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Political nonprofit tied to Jared Polis admits to violating state’s campaign finance laws, will pay $18K fine, reveal donors
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State, The Colorado Sun

Political nonprofit tied to Jared Polis admits to violating state’s campaign finance laws, will pay $18K fine, reveal donors

By Sandra Fish | The Colorado Sun A political nonprofit linked to Gov. Jared Polis has admitted to violating Colorado’s campaign finance laws and will pay an $18,000 fine and disclose its donors under a settlement agreement with state election officials. Boldly Forward Colorado, created in 2018 to pay for Polis’ transition team, donated nearly $352,000 last year to Property Tax Relief Now. That issue committee spent close to $3 million to promote Proposition HH, a ballot measure backed by Polis that would have overhauled Colorado’s property tax system and made big changes to state spending.  Voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure in the November 2023 election.  The Public Trust Institute, a conservative political nonprofit, filed the complaint against Boldly ...
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Colorado’s 11-foot tall, 27-foot-long stegosaurus to be auctioned by Sotheby’s July 17
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado’s 11-foot tall, 27-foot-long stegosaurus to be auctioned by Sotheby’s July 17

By The Associated Press (via The Colorado Sun) The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York next week, auction house officials said. The dinosaur that Sotheby’s calls Apex stands 11 feet tall and measures 27 feet nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture. The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world’s most recognizable dinosaurs. Apex, which Hatton called “a coloring book dinosaur,” was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby’s said. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Southern Ute Indian Tribe sues Colorado governor, gaming division over sports betting
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State, The Colorado Sun

Southern Ute Indian Tribe sues Colorado governor, gaming division over sports betting

By Shannon Mullane | The Colorado Sun The Southern Ute Indian Tribe is suing Gov. Jared Polis and the director of the Colorado Division of Gaming, Christopher Schroder, saying the administration is illegally freezing tribes out of the online sports betting market, in part, to maximize state tax collections.  The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver, alleges the state sought to exclude the tribe from internet sports betting by acting in bad faith, using delay tactics and belatedly making legal arguments that conflict with federal law and a state gaming compact with the tribe.  “Enough is enough,” Southern Ute Chairman Melvin Baker told Colorado lawmakers during an American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee meeting Monday. “Litigation is not...
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While 70% opt out of add-on license plate fees, program collected almost $41 million
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State, The Colorado Sun

While 70% opt out of add-on license plate fees, program collected almost $41 million

By Jason Blevins | The Colorado Sun More than 1.5 million Colorado vehicle owners have delivered more than $40 million to Colorado Parks and Wildlife by including a $29 Keep Colorado Wild Pass as part of their annual registrations.  The first fiscal year of Keep Colorado Wild pass sales ended June 30 with revenue reaching $40.9 million. That unofficial tally — final numbers will be updated by the fall — means that parks, wildlife, backcountry search and rescue volunteers, and avalanche forecasters will get boosts in funding in the coming year.  The Keep Colorado Pass plan that launched in January 2023 adds $29 to every vehicle registration in the state unless owners opt out. The pass provides access to all state parks. The 2021 legislation that created the program hoped ...
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In shadow of bipartisan Senate Bill 23-275 creating mustang task force, BLM plans another roundup
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State, The Colorado Sun

In shadow of bipartisan Senate Bill 23-275 creating mustang task force, BLM plans another roundup

By Jennifer Brown | Colorado Sun Four years into an aggressive federal campaign to thin wild horse herds across the West, Colorado officials fed up with helicopter roundups tried something unique — a state-federal working group to collaborate on mustang population control.  Then the U.S. Bureau of Land Management went ahead and proposed its next helicopter roundup.  The announcement in May that the federal agency based in Washington, D.C., plans to remove 85-110 mustangs from Little Book Cliffs near Palisade has set off a fresh round of indignant comments from Colorado officials and run the state-federal collaboration into a wall.  The main question: What is the point of the state working group if the federal government isn’t even listening?  RE...
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‘It felt like a land grab’: A Western Slope town battles against solar project
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Local, The Colorado Sun

‘It felt like a land grab’: A Western Slope town battles against solar project

By Mark Jaffe | Colorado Sun It seemed like a good idea. Put a large solar array on 640 acres of sagebrush and cedar about 30 miles northwest of Telluride. There was already a transmission line running through the property and only some cattle poking around in the shrubs and trees. The Colorado State Land Board, owner of the parcel, had made siting renewable energy facilities a priority and even amended the lease on the Wright’s Mesa land to give solar panels precedence over cows. What could possibly go wrong? And so, on a May evening last year, Seattle-based OneEnergy Renewables held a community meeting at the public library in Norwood, the mesa’s only town, to unveil a plan for thousands of solar panels and a 500 megawatt battery. Norwood is home to about 550 p...
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Court rules Teller County sheriff cannot hold illegals in jail under county’s agreement with ICE
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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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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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Local, The Colorado Sun

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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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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