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A mysterious monolith appeared in rural Colorado. Do we really want to know where it came from?
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Local, The Colorado Sun

A mysterious monolith appeared in rural Colorado. Do we really want to know where it came from?

By Parker Yamasaki | The Colorado Sun On top of a hill prickly with dry grass and cacti is a four-sided structure that looks like the sky, the hills and the small crowd of people standing next to it, but it’s none of those things. It’s not a riddle, it’s a monolith. Perhaps the 247th spotted worldwide since 2020.  It appeared unexpectedly on Sunday in Bellvue, northwest of Fort Collins, on the expansive property of Rob and Lori Graves, who own Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, a Noosa Yoghurt factory, and the Howling Cow Cafe. A cafe manager spotted the structure in the distance as she arrived at work in the morning, but didn’t think anything of it until a customer came in and asked to be pointed toward “the alien structure.”  The Howling Cow has been part of...
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Kansas forced Colorado to stop irrigating 25,000 acres of farmland. Was it too soon to put them in the same room?
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State, The Colorado Sun

Kansas forced Colorado to stop irrigating 25,000 acres of farmland. Was it too soon to put them in the same room?

By Tracy Ross | The Colorado Sun Agricultural producers, scientists and policymakers from Colorado and Kansas gathered near the Ogallala Aquifer in Burlington on Wednesday to air their concerns and share ideas for how to survive continued drought. But it was hard to escape the Republican River Basin-shaped elephant in the room.  The group convened at the behest of U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat who chairs the Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources subcommittee, and Roger Marshall, of Kansas, the ranking Republican member of the subcommittee.  The location was poignant because it’s in a region where farmers over recent years have had to shut down their wells and either switch to dryland farming or grazing or stop all agricultural activity...
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Colorado GOP endorsees lose in 14 of 18 primary races, many by big spreads
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado GOP endorsees lose in 14 of 18 primary races, many by big spreads

By Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun Fourteen of the 18 candidates endorsed by the Colorado GOP lost their primary elections Tuesday, most of them by double-digit margins. The results are adding to criticism of state party leadership, including chairman Dave Williams, who were already under fire for making the unorthodox decision to endorse in Republican primaries in the first place.  Williams was among the candidates endorsed by the party who lost their primaries Tuesday. He got walloped by conservative activist and commentator Jeff Crank in the 5th Congressional District.  State Rep. Richard Holtorf, an Akron Republican who lost Tuesday in the six-way GOP primary in the 4th District, said the losses are another sign that Williams needs to be re...
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Elisabeth Epps, Tim Hernández unseated as Democratic legislative primary results are a mixed bag for progressives 
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Downtown Denver, The Colorado Sun

Elisabeth Epps, Tim Hernández unseated as Democratic legislative primary results are a mixed bag for progressives 

By Brian Eason, Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun Moderate Democrats allied with Gov. Jared Polis won a number of Colorado state legislative primaries Tuesday night, the culmination of a hotly contested election season that pitted progressives against moderates as the future of state policy hung in the balance. In one of the most closely watched races, attorney Sean Camacho defeated incumbent state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a progressive Democrat from Denver whose tumultuous term in office was frequently marked by public squabbles with her colleagues. The Associated Press called the race at 8:20 p.m., and Camacho led with 64% of the vote as of 10:23 p.m. Another Polis-backed candidate, state Rep. Lindsey Daugherty, a moderate Democrat from A...
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Republican Greg Lopez wins special election to serve out Ken Buck’s term in Congress
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State, The Colorado Sun

Republican Greg Lopez wins special election to serve out Ken Buck’s term in Congress

The last time Lopez, an Air Force veteran and former Democrat, held elected office was in the 1990s, when he served as mayor of Parker By Jesse Paul and Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Republican Greg Lopez easily won the special election Tuesday in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, meaning he’ll serve out the term of former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, which ends in early January.  The Associated Press called the race at 7:34 p.m. when Lopez had 57% of the vote over Democrat Trisha Calvarese, a former speechwriter and congressional staffer.  “Neither of my parents had the opportunity to graduate from high school, and yet, this evening I was elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives,” Lopez said in a written statement. “I ...
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PERA’s investments bounce back in 2023, but the Colorado pension plan nets step backward
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State, The Colorado Sun

PERA’s investments bounce back in 2023, but the Colorado pension plan nets step backward

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun Colorado’s public employee pension system generated strong investment returns in 2023 — but its finances still deteriorated for the second time in five years as it struggles to bounce back from a miserable 2022. The Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association’s investments grew by 13.4% in 2023, according to its annual financial report released Friday. That matches its 13.4% loss from a year earlier. But because the pension has to average 7.25% returns a year to meet its funding targets, the net result was a step backward for the chronically underfunded pension. PERA’s unfunded debt to members grew by $1.2 billion to $27.5 billion, the report shows. Its funding ratio — the amount of money it has in the bank relative to...
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A new rule aids ranchers in killing wolves attacking their livestock at night
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State, The Colorado Sun

A new rule aids ranchers in killing wolves attacking their livestock at night

By Tracy Ross | The Colorado Sun Colorado Parks and Wildlife will allow ranchers to use artificial light to aid in killing wolves caught in the act of attacking their livestock at night.  The change follows a 6-4 vote by the Parks and Wildlife commission at its meeting on June 13. The ruling is significant because wolves generally attack at night, yet ranchers have been unable to shoot them due to a statute that prevents hunters from shooting at an animal after dark and using artificial light.  Currently, livestock owners are allowed to use night vision technology to conduct hazing that doesn’t harm or kill a wolf. They’re also allowed to kill a wolf they catch it attacking livestock in daylight. The new rules gives them added support after dealing with wolv...
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Group tied to Kent Thiry drops $1.1 million into Colorado legislative primaries in final days before election
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State, The Colorado Sun

Group tied to Kent Thiry drops $1.1 million into Colorado legislative primaries in final days before election

By Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun A group tied to Kent Thiry, the wealthy former CEO of the Denver-based dialysis giant DaVita, is spending nearly $1.1 million on TV and digital ads in 13 state legislative races in the days leading up to Colorado’s primaries on Tuesday.  The money supports more moderate Democratic and Republican candidates in their races against their more liberal or conservative opponents.  Let Colorado Vote Action, a state-level super PAC, was created Monday and spent the money Wednesday on ads that were to begin Thursday. The committee reported the spending Friday night, meeting a 48-hour campaign finance disclosure deadline in the lead-up to the primary.  READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers, but 1.7 open jobs remain for every unemployed worker
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers, but 1.7 open jobs remain for every unemployed worker

By Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun Colorado received some notable mentions in the latest national job-openings report. The state had the largest one-month increases in both workers who quit jobs or left involuntarily. That helped the state rank as the second highest in the nation for workers who quit jobs and third highest for those who lost them in April, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, or JOLTS. The last time the state hit a 3.5% quit rate was in the summer of 2021, when the Great Resignation took hold and employers faced the worst labor shortage in years. But the frustrations employers felt with getting ghosted by new hires back then doesn’t appear to be happening today, at least from what Tony Gagliardi is hearing. As state dire...
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Colorado tribes want to get into lucrative online sports betting. A dispute with the state is getting in the way.
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State, The Colorado Sun

Colorado tribes want to get into lucrative online sports betting. A dispute with the state is getting in the way.

By Jerd Smith | The Colorado Sun Colorado tribes want to offer online sports betting. But their tax status, and other issues, has some people worried that allowing the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain tribes to offer remote wagering on professional sports might siphon valuable revenue away from Colorado water projects. The Colorado Department of Revenue declined to comment on the specifics of the dispute, while tribal representatives say they are frustrated with the state’s refusal to allow them to offer it. In November, a proposition referred to the ballot by lawmakers in House Bill 1436, will ask voters to allow the state to keep more of the revenue generated by sports gaming. Taxes collected on those bets, which were authorized in 2019, are projected to generate $34.2 million in t...
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