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Oil, gas industry to fight stricter environmental bills in Colorado legislature
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coloradopolitics.com, State

Oil, gas industry to fight stricter environmental bills in Colorado legislature

By Joe Mueller | Colorado Politics Business leaders joined leaders of Colorado’s petroleum and natural gas industries in denouncing a wave of legislation creating higher environmental standards and phasing out drilling. “These concepts range from banning any development for any industry that requires an air permit in up to 50% of the state to tracking and limiting how much you can drive your car,” Kait Schwartz, director of the American Petroleum Institute Colorado, said during a press conference on Thursday. “Ideas like this are harmful to the Colorado economy and many of of them are bad for the environment.” Two Senate bills, 24-165 and 24-166 introduced Thursday, would tighten emission rules along with new enforcement of air quality standards and penalties. If ...
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Protect Kids Colorado launches to protect kids, strengthen families through citizens ballot initiatives
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Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State

Protect Kids Colorado launches to protect kids, strengthen families through citizens ballot initiatives

By Erin Lee | Guest Columnist Colorado is one of 24 states to have a Citizens Ballot Initiative process. Coloradans, that means “We the People” have a process by which to make law. Article V, Section II, Item 2.0, of the Colorado Constitution clearly lays out the people’s process by stating: “The first power hereby reserved by the people is the initiative…” The FIRST power.  The United States and Colorado Constitutions were founded on the principles of individual rights and “We The People” maintaining those fundamental and inalienable rights. It’s the reason the American experiment has been and can continue to be the most successful Constitutional Republic in the world.   As Coloradans are becoming increasingly aware, our state leadership is off the rails. The laws co...
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Sen. Kirkmeyer details ‘bad bills’ and killed Republican initiatives in address to Weld County
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Local, Northern Colorado, Rocky Mountain Voice

Sen. Kirkmeyer details ‘bad bills’ and killed Republican initiatives in address to Weld County

By BRIAN PORTER | The Rocky Mountain Voice GREELEY – The tools in the Republican toolbox for members of the Colorado House and Senate are few, limited by the majorities enjoyed by the Democrat party, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer told attendees here Saturday evening at the Weld County Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner. In a presentation she termed a Republican “State of the State” address, she detailed the inability to even play defense on bad bills, and asked Republicans to help in future legislative sessions by electing more conservatives. “We are in the minority, and it sucks,” Kirkmeyer said. “We have 12 Republicans in the Senate and 19 Republicans in the House. Democrats have a super majority in the House.” The loss of a couple of seats in the Senate could put Democrats in a supe...
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Name change for felons, preferred names for students spark fierce debate in Colorado
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coloradopolitics.com, State

Name change for felons, preferred names for students spark fierce debate in Colorado

By Marissa Ventrelli  | Colorado Politics Republicans and Democrats clashed over two proposals dealing with names and gender identity in a prolonged debated on Friday that also prompted an intense discussion into a host of social issues, notably the rights of parents and the wishes of transgender students.    The first bill, House Bill 1071, would include gender identity as a "good cause" reason that the courts could consider when individuals convicted of a felony request to legally change their names. The second measure, House Bill 24-1039, would require public and charter schools beginning in July next year to use a student's preferred name, regardless of whether it is the legal name, for school documents, such as rosters, yearbooks and identification ca...
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Debate over proposals tackling drug use, treatment illustrates ideological divide in Colorado
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coloradopolitics.com, State

Debate over proposals tackling drug use, treatment illustrates ideological divide in Colorado

By Marissa Ventrelli  | Colorado Politics Colorado lawmakers on Tuesday tackled two proposals that offer convergent — and divergent — approaches to combatting drug abuse during a discussion that starkly illuminated on ideological disagreements at the state Capitol.       Both bills emerged out of ad hoc panel, which met over the summer as a response to soaring addiction rates nationwide and in Colorado. Colorado ranks in the Top 10 states in the nation for drug use, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Advocates and policymakers agree that addressing such a complex issue requires a multifaceted response, but they often clash in their preferred solutions. "Harm reduction" advocates argue that tougher penalties hav...
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Colorado lawmakers vote to give themselves a pay raise beginning in 2025
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coloradopolitics.com, State

Colorado lawmakers vote to give themselves a pay raise beginning in 2025

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Colorado House Democrats on Thursday voted to boost the pay of General Assembly lawmakers beginning in the 2025-26 fiscal year, with those living in the Denver metro area getting substantially more in actual dollars and rate increase than policymakers who reside outside.  The cost to taxpayers for the higher per diems is just shy of $300,000 in 2025-26. Metro-area legislators' per diem has not increased for more than three decades.  Under House Bill 1059, the per diem rate claimed by lawmakers who reside in the Denver metro area will increase to 25% of the federal per diem rate set for the city and county of Denver by the U.S. General Services Administration. READ THE FULL STORY AT COLORADO POLITICS
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A new — and much gentler — property tax hike is proposed for Colorado short-term rental properties
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State, The Colorado Sun

A new — and much gentler — property tax hike is proposed for Colorado short-term rental properties

By Jason Blevins and Jesse Paul | Colorado Sun A proposed property tax hike on Colorado short-term rental owners would only kick in for people with three or more homes under new legislation proposed as a gentler alternative to a further-reaching measure also being debated at the state Capitol this year.  State Rep. Shannon Bird, a Democrat from Westminster, hopes her House Bill 1299 will work as a compromise to slow the growth of short-term rentals that is pinching the housing supply, especially for local workers.  Her legislation would impose the state’s much higher commercial property tax rate on properties offered as short-term rentals when they belong to a person or business that owns at least two other homes.  READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN
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Caldara: Bizarre bills flow from Colorado’s loony legislature
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Commentary, completecolorado.com

Caldara: Bizarre bills flow from Colorado’s loony legislature

By Jon Caldara | Complete Colorado (You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.) While Colorado’s governmental core functions are going unattended, as witnessed by crime, traffic and crumbling roads, the legislature is busying itself with the most critical work of all — coming up with wing-bat crazy bills to promote the trans agenda by disempowering parents, crush needed industries and torture puppies. By far, my favorite is House Bill 1039. In its original version it empowers any kid in school to choose his own name “to reflect that individual’s gender identity.” The school must use the new name he, she or “they” chose in all their record keeping, teaching, activities — even the yearbook. Mind you, at 18 years old any young adult can legally change ...
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Colorado lawmakers decide to hold proposal exempting legislature from open meetings law’s provisions
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coloradopolitics.com, State

Colorado lawmakers decide to hold proposal exempting legislature from open meetings law’s provisions

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics A panel of lawmakers decided to hold a proposal that seeks to carve out the General Assembly from some of the provisions of the state's open meetings law after the sponsor indicated it may not be ready for prime time. Senate Bill 157 attempts to deal with one of the stickiest unanswered questions around the state's open meetings law — what exactly is an open meeting? The law, as it applies to the General Assembly, says that occurs whenever two or more lawmakers are together discussing public business. But over the law's 50-plus year history, lawmakers have held daily conversations on legislation on the floor of the House or Senate or in offices at the Capitol — all outside the public view. It's a conflict between what the ...
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Parents of medically fragile kids can’t find nurses because the pay is so low. They want Colorado lawmakers to step in. 
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State, The Colorado Sun

Parents of medically fragile kids can’t find nurses because the pay is so low. They want Colorado lawmakers to step in. 

By Jennifer Brown | Colorado Sun Nurses willing to care for medically fragile children and adults — including patients who use feeding tubes, can’t walk or speak, and rarely leave their homes — are hard to find in Colorado.  Amid a statewide nursing shortage so dire that even state mental institutions offer $14,000 signing bonuses, the lowest-paying nursing positions are going unfilled. That means many parents who have relied on “private duty nurses” for in-home care for their children and adult children are getting no help.  Colorado’s Medicaid program reimburses the agencies that employ these in-home nurses at some of the lowest rates in the nation, according to the Home Care and Hospice Association of Colorado. The rate for registered nurses in Colorado is $...
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