counties

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Regulatory Capture and Colorado's Unelected Boards I wrote a bit back (see the first link below) about how our state is increasingly turfing what ought to be legislative control to a series of unelected boards, how legislative laziness has effectively handed over control of our state to them.Rulemaking and regulation might make things more efficient, it might enable higher policy output with less time, but it is not without cost. It's one of those costs I want to cover today: policy by unelected board opens us up to control, not by the people, but by industry and (increasingly in Colorado) advocates.This is due to cronyism in board appointments and also what might loosely be termed a form of "regulatory capture" (if you wil...
Read More

FD863768-0ACF-495E-9D21-2EF784DFFA6B[1]

Join us at RMV's Freedom Festival

Click Here for Tickets!

This will close in 0 seconds