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Denver’s 7A: What you need to know about RTD’s request to keep all its sales tax revenue
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Local, The Colorado Sun

Denver’s 7A: What you need to know about RTD’s request to keep all its sales tax revenue

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun Metro Denver-area voters will decide Nov. 5 whether the Regional Transportation District can continue to keep all of its sales tax revenue in coming years, even when a strong economy pushes revenue up above caps set in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.  The so-called “de-Brucing,” named after TABOR author Douglas Bruce, is a common request from local taxing agencies.  In RTD’s case, a “yes” vote on 7A would not raise the current dedicated RTD sales tax, but would allow RTD to keep projected revenue about $50 million to $60 million a year above the TABOR cap instead of refunding that amount to millions of taxpayers.  READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Denver’s 16th Street Mall aims to finish construction by summer 2025
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Downtown Denver, The Colorado Sun

Denver’s 16th Street Mall aims to finish construction by summer 2025

By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun The stretch between Larimer and Arapahoe streets on Denver’s 16th Street Mall reopened Tuesday with great fanfare, including a MyDenver Day block party and a pep talk to prepare for the day when the whole mall can celebrate. “We will, by the time we are back here next summer, have opened the entire 16th Street Mall from Union Station to buses that will be running all the way up to the Sheraton,” said Mayor Mike Johnston, during the Downtown Denver Partnership annual meeting held outside the organization’s headquarters at 16th and Arapahoe streets. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN Prior construction on Denver's 16th Street Mall is shown. (Photo credit: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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Forest Service closes Colorado caves to limit spread of bat disease that has killed millions of animals
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State, The Colorado Sun

Forest Service closes Colorado caves to limit spread of bat disease that has killed millions of animals

By Jason Blevins | The Colorado Sun This spring, wildlife biologists found 32 bats on the Front Range with white-nose syndrome, up from one on the Eastern Plains in 2023. This month federal wildlife officials reported the first bat in Utah infected with the syndrome that has killed millions of bats across North America in recent years. “This is definitely a surge. Imagine Colorado is a big rock sitting on a beach and the waves coming in around it are this disease,” said Daniel Neubaum, the species conservation manager dealing with bats for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “That’s what we are seeing. We are probably going to see the disease trickle down from the north and I think the western parts of the state will be the last places we detect it in Colorado.” READ ...
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Albertsons brand would no longer exist in Colorado after merger with Kroger
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State, The Colorado Sun

Albertsons brand would no longer exist in Colorado after merger with Kroger

By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun As week two of the State of Colorado v. Kroger trial begins Tuesday (Monday is a state holiday), last week’s testimony gave onlookers a peek behind the corporate grocery curtain in Colorado. If the merger moves forward, Albertsons would no longer exist in Colorado, as it hands most of its local stores, which include mostly Safeways, to a little-known grocer and food distributor called C&S Wholesale Grocers in New Hampshire. Lawyers with the state Attorney General’s Office questioned whether the small company with a spotty history managing acquisitions can handle the $2.9 billion divestiture. But C&S, whose chairman also cofounded Symbotic, a warehouse robotics company, has big plans to invest in the stores, lower prices and grow overnight f...
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From Greeley to Pueblo, Front Range cities still need new water storage
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State, The Colorado Sun

From Greeley to Pueblo, Front Range cities still need new water storage

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun When a city must find its water 50 miles away and 1,400 feet underground, in an aquifer whose origins first had to be pegged to the late Cretaceous and the early Paleogene periods, and further delineated between Colorado turf on the surface or Wyoming land just a skosh to the north, while drilling two-way wells at $1 million each on the way to an eventual price tag approaching $400 million, and then filter out dissolved uranium, it would seem a stretch to call this plan the easy way out.   But for Greeley, bent on doubling its current population of 109,000 by 2060, this is indeed the simpler choice.  Greeley will store and retrieve its biggest future water supply at Terry Ranch, at the Wyoming border, because it’s the most conveni...
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Does Colorado’s public pension program invest in companies that boycott Israel?
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State, The Colorado Sun

Does Colorado’s public pension program invest in companies that boycott Israel?

By Justin George | The Colorado Sun Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association, or PERA, is barred from investing in companies that have economic prohibitions against Israel under a law passed in 2016. The law requires PERA to identify all companies that have economic prohibitions against Israel and put together a list of these companies twice a year. PERA must notify any company on the list that it could be subject to divestment if the company continues its anti-Israel policy. If the company hasn’t dropped its policy within 180 days of being notified, PERA is required to stop investing in it. This year, a Colorado house bill proposed to repeal the rule but it failed. The issue has come under greater scrutiny since Israel has been at war in Palestine since an Oct. 7, 2023...
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Jobs, programs are cut at two Colorado mental health centers amid Medicaid “unwind”
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State, The Colorado Sun

Jobs, programs are cut at two Colorado mental health centers amid Medicaid “unwind”

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun Two more community mental health centers are eliminating jobs and cutting programs as Colorado’s safety-net health system staggers from a massive drop in Medicaid rolls.  WellPower, which provides mental health care in Denver regardless of whether patients have insurance, is cutting six positions from its co-responder team that pairs social workers with city park rangers, fire and law officers. It’s also eliminating its virtual therapy program, which connected 579 patients with therapists online last year. And it’s ending its lease of Garfield House, an apartment complex where the mental health center has placed patients who needed housing.  READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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In Colorado case, Kroger and Albertson’s say competition is Walmart, Costco and Amazon
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State, The Colorado Sun

In Colorado case, Kroger and Albertson’s say competition is Walmart, Costco and Amazon

By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun About two weeks before the Federal Trade Commission sued to block Kroger Company’s proposed $24.6 billion merger with Albertsons Companies Inc. in late February, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office filed an antitrust lawsuit of its own. The state’s antitrust trial began Monday morning in Denver District Court, room 414, as attorney Arthur Biller with the AG’s Office laid out how the merger threatens to increase grocery prices, reduce competition and impact the number of grocery workers and supermarkets, especially in the more rural parts of the state. He called Kroger “a monopolist of supermarkets” because it searches for “no-comp or low-comp stores,” or stores with little to no competition. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORA...
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Adam Frisch and Jeff Hurd are vying to replace Lauren Boebert in 3rd District. Here’s where they stand on the big issues.
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State, The Colorado Sun

Adam Frisch and Jeff Hurd are vying to replace Lauren Boebert in 3rd District. Here’s where they stand on the big issues.

By Jesse Paul | Colorado Sun Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, and Republican Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican, are running against each other to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in Washington, D.C. The GOP-leaning district spans Colorado’s Western Slope and stretches into Pueblo and southeastern Colorado. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, currently represents the district, but moved to Windsor on the other side of the state and is running this year to represent the 4th Congressional District. We asked Hurd and Frisch about their stances on major issues, like the economy, immigration and the environment.  READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Amendment K: If supported, election officials would have more time to prepare ballots
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State, The Colorado Sun

Amendment K: If supported, election officials would have more time to prepare ballots

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Colorado voters in November will be asked to move up a number of constitutional filing deadlines for candidates and citizen initiatives to give county clerks more time to prepare ballots in future elections. Amendment K, referred to voters by the state legislature earlier this year, would amend the state constitution to require supporters of citizen-led ballot initiatives to submit petitions one week earlier in order to qualify for the ballot. Judges would also have to file their declarations of intent to seek another term a week sooner. If the measure passes, nonpartisan legislative staff would have to publish the text of all the statewide ballot measures in newspapers across Colorado 15 days earlier. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO S...
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