A Denver-area nonprofit is seeing a surge of interest in its mission to stop food waste, as an increasing number of Coloradans struggle to afford meals due to rising costs and aid cuts.

More than 33,000 Coloradans have lost access to federal funding for food assistance since last year due to cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to an analysis published this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank.

Those cuts come as food insecurity is on the rise in Colorado’s biggest city. More than a third of adults in Denver reported shrinking or skipping a meal in 2025 due to the cost of food – double the rate measured in 2024, according to a city report published in March.

But the Colorado nonprofit We Don’t Waste sees a solution in recovering and redistributing food that would otherwise go to a landfill – which can be up to 40% of the total supply according to some estimates.

The organization operates “like a logistics company in disguise,” said senior communications and marketing manager Caroline Hissong.

We Don’t Waste partners with food suppliers like grocery stores and restaurants to recover usable food that would otherwise get thrown out. The organization then brings the food back to their facility to weigh and sort it before redistributing it.

“We’re keeping track of pretty much every pound of food that’s coming in and out,” Hissong said.

We Don’t Waste sends both prepared meals and raw ingredients to partner organizations like food pantries and soup kitchens who further redistribute it to the communities they serve.

We Don’t Waste also supports mobile food markets where the organization gives away truckloads of food.

“People can come and shop like it’s a farmer’s market but there’s no price tag on anything,” said Hissong.

We Don’t Waste saw a spike in interest on social and traditional media recently with its “Potatopalooza” event, where the organization gave away 42,000 pounds of potatoes in roughly an hour and a half.

“We had folks literally backing up pickup trucks and loading up everything in laundry bins,” Hissong said. “It was really incredible to see.”

We Don’t Waste claims to have saved 280 million servings of food since it got started in 2009.

But economic and political shifts can change the shape of food insecurity, which means the organization has to stay adaptable.

Hissong said We Don’t Waste conducts community listening sessions and surveys to better understand the different ways food insecurity affects various communities.

The organization relies heavily on volunteers, and the attention from Potatopalooza is raising awareness about its work. But the main challenge right now is meeting the increasing demand for free and low-cost meals.

“We just need more food,” Hissong said.

NEED TO KNOW

💵 Victor Marx, the Republican in the Colorado governor’s race, is facing allegations of campaign finance violations. Darcy Schoening, a former state Republican party official, filed complaints with the Secretary of State earlier this year claiming over 100 people had collectively given Marx’s campaign tens of thousands of dollars more than allowed under Colorado law. A new complaint by Schoening claims Marx violated campaign finance laws by telling supporters to give unlimited amounts to his bid for the governor’s office by purchasing merchandise from his online store. Further proceedings will determine whether the campaign faces fines or other penalties. (9News / Kyle Clark)

🔫 Coloradans who want to buy semiautomatic firearms with detachable magazines have to take a safety class and a test first, under a law passed last year that went into effect on August 1. Huge numbers of Coloradans requested gun-purchase background checks ahead of the law going into effect, suggesting a surge in demand for the type of weapons covered by the law. (Colorado Newsline / Sara Wilson)

🚱 Rural communities in southern Colorado lack safe drinking water, despite decades-old plans for infrastructure improvements. Some communities in the Lower Arkansas Valley can’t fund the projects themselves, and the Trump administration has held up federal funding. Some local residents have installed expensive filtration systems, while others have to haul water from supply sites. (Rocky Mountain PBS / Priya Shahi)

👶 Colorado’s universal preschool initiative should shrink class sizes, set curriculum standards and bolster teacher training, according to a state-mandated report on the program. Since it launched in 2023, the program has grown to cover about 70% of the state’s 4-year-olds, offering 10 to 30 hours a week of tuition-free preschool. The state is planning to release a five-year strategic plan for universal preschool later this year. (Chalkbeat / Ann Schimke)

📚 Colorado nonprofits are helping students and teachers with the rising cost of back-to-school supplies. Teachers often spend hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock their classrooms, and families also routinely spend hundreds of dollars on things like clothes, supplies and books as inflation continues to push up costs. Click through the following links for details on how to support and participate in these programs. (Denver 7 / Alex Dowd, CBS / Ashley Portillo)

COMING UP

🧑‍💻 I’ll be joining Dr. Jonathan D. Rosen on his podcast next Friday, August 14, to talk about the Tren de Aragua gang. Before starting The Blanket, I reported extensively on Tren de Aragua in the United States and Latin America. I’ve been featured as an expert by Denver7, CPR, Westword and many other outlets explaining the reality of the gang’s presence in Colorado and region-wide. I’ve still been keeping tabs on Tren de Aragua, particularly in the United States, so I’m excited for the conversation.

Colorado has become a key battleground in legal fights over the role of state and local authorities with respect to federal immigration enforcement.

Courts in Colorado are weighing whether state and local regulations apply to immigration detention centers, when state and local officials can refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents, and whether undocumented students can get tuition benefits at Colorado universities.

Similar questions are also coming up in other states, as the Trump administration continues an aggressive anti-immigration crackdown that has communities across the country looking for ways to minimize the human and economic fallout.

To get a clearer picture of the legal issues at play, I talked with Deep Gulasekaram, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who specializes in immigration law and constitutional law.

“If there’s anything to say in broad terms it is that this area of law is highly unsettled, that there are lots of unanswered questions which are being asked and answered right now,” Gulasekaram said.

Read on for highlights of the conversation, and watch the extended interview below 👇

Detention centers

One question that has become more prominent and more urgent in recent weeks is whether state and local authorities can apply health and safety regulations to immigration detention facilities.

In mid-July, the Adams County Health Department confirmed a case of tuberculosis at Colorado’s only large-scale immigration detention center – a facility in Aurora that houses about 1,200 people.

But local officials say they’ve been blocked from investigating further by the GEO Group, the private contractor that runs the facility for the federal immigration agency ICE. GEO recently announced a new contract with ICE to reopen a former prison in Hudson as Colorado’s second 1,200-bed immigration detention center.

ICE told me that while there aren’t any confirmed tuberculosis cases at the Aurora facility right now, “there was one case of TB on June 25, and the detainee was treated, cleared, and removed from the country.”

GEO sued Colorado in federal court earlier this year over a new state law aimed at expanding local authorities’ power to do health and safety inspections at immigration jails. The company argued that the regulations would illegally interfere with the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration laws.

ICE is changing its internal rules to try to give contractors legal protection against local and state regulations, according to recent reports from the Washington Post and WIRED.

The plans for the new facility in Hudson sparked a separate fight in state court, where a legal advocacy group is backing a Hudson resident’s lawsuit aiming to make the town enforce local zoning requirements on the proposed facility.

Although the GEO Group and Hudson lawsuits involve different legal specifics, they address similar legal issues around the authority of state and local governments to impose regulations on the federal government or its contractors.

“This has been a question that has been a part of American constitutional law going back centuries,” Gulasekaram said.

Information sharing

Legal controversy has also unfolded around state laws passed in recent years that bar Colorado officials from giving people’s personal information to ICE unless it’s part of a criminal investigation.

A federal judge recently tossed a lawsuit involving the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, which had argued the laws are too vague and create confusion around the limits of cooperation with immigration authorities.

A separate lawsuit in state court is looking at the same law from a different angle. Gov. Jared Polis has been fighting to force the state’s Department of Labor to respond to a request for information from ICE. A judge ruled the Department of Labor doesn’t have to comply, saying the information requested is not related to a criminal matter. Polis appealed that ruling, but the parties recently asked to pause the case until a new governor takes office next year.

Other states have similar laws restricting information-sharing and cooperation with ICE, often with exceptions for criminal investigations. But leveraging information compiled by local authorities makes ICE’s job a lot easier, so the agency has an incentive to try to make the most of those exceptions.

“That leaves the factual question whether in fact the information being sought was in connection with some very serious allegation and of criminality, or whether it looks very much like a fishing expedition,” Gulasekaram said.

Tuition and financial aid

The latest challenge to Colorado’s immigration policies is the federal government’s lawsuit over a program that offers in-state tuition and aid to undocumented university students who meet certain residency requirements.

More than a dozen other states have faced similar lawsuits claiming the policies violate federal law because they don’t offer the same benefits to out-of-state U.S. citizens.

Courts have ruled both for and against states that offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, but Gulasekaram said recipients may still face barriers related to their lack of lawful status after they graduate.

“Ultimately whether you can use your degree to work for the benefit of the people of the state of Colorado or the people of the United States – that is controlled in large part by federal law,” he said.

NEED TO KNOW

🏘️ Cutting red tape has helped lower the cost of building affordable housing in Colorado compared to states like Texas and California. Recent measures made it easier to use publicly owned land for affordable housing development, simplified paperwork and changed building and inspection rules to accommodate low-cost construction options. A recent poll found housing affordability and other cost-of-living issues are among Coloradans’ top concerns. (The Conversation / Solomon Greene, read the poll)

📚 Colorado education officials allowed hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funding to flow to a school with Christian religious curriculum. The Colorado Department of Education said it doesn’t have the authority to enforce state and federal constitutional restrictions against government support for religious institutions, claiming that is the role of the courts, but an independent legal expert questioned that assertion. The “public Christian school” closed this year after lawmakers passed new rules unrelated to religious affiliation. (Chalkbeat / Ann Schimke, May 29 newsletter)

🏫 A top federal civil rights official, Harmeet Dhillon, publicly expressed support for parents whose complaint led to an investigation of Jeffco Schools’ transgender policies. Dhillon runs the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, which is in charge of deciding whether to cut off federal money to Jeffco, the state’s second-largest district, over its policies aimed at protecting transgender kids. Jeffco sued the U.S. Department of Education this week over the threats to cut its federal funding. (Class Notes / Suzie Glassman, Chalkbeat / Erica Meltzer, July 3 newsletter, read the new lawsuit)

⏳ The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has reduced the average processing time for rape kits to about six months, down from more than 500 days last year. That’s still short of a 90-day internal goal and a 60-day target set by state law, and victim advocates say the backlog is hindering justice. The backlog resulted from staff shortages after crime lab workers were tasked with reviewing over 1,000 cases handled by Missy Woods, a former forensic scientist who admitted this year to manipulating test results over the course of nearly three decades at the agency. (Westword / Hannah Metzger, June 26 newsletter)

🚱 Wildfire response and recovery could cost Colorado nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, according to an estimate from the state’s official Drought Task Force. A historically hot and dry winter in Colorado raised wildfire risk and added urgency to water-saving measures. The task force also recommended improving water efficiency at state facilities and temporarily extending tax deadlines for drought-impacted small businesses and agricultural producers. (CPR / Tegan Wendland, Colorado Sun / Shannon Mullane, CBS / Christa Swanson, watch the full meeting)

COMING UP

🧗 I’ve been lining up more interviews with people working directly on solutions and accountability here in Colorado, and I’m also chipping away at a few original reporting projects. I don’t want to give too much away or make any promises I can’t keep, so suffice it to say that I’m excited and hopeful you’ll find value in what I’m preparing. Speaking of which, if you find value in this newsletter, please consider sending it to a friend or contributing financial support. Anything helps.

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The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is in the process of upgrading a statewide gang database, despite little evidence of its efficacy and concerns over civil rights raised by similar databases in other states.

The CBI is required to maintain a database of alleged gang members under a state law passed in the late 1980s. Lawmakers believed that fighting gangs would be easier if cops across the state had a centralized place to share information about them.

But the database has not been working as intended.

Notably, the database currently isn’t functioning at all. The Aurora Police Department said it’s been offline for “several years,” and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office also said it’s been down for “quite some time.” But the CBI insisted that it’s only been offline for about a month.

Moreover, none of the biggest police and sheriff’s departments in the state use the database extensively. The Blanket contacted the 20 biggest local law enforcement agencies in Colorado, and of the 18 that responded, all of them said they either don’t use the database or use it very infrequently. None could cite an example where it had helped with an investigation.

Even though the database doesn’t seem to be very useful for Colorado law enforcement, federal agencies also have access to it.

In 2017, the federal immigration agency ICE told 9News that it had used the database to identify someone as an alleged gang member. ICE declined to answer The Blanket’s questions about how it uses the database.

CBI said that it only maintains the database, and that the agencies that use it are responsible for the accuracy of the information. Federal law says that old records are supposed to be purged after five years, but the auto purge function on the current system hasn’t been working for the past few years, meaning it may contain outdated entries.

CBI said that before the database went offline, it listed 2,839 gang members and 52 gangs. That’s a significant decrease from the last count I could find, from 2007, when the database had over 12,000 gang members and 110 gangs.

In other places where these databases have been used, they’ve created a lot of controversy. New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles have all faced lawsuits in recent years from people who claimed their gang databases included inaccurate entries and were used for illegal racial profiling.

Those issues, so far, haven’t really come up in Colorado. The Blanket reached out to several organizations that work on criminal justice issues in the state and none of them said it was a big problem.

While the database is offline right now, several law enforcement agencies said they might use the new system more frequently once it’s upgraded. The upgrade will cost a little over $600,000 and is expected to be completed later this year.

NEED TO KNOW

🧑‍⚖️ Immigration courts in Colorado and across the country are struggling under a huge backlog of cases and political pressure to quickly deport as many people as possible.

Those issues often result in violations of immigrants’ due process rights. The University of Denver’s Court Transparency Project has been sending observers to Colorado’s immigration courts to document how these problems are playing out.

In this extended interview, Ella Iveslatt, a researcher with the project, talks about transparency, due process and access to justice in Colorado’s immigration courts.

COMING UP

😅 It’s been three months since The Blanket launched, and I’ve taken some time to reflect on what’s been working and what hasn’t. One of the main lessons I’ve learned is that my time is better spent creating higher-quality content, even if that means covering fewer topics and publishing less frequently.

So I’m going to spend next week reexamining my workflows and pushing forward some deeper dives that I’ve had on the back burner. I’d like to build this newsletter audience by offering something more than a simple roundup of the videos I’ve published during the week. I want to use this space to go deeper on topics that I cover in video, linking to sources and adding additional details. I also want to add a section rounding up solutions and accountability reporting from other outlets, to keep you informed without having to cover every topic myself.

I would really appreciate any feedback, tips or questions you may have. If there’s something you want to share, you can reply to this email or send a WhatsApp, Signal or text message to 720-355-1474.

The private prison contractor, the GEO Group, announced this week that ICE is going to pay the company potentially up to a half a billion dollars to re-open an actual former prison so they can use it to lock up immigrants.

The facility is being called “Big Horn” and it’s about 30 miles outside Denver, in a town called Hudson. The former prison is owned by a Chicago-based real estate company that expects to make nearly $1 million a month by leasing it to the GEO Group.

The facility has the capacity to hold almost 1,200 people, which is roughly the size of an immigration jail run by the GEO Group in Aurora that can hold around 1,500 people.

The Aurora facility is the only other large-scale ICE detention site in Colorado, so this new jail will almost double ICE’s detention capacity in the state. And this comes as the Trump administration is continuing its immigration crackdown and locking up more and more people.

The Aurora facility and other ICE facilities around the country have repeatedly for years faced allegations of keeping people in inhumane conditions and neglecting their medical needs. But it’s been difficult to hold ICE and its contractors accountable.

State and local officials have limited power over immigration facilities like the one in Aurora and like the new one coming to Hudson, since they’re privately owned and operated by companies working for the federal government.

In Aurora, the city council recently passed ordinances to try to require the GEO Group to allow random, unannounced health and safety inspections at the detention facility there. And state lawmakers passed a bill this year to expand the state’s power to do health and safety inspections at immigration jails.

But it’s not clear if those rules can actually be enforced or if they’ll hold up in court.

ICE recently updated its detention standards to remove references to contractors having to comply with state and local laws. And the GEO Group is suing Colorado over the recent health and safety inspection law.

Federal judges in other states have ruled that state authorities can inspect privately-run immigration facilities. But the judge in the Colorado case has a record that suggests he supports the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The lawsuit is still in the early stages, but no matter how it turns out, it’s the kind of case that’s likely to get appealed and it could ultimately end up at the Supreme Court.

NEED TO KNOW

💵 Progressive policy advocate Kayla Frawley recently started a project called the Second Fund that gives cash grants to single-parent families in Denver who need help paying expenses between $55 to $555.

A third of kids in Denver live in single-parent households, and those families are under even more pressure from the rising cost of living that’s affecting all Coloradans.

Relying on a single income means limited resources and a lack of stability. And even when single-parent families tap into public assistance, those gaps can still exist.

Small, one-time costs can snowball into bigger financial emergencies. A missed car payment can result in late fees. A credit card purchase or a payday loan to make ends meet ends up costing more because of interest.

I talked with Kayla about how the Second Fund is addressing those issues:

COMING UP

🫣 Last week I said I would have some original reporting to share this week – which is the same thing I had said the week before. Unfortunately, that reporting still isn’t ready to share. I’m still trying to get answers to some final questions, and I’ve had family in town this week, which left me less time for work than I expected. This has been an important lesson about the pitfalls of making promises about future reporting. I’ll do better in the future.

⚕️ This week, I talked with investigative journalist David Migoya about his reporting that led authorities to investigate allegations of Medicaid fraud, as well as why healthcare aid is susceptible to fraud and what Colorado is doing about the issue.

David’s reporting showed that a Colorado home health company raked in millions of taxpayer dollars through Medicaid – in part by recruiting homeless people as patients and putting them up in houses while profiting by providing them with taxpayer-funded health care.

After David’s reporting came out, the company was suspended from Medicaid while authorities investigate what one agency called “credible allegations of fraud.”

In the first video, we started by talking about how “The Program” worked.

Healthcare aid fraud has been making lots of headlines recently in Colorado, and in the second video, we went deeper on what makes health care aid susceptible to fraud.

So what is the state doing about it? In the third video, we talked about how local investigative reporting has put pressure on Colorado to do more to tackle the issue.

NEED TO KNOW

🎤 Inspired by a webinar put on by the Global Investigative Journalism Network, I started a video series this week asking what audiences want to know about how The Blanket does its work.

The first video responds to a question about the strangest story I ever covered: the murder of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman.

In the next video, I talk more about where I think journalism is headed and what good journalism should look like.

I’m still gathering questions for more response videos in the future, so leave a comment or send a WhatsApp, Signal or text message to 720-355-1474.

COMING UP

🏃 Last week I promised some original accountability reporting, but I’ve had to push back publication until next week while I finish tying up some loose ends. So keep an eye out for that, as well as more solutions and accountability reporting!

Colorado generally has some of the best protections for LGBTQ people of any state in the country. But kids in Colorado are still being impacted by the Trump administration’s extensive efforts to curtail trans peoples’ rights.

Children’s Hospital Colorado stopped providing gender-affirming care to kids last year – like dozens of other hospitals across the country – after the Trump administration threatened to cut off federal funding.

Families of trans kids sued, and a few weeks ago, the state Supreme Court ruled that the hospital’s decision probably violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.

At the time, it seemed like a big win for supporters of trans rights, and that’s still true. But the fight isn’t over.

Local news outlets reported recently that kids still aren’t getting gender-affirming care at the hospital because doctors who work there are refusing to provide it, saying they’re afraid the Trump administration could come after them.

Even though major US medical associations support gender-affirming care for kids, the doctors’ fears aren’t baseless. The Trump administration is exploring legal action including possible criminal charges against doctors and hospitals in other states.

The families of the trans kids are looking to hold the hospital in contempt of court, arguing it’s trying to get around the order to restart care by blaming the doctors. There’s a hearing on that issue set for next month.

Another big fight over trans kids’ rights is happening in JeffCo Schools – the second biggest district in Colorado after Denver.

The federal Department of Education launched an investigation that found earlier this year that the district’s policies aimed at accommodating trans kids violate gender equality provisions in a federal law called Title IX.

The feds claimed that dozens of male students are taking roster spots on girls’ sports teams. But the district said that isn’t true, and that the males aren’t athletes but rather mascots and managers and coaches.

So what’s next? It’s kind of hard to say.

JeffCo has asked the state for help fighting the feds, since they threatened to cut the school district’s funding. But it’s not clear how far the feds are willing to go in that case.

Trump’s Education Department also went after Denver Public Schools and demanded the district get rid of an all-gender bathroom. But the district refused and so far nothing has happened.

At the same time, parents of JeffCo students backed by a conservative, anti-trans legal advocacy group are challenging the district’s policies in federal court.

The Blanket attended the oral arguments in that case, and it did not go well for JeffCo. The court should issue a ruling in the next few weeks or months.

NEED TO KNOW

🗺️ The Colorado Supreme Court this week struck down proposals that would have asked voters to change Colorado’s congressional election maps.

The state’s current maps of U.S. House of Representatives districts were drawn by an independent commission approved by voters in 2018, which created four safely Democratic seats and four safely Republican ones.

But both parties wanted to ask voters this fall to sidestep the independent commission and change the maps through ballot initiatives. Democrats proposed plans to redraw the maps so they would have a chance to win seven of those eight seats, and the Republican counterproposal would have given that party a chance to win five of the eight.

But the state Supreme Court said those proposals violate a rule that limits ballot initiatives to a single subject. And since the proposals would have changed both the process for how the districts are drawn, as well as the actual boundaries of those districts, they didn’t meet that requirement.

Colorado has been trending more and more towards the Democratic Party over the past two decades. And the results of this year’s primary elections showed there’s an appetite for even more progressive representation.

But Colorado’s delegation in the U.S. House is probably going to stay split between Democrats and Republicans, possibly until after the next census in 2030.

⚖️ Colorado Gov. Jared Polis fired two members of the state clemency board who had recommended against his decision to give leniency to election denier Tina Peters.

The fired lawyers had publicly spoken out against Polis’ decision, saying the board had recommended — twice, unanimously — against giving Peters clemency, because they thought she wasn’t actually sorry about her crimes and was engaging in “performative accountability.”

Multiple news outlets reported this week that Polis said the public criticism of his decision violated a confidentiality policy that is supposed to keep clemency board proceedings secret.

But the lawyers stood by their decision to speak out, saying the public had a right to know how such a controversial decision got made.

Tina Peters was the top elections official in Mesa County, the biggest county in Western Colorado. She broke the law while trying to investigate false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

She was convicted of multiple felonies in 2024 and sentenced to several years in jail. But in May of this year, Polis gave her clemency that let her get out early on June 1.

After Peters got out, she immediately went back to talking about baseless claims of election fraud, and she visited the White House this week where Trump repeated his own disproven claims.

COMING UP

🇺🇸 Enjoy the holiday weekend! 🦅 We’ll be back next week with some original accountability reporting in addition to highlighting the work of another long-time local investigative journalist. Stay tuned.

Colorado voters might be asked this fall to approve a graduated income tax that would lower tax rates for the vast majority of Coloradans while raising them for high-earning people and corporations.

A new study says that proposal, called initiative 195, would cause high-earning people and companies to leave Colorado rather than paying the higher tax rate. And that would mean the state would collect less money than expected.

But is that true?

The analysis, put out by a business-friendly think tank in the Denver area called the Common Sense Institute, contradicts not only what supporters say about initiative 195, but also the conclusions of nonpartisan, independent analysts that work for state lawmakers.

What’s more, this idea of “tax flight” has been disputed by a lot of economic research.

So I asked to interview someone from the Common Sense Institute last week, and initially they seemed open to a video conversation.

Then they said they couldn’t do video, but they could answer written questions.

So I sent them a couple of questions, but they refused to address the research that says they’re wrong about tax flight. I asked multiple times but they just ignored me and then stopped responding.

I’ve been a journalist for many years and I’ve covered a lot of reports like this. And I have to say, it raises some pretty big red flags that the Common Sense Institute either can’t or won’t defend the central thesis of this report.

And I thought it was important to share since this questionable idea of “tax flight” will likely be one of the main arguments that we hear in the coming months against the graduated income tax proposal.

NEED TO KNOW

🔬 Missy Woods, a former forensic scientist for Colorado’s state crime lab, pleaded guilty this week to criminal charges related to her manipulation of more than 1,000 DNA tests over nearly three decades at the agency.

Woods was criminally charged in 2025 after an internal investigation found she’d manipulated more than 1,000 DNA tests over nearly three decades at the agency.

She wasn’t necessarily fixing cases to get bogus convictions; it was more about taking shortcuts to make her job easier for herself.

Her mishandling of those tests raised doubts about the validity of convictions in cases she worked on – and the legal process to sort all that out could end up costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Woods is 65, and facing the possibility of years-long sentences that could mean spending the rest of her life in prison, so she’ll likely ask the judge to give her a light sentence in exchange for admitting her guilt.

Still, Woods pleading guilty is important because it’s a step toward accountability and repairing the damage to the reputation of the state crime lab.

🛢️ The federal Bureau of Land Management said last week that it leased roughly 135,000 acres in Colorado for oil and gas drilling, bringing in more than $35 million that gets split between the federal and state government.

The public lands sale was one of the biggest ever in Colorado, and it went ahead despite formal protests by the state parks and wildlife agency and other groups that were concerned about environmental impacts.

The feds are planning even more sales later this year as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to make it easier and cheaper for oil and gas companies to lease public lands for drilling.

But new drilling operations would have to go through an environmental review before they’re allowed to start, and that will likely be a contentious process since these operations are facing increasing resistance in Colorado.

COMING UP

🤓 Next week’s newsletter will include a write-up based on a new video series focusing on K-12 education funding in Colorado.

When I did my recent series about Colorado’s state budget, a lot of you asked me about K-12 education funding. And that’s a really important topic because education is the second-biggest item in the state’s budget, after healthcare.

I’ve been reading up and talking to some experts to learn more about where the money comes from, what we’re spending it on, and how education funding choices affect schools. The first video is already out, and the next two will be coming out today and tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Colorado’s state prison system is nearly overflowing.

Officials are considering several options for dealing with the overcrowding, including opening a new prison.

But how much do prisons actually contribute to public safety? And are there better ways to deal with crime?

I recently talked with the activist Eric King, who spent over a year in the federal supermax prison in southern Colorado known as ADX Florence.

We started by discussing the history of ADX Florence and how Eric ended up there. (Eric recently wrote a book about his experience, which you can read to learn more about his story.)

We also talked about what life is like inside.

Additionally we talked about Eric’s advocacy for prison abolition and how that relates to the discussion around prison overcrowding in Colorado.

Although prison abolition remains outside the political mainstream, awareness and momentum is growing for reforms that could make prison more humane. Eric and I discussed what those might look like.

NEED TO KNOW

📮 Colorado’s 2026 primaries are happening this month, and they will likely decide who fills some of the state’s most important offices: governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and U.S. Senate.

Republicans haven’t won a statewide office in a decade, so several Democratic primaries may be more consequential than the general election in November, as I explain in the video below.

And even though most Colorado voters are independent, the state’s elected officials mostly belong to either the Democratic or Republican party – and they tend to be more partisan and polarized than the citizens they represent.

I talked about this with Amy Spicer, a researcher at the nonprofit group Courageous Colorado who wrote a recent report about how Colorado’s primary system limits the influence of independent voters.

We also talked about some ways to give independent voters more of a say in which candidates end up on the primary ballot.

🛢️ The federal government is planning to sell tens of thousands of acres of public lands in Colorado to oil and gas companies.

It’s the biggest public land lease sale in years — over 150,000 acres across more than 100 parcels, mostly in northwest Colorado.

I did a brief video talking about the context of legal and regulatory changes under the Trump administration that are making it easier and cheaper for private companies to lease public lands for drilling.

COMING UP

📚 I’m planning to launch a series of videos next week explaining some of the basics of how K-12 education funding works in Colorado.

I got several requests to tackle this topic when I made a call-out for state budget questions a few weeks ago. Some folks are still sending in ideas, which is great. Keep them coming!

🖋️ Colorado Gov. Jared Polis Polis set a personal record by vetoing a dozen bills passed by lawmakers in 2026.

The vetoes covered a wide range of topics, from social media to union rights to lobbying. Here’s a quick rundown of all 12 bills – what they proposed and why the governor nixed them.

1. SB-147 - This bill was directly aimed at Polis. It would have required the governor’s office and other state agencies to disclose when they try to influence Colorado lawmakers, just like other lobbyists. The bill had strong, bipartisan support from lawmakers, but Polis said it would put unfair limits on the governor’s office.

2. HB-1005: This bill would have made it easier for workers in Colorado to unionize by eliminating a two-vote process that doesn’t exist in any other state. Polis said he opposed the bill because it didn’t take business interests into account.

3. SB26-005 - This bill would have allowed Coloradans to sue over constitutional violations related to immigration enforcement. Polis vetoed the bill, saying it was too narrowly focused on immigration. He said he supported a different bill that would have allowed lawsuits over constitutional violations in a broader range of contexts – but lawmakers didn’t pass that bill.

4. HB26-1210 - This bill would have banned so-called “surveillance pricing” where companies use your personal data to set a price specifically for you. Polis said the bill could prevent companies from offering lower prices, and he said consumers can bring lawsuits under existing anti-discrimination laws if companies unfairly give them a higher price.

5. HB26-1255 - This bill would have required social media companies to respond to law enforcement warrants within 24 hours, and it would have required social media companies to report threats posted on their platforms to law enforcement. Polis signed a similar bill with a 72-hour time limit to respond to warrants, but he said the 24-hour limit is too tight and out of step with other states. He also said the requirement to report threats could stifle free speech.

6. HB26-1286 - This bill would have required a human driver to be present in commercial vehicles over a certain weight. Polis said the bill was too strict and could prevent Colorado from “being on the cutting edge” of automated driving technology.

7. HB26-1355 - This veto basically restores $1.75 million in funding that lawmakers were going to cut from out of school programs. Polis said the state has the money and the programs help kids stay out of trouble and improve their career prospects.

8. SB26-146 - This bill would have prohibited restaurants from including single-use utensils in take out or delivery food unless customers opt in. Polis said compliance could be hard on small businesses.

9. HB26-1418 - This bill would have put a fee on transactions in video games to help pay for youth mental health and education. Polis said it could lead to lawsuits over whether it violates constitutional budget limits.

10. HB26-1236 - This bill would have put some additional consumer-focused protections around arbitration proceedings used to resolve disputes with companies. Polis said it could discourage arbitration and make resolving those disputes more costly and less efficient

11. SB26-134 - This bill would have ended credit card fees on sales tax, but Polis said the bill faced too much legal risk. He said Illinois tried to implement a similar law but it’s been tied up in court.

12. SB26-184 - This bill would have expanded the kinds of cancer considered an occupational disease for firefighters, but Polis said the expansion could discourage fire departments from participating in a program designed to help firefighters with cancer treatment costs.

💸 In response to the state budget explainer I did last week, I got a lot of comments asking about waste, fraud and corruption.

The bottom line is that accountability in public spending is important, but it’s only part of the answer to Colorado’s budget problems.

It’s not like waste, fraud and corruption aren’t real issues. There was a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal in the state court system in recent years, and we’ve also seen a couple different recent cases of healthcare fraud reaching into the tens of millions of dollars.

But the scale of the waste, fraud and corruption is way, way smaller than the scale of the budget problems – we’re talking about amounts that are measured in millions of dollars versus the billions of dollars that advocates say are needed for things like education, healthcare and transportation.

Another thing is that the politicians that talk the most about waste, fraud and corruption tend to argue that the solution is to keep government spending to a minimum so taxpayers don’t get ripped off even more.

But there’s a flaw in that argument too. The solution to waste, fraud and corruption is to add or adjust accountability mechanisms to root out and prevent those problems.

Just keeping the budget small, on its own, doesn’t address any of those issues.

⚡ This week saw a new development in Xcel Energy’s request for what would be its largest-ever rate increase in Colorado.

The company offered to reduce its request to about 70% of the amount it originally sought, though that would still represent the largest rate increase ever.

Consumer advocates oppose the plan, and the public still has a chance to weigh in before and during a hearing scheduled for June 16.

⛓️‍💥 Next week’s newsletter will include a write-up based on a new video series focusing on prisons.

Colorado is home to the only supermax federal prison in the U.S., and its state prison system is approaching maximum capacity. Check out the series, which explores those issues and looks at potential reforms that could make prisons more humane.

Almost everybody agrees that Colorado’s state budget has problems.

Healthcare and other aid programs are getting cut while schools, public safety and transportation remain underfunded.

Some blame waste, fraud and corruption. But that’s only a small part of the story. The real causes are a lot more complicated.

I spent the last few weeks learning more about the basics of the budget here in Colorado, talking to experts and digging into economic research to better understand what’s going on with our tax money.

History of TABOR

If you pay taxes in Colorado, you’ve probably heard of TABOR, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

It’s the amendment to the state constitution that says the government has to run a balanced budget and send you a refund when it collects more taxes than it’s allowed to spend.

But TABOR’s tax and spending limits are at the core of Colorado’s budget problems, so understanding TABOR is fundamental for understanding everything else about the budget.

And to understand TABOR, you have to go back to the nationwide anti-tax movement that started in the mid-20th century.

People across the U.S. were feeling increasingly dissatisfied with how their taxes were being spent. Some of that was a bigoted backlash to the civil rights movement and government programs that helped people who were discriminated against. Some of it was a growing distrust of the government due to scandals like Watergate and the Vietnam War.

When the economy slowed down in the mid-1970s, a lot of people felt pushed to the brink by rising prices – so they looked to tax cuts for financial relief. Activists in California convinced voters to support an amendment to the state constitution that limited property taxes. And the success of that campaign inspired a wave of anti-tax initiatives in states across the country – including here in Colorado.

It took years of organizing and a few failed attempts to get TABOR passed here. But the constitutional amendment that voters finally approved by a small margin in 1992 is widely recognized as the most restrictive limitation on taxes and government spending of any state in the country.

“TABOR is the most consequential fiscal issue and policy in our state because it dictates everything else,” said Andrea Kuwik, an analyst at the Bell Policy Center, a progressive think tank.

What TABOR does

Think of the state budget under TABOR like a pie. You only get a single pie each year, so you have to decide how big of a slice to give to each program you want to fund. A bigger slice for one program means less for everything else.

And you can’t just make the pie as big as you want. TABOR limits the year-to-year expansion of the budget by tying it to two factors: the state’s population growth and the price of consumer goods.

On the surface, it sounds like that would allow the budget to adjust to changes in the economy. But in practice, government spending doesn’t always keep up.

One of the problems is that costs can grow more quickly for the government than for consumers.

Healthcare is a key example. It has become the biggest item in the state budget, in part because of big improvements in the quality of care that have caused prices in that sector to grow far faster than prices of other consumer goods. Expanding healthcare coverage to more Coloradans has also increased the overall expenditure.

“We don’t want to give that up because it increases the human flourishing of our society,” said Caroline Nutter, an analyst at the Colorado Fiscal Institute, a progressive think tank. “But high-quality healthcare comes at a cost, and that cost has increased far more than the price of groceries.”

Population growth is also an imperfect measure because it doesn’t account for the economic impacts of demographic changes. Population growth spurred by working-aged people moving into the state won’t have the same effects as an influx of young children or elderly retirees.

“Those populations cost more,” Nutter said. “They have healthcare costs and other costs that are just higher than your average 25-year-old full-time employee.”

How the budget got so complicated

Pretty soon after TABOR passed, the limits it placed on the state budget started to clash with Coloradans’ desire for greater government investment in certain areas.

In 2000, voters tried to give K-12 education more money by passing another constitutional amendment called Amendment 23, which mandated annual education spending increases. But after the start of a global economic crisis in 2008, lawmakers decided the state couldn’t afford to meet those requirements. So they created an accounting trick called the budget stabilization, or BS, factor that withheld billions in school funding over more than a decade.

Coloradans also voted for a big modification to TABOR in the wake of the economic downturn that followed 9/11 in the early 2000s.

Tax revenues fell because of the recession, but since the budget could only grow based on how big it was the previous year, this caused a “ratchet effect” where the budget got stuck at a lower baseline.

“The state couldn’t do any kind of counter-cyclical spending, which in economics is just the ability to inject money into the economy when the economy isn’t doing well. And it is a very proven and evidence-based way to respond to economic downturns,” Nutter said.

To deal with this issue, Coloradans passed Referendum C in 2005, which suspended TABOR’s budget growth limits for five years and eliminated the “ratchet effect.”

“Without that, it would have been billions and billions of dollars that would have been cut,” Kuwik said.

Why Colorado has so many fees

TABOR’s budget restrictions have also spurred lawmakers to turn some programs into government-owned businesses called state enterprises that generate the vast majority of their revenue through fees instead of taxes.

One example is the higher education system. In the mid-2000s, Colorado’s public colleges and universities converted to function as state enterprises, funded largely by tuition and federal grants.

Similarly, the state’s parks and wildlife agency is funded mostly by hunting and fishing license fees, park entrance fees and proceeds from lottery sales.

The patchwork nature of the state’s budget makes it hard to track exactly how the government is spending taxes, fees and money collected from various sources. That can generate distrust and contribute to the feeling that government services are inefficient, not worth paying for or in need of even stricter fiscal discipline.

“I see TABOR as a huge transparency problem,” Nutter said. “It’s not all in one place where the average person could look up what is the state budget, how we spend our money.”

On top of this, TABOR requires voter approval for new tax increases, which can warp voters’ perceptions of how heavy their tax burden really is. Colorado has some of the lowest tax rates in the country, but most Coloradans still feel their taxes are too high.

“They get asked these questions much more so than in other places, and so then it feels like you’re being taxed a lot,” Kuwik said.

Another important impact of TABOR was that it caused a shift toward higher local tax rates. Courts have ruled that local governments can get rid of TABOR’s tax limits if voters approve it, so local governments have raised taxes to fill gaps in state funding for things like childcare, transportation and housing.

“That creates a hodgepodge of inequities in certain places,” Kuwik said, pointing to the example of mountain resort communities that can impose taxes that mostly fall on visitors while other rural communities have to tax themselves to fund government programs.

“Who’s bearing the burden of the taxes becomes a challenging question,” Kuwik said.

Can Colorado’s budget be fixed?

This year’s $1.5 billion budget shortfall was mostly caused by new federal tax cuts that meant Colorado collected less state tax than expected.

But those recent tax cuts aren’t the only thing holding Colorado back from investing more in key areas like healthcare, education, transportation and public safety. TABOR’s budget restrictions are a big obstacle.

Politicians and advocates favoring smaller government often point to waste, fraud and corruption as major causes of Colorado’s budget problems. And there have been significant recent cases of healthcare fraud reaching into the tens of millions of dollars.

But reducing waste, fraud and corruption requires adjusting or adding accountability mechanisms. Simply keeping the budget small, without other measures, won’t solve those issues.

Colorado voters have shown a willingness to tweak TABOR’s limits when they’re seen as too strict. And advocates like Kuwik and Nutter see opportunities for reforms to TABOR that could make the budget more responsive to Coloradans’ needs while keeping state finances healthy.

Both of their organizations are backing a ballot initiative this fall that would allow the state to keep money above the TABOR cap to spend on K-12 education.

Progressive advocates are also backing a proposal that might be on our ballots this fall for a graduated income tax, under which people who earn less than $500,000 a year would pay a lower income tax rate than people with higher incomes. Under TABOR, everybody pays the same flat rate.

“A graduated income tax – getting more revenue into the system – is a really important step in trust and a really important step in showing people that government can be effective when it is adequately and sustainably funded,” Nutter said.

🤑 I spent much of this week doing research and talking to experts about Colorado’s state budget in preparation for a series of explainers about how the government is spending our tax money.

Taxes are one of the issues Coloradans care about the most, and if you know where to look, it’s not that hard to find the data.

What’s not so easy is digging into that data and finding out what it really means.

But that’s my job. So if you’ve got a question about the state budget or about how our tax dollars are spent, let me know and I’ll look into it.

Stay tuned for the budget explainers starting next week!

🏫 Colorado’s first “public Christian school” is dropping a discrimination lawsuit against the state and it could be forced to shut down under new rules lawmakers passed this year.

The school is called Riverstone Academy and it opened last August in Pueblo county.

The founders hoped they could provoke a lawsuit that would end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, and force the state to provide funding even though the school is explicitly religious.

But that didn’t go as planned. Right after the school opened, the county cited it for health and safety issues and the kids had to move into a nearby church.

The school did eventually sue the state over the funding issue, but now that lawsuit is over.

It’s probably not the end of the broader fight over public funding for religious schools – but it is the end of this particular battle.

📮 Voters in Colorado’s primary elections next month will choose among candidates largely selected by a small group of highly engaged political party actors, according to a new report from the progressive advocacy group Courageous Colorado.

The primaries are important because they decide which candidates will be on the final ballot this fall. And in heavily Democratic or Republican areas, the winner of the dominant party’s primary almost always wins the general election too.

But Colorado actually makes it way more complicated and difficult for candidates to get on the primary ballot than most other states.

Here, a lot of candidates qualify for the primaries by participating in a process called a caucus or assembly, which tend to be controlled by political party insiders.

And that could be making our politics more polarized. Even though most Colorado voters are independent, the candidates that end up on the primary ballots are often chosen by a small group of highly-engaged, political party actors.

The report calls this Colorado’s “democracy paradox” – the state makes it easy to vote, but it gives voters really narrow choices about who to vote for.

📨 Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who broke the law while investigating false claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, will get out of prison early after receiving clemency from Gov. Jared Polis.

Peters was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nearly 9 years in prison for crimes that included lying to get an unauthorized person access to the county’s electronic voting system during a software update, and ordering staff to turn off surveillance cameras that were supposed to monitor the update. Polis’ clemency decision will let her out on June 1.

The crimes occurred in early 2021, when lots of people were still falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election against Joe Biden. Oddly, Trump won Mesa County – the biggest county in Western Colorado – by a significant margin in that election.

Peters didn’t find any fraud in Mesa County, and there’s no evidence that fraud played any role in Biden’s victory in 2020.

Polis said Peters sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time, nonviolent offender. But many disagreed – including the Republican prosecutor who convicted her and Polis’ fellow Democrats, who formally censured him over the clemency decision.

🏥 Colorado’s Supreme Court ordered the state’s biggest children’s hospital to restore gender-affirming care for minors.

Children’s Hospital Colorado paused care last year – like dozens of other hospitals across the country – after the Trump administration called gender-affirming care bogus and threatened to cut off federal funding.

But Colorado’s Supreme Court said the pause likely discriminated against trans patients – and the threats of funding cut offs are only speculative.

The ruling only applies to Colorado, but it’s the latest — and maybe the biggest — legal win pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks on hospitals that provide gender-affirming care.

The case still has to go back to a lower court, so stay tuned for more updates.

🏗️ Local governments are moving ahead with temporary bans on new data center construction.

State lawmakers didn’t pass any new data center laws this year, even though they were lobbied hard by the tech sector, labor unions, environmentalists and other groups with competing interests.

Without new statewide guidance, local communities are temporarily banning new facilities to give them more time to come up with plans and regulations.

The city of Denver just approved a one-year pause on new data centers, and few other cities and counties either have passed or are considering similar measures.

Most Coloradans think data centers bring more problems than benefits. Pretty much everyone is worried about rising energy costs and environmental damage.

At the same time, data centers power pretty much everything we do online and they can also bring economic benefits. Colorado already has dozens of data centers – and there are plans to build even more.

But there’s a lot of disagreement about how to make sure they’re built and operate responsibly. Temporary bans aren’t a permanent solution, so this issue isn’t going away.

I’ve learned a lot in the month since I launched this newsletter, and it’s made me rethink how to best fulfill The Blanket’s mission of covering Colorado’s biggest challenges through a solutions and accountability lens.

To do that better, I plan to move away from daily updates and toward deeper, original reporting that provides more context and understanding.

My decision to start this newsletter and the related social media accounts coincidentally lined up with the closing months of Colorado’s legislative session, and over the past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time following the progress of various bills. That helped me learn more about how the political process works here, and it improved my understanding of what are the top issues on the minds of politicians, business leaders, activists and voters here in Colorado.

It also helped me get more familiar with the media landscape and realize that there are a lot of newsletters offering daily updates not unlike the ones I’ve been sending out here. Far fewer dive deep into the history and context of the issues facing our state and explain them from the bottom up. So that’s what I want to focus on moving forward.

I’ll also continue building my graphic design and video editing skills, and experimenting with different formats on social media. I’ve gotten good engagement on some of the videos I’ve made – especially considering I’m starting from absolute zero.

I’ve done high-volume, fast-paced news coverage before. But it’s not my passion and it’s not my strong suit – and I don’t think it’s what’s missing from the current news landscape in Colorado. I’m hoping this pivot will move The Blanket in a positive direction.

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ICE is still making unlawful arrests in Colorado, a federal judge ruled in an order requiring the agency to give agents additional legal training.

The judge ruled this week that ICE agents in Colorado aren’t complying with an order he issued last year telling them to stop making arrests without a warrant if they couldn’t prove the person was a flight risk according to the judge’s interpretation of federal law.

The order also required ICE to document its arrests so the court could monitor the agency’s compliance, but the judge said ICE hasn’t been doing that either – probably because most of the 200 ICE agents in the Denver field office haven’t received any training on the order and don’t know how to comply with it.

This issue of inadequate training for ICE officers has gained prominence over the past year because ICE has been on a hiring spree, more than doubling in size as it ramps up immigration enforcement in Colorado and across the country.

Some of the Colorado officers who didn’t understand the judge’s order had been on the job for years, raising questions about the adequacy of ICE’s training. During the recent hiring surge, training schedules for new ICE recruits were shortened from 72 to 42 days and whistleblowers claimed that standards were loosened to get more agents into the field making arrests.

Officials have insisted the training remained rigorous, but ICE recently said it would return to the longer, 72-day training schedule.

Need to Know

📚 Voters will have to decide this fall whether to allow the state to spend more tax money on education rather than returning it to taxpayers. Lawmakers passed a measure to include the question on the November ballot. It could provide hundreds of millions of dollars in additional education funding over the next ten years, though taxpayers might have to give up thousands of dollars in returns. (CPR, Denver Gazette, read the bill)

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 A state tax credit aimed at reducing child poverty will stop this year after Gov. Jared Polis threatened to veto a bill that would have funded the credit by raising taxes on corporations. Funding for the credit was disrupted by changes to the federal tax code that affected Colorado taxes. Lawmakers said Polis refused to sign the bill unless it included income tax cuts. (Denver Post, Colorado Sun, Colorado Newsline)

🧑‍⚖️ Law firms would be be barred from making financial deals with businesses not owned by attorneys under a bill that passed the legislature this week. The idea is to ensure that lawyer’s ethical duties to their clients don’t conflict with outside business pressures.(Sum & Substance, read the bill)

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Something Good

🤳 I probably wouldn’t describe social media as “something good” in a general sense, but if you’ve been enjoying this newsletter, you’ll probably like The Blanket’s social media accounts. We post most days on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and X. Help spread the word by following us, and liking and sharing our content!

Today is the last day for Colorado lawmakers to pass bills before this year’s legislative session ends, starting a 30-day countdown for the governor to veto bills he disagrees with.

In Colorado, bills that pass the General Assembly become law if the governor signs them, or automatically if he doesn’t give his signature or veto. The governor has to veto a bill within 10 days if the legislature is in session, and lawmakers can override the veto with a two-thirds vote. But once the legislative session ends, the governor has 30 days to veto a bill and that veto is final.

This poses an issue for at least one bill with widespread support among lawmakers that would require the governor’s office to disclose when it uses taxpayer money to try to influence proposed legislation. However, the bill moved through the process slowly, and Gov. Jared Polis is expected to veto it.

The end of this year’s legislative session came with a flurry of activity. Some of the highlights are recapped below.

Need to Know

🤖 A new framework for preventing AI discrimination is likely to become law once it gets Gov. Jared Polis’ signature. The new law will repeal and replace legislation passed two years ago that was never actually implemented due to pushback from the tech industry. The new law will require companies to disclose when they use AI in consequential decisions like medicine, housing, school and employment, and it will give Coloradans the right to appeal and review those decisions. (Denver Business Journal, Colorado Politics, read the bill) Separately, lawmakers are considering bills to limit the use of AI in health insurance decisions and mental health therapy, as well as a bill aimed at protecting people from potentially harmful interactions with AI chatbots – though little time remains to pass them before the legislative session ends. (Colorado Politics)

🗳️ Elections in Colorado will have some changes starting this fall. Gov. Jared Polis is likely to sign a bill aimed at countering potential interference from President Donald Trump’s administration. The bill would require election clerks to send out ballots earlier to avoid disruption to Colorado’s mail-based voting system, among other measures. (Colorado Sun, read the bill)

🏳️‍🌈 People who undergo so-called “conversion therapy” will be able to sue practitioners if they suffer harm from efforts to try to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill, which is expected to get Gov. Jared Polis’ signature, is a response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that struck down Colorado’s statewide ban on conversion therapy. (Daily Camera, April 1 newsletter, read the bill)

💡 The state utility regulator will remain a three-person board, despite a push by utility companies to expand it to five people in a bill that will renew the board’s authority for the next decade. The Public Utilities Commission, known as the PUC, oversees companies in power, telecommunications, transportation and other sectors. Its authority has to be renewed this year, offering opportunities to change how it functions. The companies argued more members would increase the board’s “ideological diversity,” but opponents said adding more commissioners could complicate decision-making. (Colorado Sun, April 29 newsletter, May 11 newsletter)

👷 Several worker protection measures are headed to the governor’s desk. One bill seeks to establish statewide standards that mirror federal requirements for employers to maintain generally safe conditions in the workplace, in response to declining workplace safety enforcement by President Donald Trump’s administration. Another bill would require large meatpacking plants to provide workers with adequate bathroom breaks and protective equipment. Another bill aims to improve data collection on worker injuries and illnesses related to extreme temperatures. (CPR, Colorado Newsline)

🖥️ No new statewide data center laws are coming to Colorado this year, after the failure of two competing bills – one aimed at incentivizing data center construction and another seeking to put environmental guardrails on the facilities. Lawmakers couldn’t find a compromise between trying to reap the economic benefits of data centers and addressing concerns around their impact on energy and the environment. (Colorado Newsline)

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Something Good

🐟 Over the weekend I tried a recipe for beer-battered fish and mushy peas from Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, with a homemade tartar sauce based on a James Beard Foundation recipe. Colorado isn’t really known for great seafood, but occasionally I get a craving for it and I often like to prepare it myself. This meal was simple and tasty, and it didn’t require expensive or super-fresh fish.

Colorado’s state utilities regulator won’t be able to force companies like Xcel Energy to fund infrastructure improvements by raising money from investors rather than consumers.

Lawmakers dropped a proposal from a bill they are working on to reauthorize the Public Utilities Commission, known as the PUC, which sets rules for power, telecommunications, transportation and other companies that we all use every day.

The proposal would have allowed the PUC to require companies like Xcel to raise money from investors through sales of bonds that the utility would later pay back, plus interest. As it stands, the PUC can recommend that process, known as “securitization,” but companies can ignore the commission and try to pass costs onto consumers in the form of higher rates instead.

Consumer advocates say securitization keeps costs down for consumers, while utilities argue it cuts into their profits.

Xcel is currently asking the PUC to approve a new electricity rate increase that would add about 10% to Colorado consumers’ bills. That hike would amount to a 33% increase since 2023. The company says the increases are needed to pay for infrastructure improvements, wildfire mitigation and cleaner energy generation.

Need to Know

💰 Gov. Jared Polis signed the state’s budget for the next fiscal year on Friday. The budget makes big cuts to healthcare assistance in order to comply with the state constitution’s limits on taxes and government spending. Many other programs also saw cuts, though education funding was largely spared. (Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics, previous newsletters: April 2, April 7, April 10, April 23)

🏥 Big businesses won’t have to pay more to support Colorado workers’ healthcare aid after lawmakers shot down a bill that opponents argued could push companies to avoid hiring workers who need healthcare assistance. Others said it could violate the state constitution’s tax restrictions. The bill would have made companies with more than 500 employees pay $2,300 per year (roughly half the average cost of Medicaid) for each employee working more than 20 hours a week who uses state healthcare assistance. (Sum & Substance, March 26 newsletter, read the bill)

🖥️ New data center regulations have proven difficult to move forward in the state legislature due to strong disagreements between pro-business and pro-environment camps. A bill that would have offered tax incentives to attract data center development died last week even though supporters added provisions aimed at addressing environmental and consumer concerns. A separate bill focused on establishing environmental guardrails for data centers is still in the works, and it could be amended to include more incentives to lure data center construction, but it has a short window to pass before the legislative session ends this week. (Colorado Sun, Sum & Substance, March 27 newsletter, read the bill)

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Something Good

🤠 Over the weekend I went to the Buffalo Bill museum and grave in Golden and found it way more interesting than I thought it would be. Two things struck me: One was the relatively progressive values held by one of the most legendary figures of the American West. (Bill’s dad was stabbed for speaking out against slavery, and Bill himself publicly backed women’s right to vote and equal pay – though he had a complicated relationship with Native Americans.) I also found it interesting that near the end of his career, Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West” shows paired up with Pawnee Bill’s “Far East” shows to create a “congress of rough riders of the world.” It seems like Buffalo Bill almost did too good a job of bringing his showcase of the American West to the global public. After a couple decades, the mythical image he helped create was no longer exotic enough to draw audiences on its own.

Groups with ties to the national Democratic Party are funding efforts to redraw Colorado’s congressional election maps to favor Democratic candidates.

Colorado currently has an even split of Democratic and Republican representatives in the U.S. House – four from each party. But Democrats want to ask voters to approve new maps that would give the party a good chance to take seven of the eight seats in 2028 and 2030.

The redistricting effort has raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars this year, mostly from two groups that have ties to the national Democratic Party but don’t disclose their donors, according to a recent public filing that the Colorado Sun first reported.

Colorado’s current map was drawn by an independent redistricting commission that voters approved in 2018. The Democratic redistricting proposal would change the maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections, before returning to the independent system.

The campaign funding revelations highlight Colorado’s place in a broader national fight over election maps, which entered a new phase last week after the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to draw maps that dilute the power of racial minority voters. Republicans in Colorado and other states have also been trying to redraw maps to favor their party.

Need to Know

👶 A controversial plan to shore up state childcare aid was voted down on Wednesday by a legislative committee. The bill would have allowed state-run businesses to put money in riskier investments with higher potential returns, directing the profits to bolster aid programs that have frozen enrollment and left thousands of families without childcare. Opponents argued the plan could violate state laws against investing public money in corporations. (Denver Post, May 6 newsletter, read the bill)

⚕️ Lawmakers are looking for new ways to fund a program that helps Coloradans afford health insurance on the individual market, after dropping a proposal to charge health insurance companies $40 million in fees that they would pass onto consumers. The program needs to raise about $140 million to avoid thousands of people potentially losing coverage. (Sum & Substance, May 5 newsletter)

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Something Good

🐕‍🦺 My co-working companion (aka my dog Maya) is happy to be back in the office after a snowstorm-related internet outage disrupted our normal routine. She has been doing a great job covering the urban wildlife and delivery worker beats for The Blanket, and we’re working on setting up a live feed of her barking news alerts. We’ll report back with an update soon.

The Trump administration has sued Colorado and the city of Denver over their bans on semiautomatic and high-capacity guns, citing the Second Amendment.

The federal government sued Denver on Tuesday and filed a similar suit against Colorado on Wednesday, after city and state leaders refused demands to repeal laws prohibiting semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines like those used in some of the state’s deadliest mass shootings.

Multiple studies have shown that bans like these can significantly reduce the number of people killed by mass shooters. But gun rights advocates have been testing the legality of high-capacity magazine bans in several states in recent years, and the issue could soon be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Need to Know

🔎 Groups of lawmakers known as legislative caucuses can keep their donors secret. A now-abandoned proposal would have required public, quarterly reports listing the funders of these groups. Opponents said it could discourage caucuses from coming together to discuss important policy issues. One lawmaker proposed making caucus funding part of the Secretary of State’s campaign finance oversight. (Colorado Sun, Denver Post, read the bill)

🏟️ A new group is coming together to negotiate with the Broncos football team on behalf of Denver residents who will be impacted by a huge new stadium and entertainment district project in the west Denver area known as Burnham Yard. Communities near the planned mega-project have voiced concerns about economic displacement and quality of life disruptions. (Denver Post, Axios)

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🤓 Shout out to local libraries – in particular the Belmar branch of the Jefferson County public library system. The snowstorm knocked out my internet yesterday, but I was able to get online at the library and work from this room that has an amazing view of Belmar park. It was another great reminder of the importance of these public spaces.

Childcare assistance in Colorado could get a funding boost under a contentious proposal to allow state-run businesses to put money in riskier investments with higher potential returns.

Lawmakers are trying to find money for Colorado’s struggling Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, which has had to freeze enrollment in many counties, leaving thousands of primarily lower-income families without childcare.

The proposal would allow businesses owned and operated by the state — funded mostly by fees rather than taxes — to invest some of their money into portfolios that provide higher returns but come with more risk. The money earned from those investments would be directed toward CCAP. Currently, funds are kept in safer, lower-yield investments overseen by the state Treasury.

The proposal wouldn’t be an immediate fix. Money wouldn’t flow for at least two years while the investment fund builds up a reserve. And some critics have raised concerns that the plan might violate state laws that prohibit investing public money in corporate stocks, which means it could spark lawsuits if it’s passed.

Need to Know

🔫 The Trump administration sued the city of Denver over its ban on assault weapons. The lawsuit filed on Tuesday claims the city’s prohibition on large-capacity firearms violates the Second Amendment. Denver officials said they stand by the law and believe it will hold up in court. (Denverite, read the lawsuit) On Monday, Gov. Jared Polis signed a state law banning 3D printing of guns and gun parts. (Denver Post, read the law)

🧑‍🌾 Farmworkers in Colorado will have to work eight more hours a week before they get overtime pay under a law signed Monday by Gov. Jared Polis. A Colorado law passed in 2021 set the state’s overtime threshold at 48 hours for most agricultural workers and 56 hours for “highly seasonal” employees who may take time off between seasons. Now, all farmworkers must work at least 56 per week to earn overtime. (Denver Post, March 25 newsletter, read the law)

🏘️ State lawmakers ditched two proposals to increase housing density after facing opposition from local officials and neighborhood groups in various cities. The abandoned bills would have allowed residential property owners to split their lots in two and build homes on lots as small as 2,000 square feet. Proponents argued the bills would help lower housing costs, but opponents said they would take away localities’ ability to decide their own housing policies. (Colorado Sun, April 21 newsletter, read the lot-splitting bill, read the lot size bill)

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🚭 I really enjoyed this story from CPR about students and educators leading efforts to reduce vaping among young people in Colorado. The campaigns are funded by millions of dollars from the vape-maker Juul, which paid to settle a lawsuit by Colorado and other states over allegations the company illegally marketed to kids. As someone who started using tobacco as a teen and went through the difficult process of quitting as an adult, I can attest to the importance of these kinds of prevention campaigns.

Workers in Colorado will likely continue to face an obstacle to unionization that doesn’t exist in other states, even though lawmakers have once again passed a bill to get rid of it.

Forming a union in Colorado requires workers to take two votes: first, a simple majority of workers has to agree to form the union, then three-quarters of workers have to approve the union’s authority to collect dues from workers’ paychecks.

No other state requires that second vote, though about half of states make it illegal to require workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

Colorado lawmakers passed a bill to end the second-vote requirement last week, with some pointing out that unions help workers bargain for better wages and working conditions. But Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a similar bill last year and is expected to veto this one too, saying it doesn’t represent a compromise between labor and business.

Unions can’t really function without collecting dues from members, so the second-vote requirement represents a big hurdle for workers trying to bargain collectively with their employers. It’s part of the reason why Colorado has one of the lowest unionization rates in the country.

Need to Know

🤖 Colorado consumers could get protections from AI discrimination that look different from what lawmakers originally intended. A new bill would repeal and replace a law passed two years ago that was never actually implemented due to pushback from the tech industry. The new proposal would require companies to disclose when they use AI in consequential decisions like medicine, housing, school and employment, and it would give Coloradans the right to appeal and review those decisions. But unlike the current law, it wouldn’t force AI companies to report on the potential for discrimination or disclose how their systems work. (Colorado Sun, Sum & Substance, Axios, read the bill)

⛓️ Several proposals to reduce overcrowding in Colorado’s prison system are advancing in the state legislature. The measures include making more prisoners eligible to earn time off their sentence, lowering the prison population threshold at which the parole board would have to consider more people for release, and allowing the state parole board to approve releases of certain people who committed crimes when they were under 21 if the governor doesn’t act. Lawmakers have also considered a request by Gov. Jared Polis to open a new prison. (Colorado Sun/CPR, April 2 newsletter, read the earned time bill, read the juvenile offender bill, read the overcrowding bill)

⚕️ Health insurance companies could pass $40 million in fees onto Colorado customers next year under a plan to fund a struggling health care affordability program. State lawmakers are advancing a bill to raise $140 million for the program through $100 million in bond sales and $40 million in fees on insurers, which the companies said they’ll pass onto consumers. Supporters say the plan will prevent thousands from losing coverage, while critics warn it unfairly raises costs for customers and could face legal challenges. (CBS Colorado, Sum & Substance, read the bill)

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🛸 I’ve been rewatching the classic 90s TV show “The X-Files” and thinking a lot about my experience as a Millennial kid living through the era of dial-up Internet, brick phones, and big, boxy suits. For that reason, I really enjoyed this essay by a Gen Z author reflecting on their perceptions of the show’s portrayal of that time from the perspective of someone who didn’t experience it themselves. I was surprised at how much I identified with their observations, even though we’re coming to the show from totally different viewpoints.