Colorado voters will decide this election season whether to force local law enforcement to help federal immigration officials, as the Trump administration continues its unpopular mass deportation efforts.

The ballot measure, known as Amendment 81, would change Colorado’s constitution to require law enforcement to determine the immigration status of anyone charged with a violent crime and anyone charged with any crime if they were previously convicted of a felony.

If local cops can’t confirm that the person charged has lawful immigration status, they would have to report them to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Amendment 81 is backed by conservative activist networks that are behind a majority of this year’s ballot measures.

The backers have mounted virtually no public campaign to promote the measure, but Republican candidates and supporters are promoting it in their voting guides, according to Christina Adams, the president of the Eagle County Republican Women Club, which is one of the measure’s registered supporters.

“It’s because of all the people that have been murdered by illegal aliens,” Adams told The Blanket. “People want to be safe and secure.”

When pushed for specifics on the connection between crime and immigration, Adams tried and failed to look up supporting statistics while on the phone with The Blanket. She then recounted an anecdote of an assault she said one of her friends experienced before abruptly ending the call.

Research has consistently found that unauthorized immigrants do not increase crime rates.

An opposition campaign that launched last week has countered that Amendment 81 could harm rather than help public safety efforts.

“We’ve seen aggressive enforcement actions here in Colorado that impact everyone,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, the main organization behind the opposition campaign along with the ACLU of Colorado.

Community concerns

Colorado appears to have little appetite for increased cooperation with ICE.

Two-thirds of Coloradans polled in March said that they worry ICE might be detaining the wrong people. That fits into a broader national sentiment of disagreement with the Trump administration’s deportation drive and distrust toward the federal immigration agency whose officers have killed several U.S. citizens this year.

Current law allows – but does not require – Colorado law enforcement to cooperate with ICE in criminal cases, though it restricts cooperation on civil immigration enforcement.

While some Colorado law enforcement agencies choose to cooperate with ICE, some have tried to distance themselves from the federal agency.

Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said earlier this year that his officers would intervene if they saw ICE agents using excessive force. Gunnison County Sheriff Adam Murdie said last month that he would stop working with ICE after hearing concerns from community members.

Forcing law enforcement to work with ICE could degrade trust between communities and local authorities, Larimer and Jackson county District Attorney Gordon McLaughlin said at the opposition campaign launch last week.

“If victims in the community do not trust that we are fighting for them, they do not pick up the phone, they do not make that call, they do not come into court, they do not report their abuser. That means that law enforcement cannot do our jobs to support victims and keep our community safe,” McLaughlin said.

The statewide associations representing sheriffs and district attorneys have not taken an official position on the measure.

Cost concerns

Opponents of Amendment 81 also say it could increase costs for taxpayers.

Neither the opposition campaign nor analysts who work for the state government cite specific estimates, but both agree that local law enforcement would need additional resources to comply with the requirement to determine the immigration status of the criminal suspects covered by the amendment.

“I can’t imagine that this would not be a huge impact on municipalities,” said Ariane Frosh, policy counsel at the ACLU of Colorado.

Trump’s immigration agenda is already costing Colorado taxpayers thousands of dollars each due to a massive federal funding increase over the past two years, according to an estimate from the progressive Economic Policy Institute think tank.

But the benefits of that spending are far from clear.

Colorado’s relatively high violent crime rates declined last year, following long-term national trends. But only a small share of people recently arrested by immigration authorities have had violent criminal records, making it unlikely that ramped-up ICE activity under Trump contributed to the decrease.

The federal immigration enforcement drive is also disrupting labor supplies in some industries and removing economically productive immigrants from the country – undermining the administration’s arguments that deportations will help the economy.

NEED TO KNOW

⚕️ The rising cost of Medicaid is crowding out other public programs in Colorado’s state budget, meaning more cuts to healthcare aid are likely coming. Medicaid spent $158 million more than it budgeted for last year, and projections show that figure could increase to $443 million this year. (CPR News / John Daley, 9News / Marshall Zellinger, read our explainer on how the state budget works)

💸 Backers of two anti-trans ballot measures paid to gather signatures to get their measures on the ballot, but didn’t report those payments to state election authorities as the law requires, according to a complaint filed by opponents of the measures. (Colorado Times Recorder / Jamie O’Rourke, read our coverage of the ballot measures)

🧐 Supporters of a ballot measure to implement a graduated income tax in Colorado used paid signature gatherers who weren’t properly registered to get their measure on the ballot, according to a lawsuit filed by opponents. (The Sum & Substance / Ed Sealover)

🔥 Wildfire prevention and mitigation efforts could combine multiple strategies to improve their effectiveness, according to two Colorado-based researchers. Experts sometimes disagree over whether the “best” approach is to quickly suppress fires when they break out, prevent fires by clearing fuel, or manage fires to control how they burn. But the researchers say the various camps should work together to design more holistic strategies. (The Conversation / Tony Cheng and Matt Thompson)

⚖️ Colorado’s state Supreme Court is pausing mandatory livestreaming of criminal proceedings for 90 days while it seeks solutions for repeated intentional disruptions and misuse of the videos. State law dating back to 2023 requires courts to livestream criminal proceedings. But Chief Justice Monica Márquez said that the streams have been illegally recorded and posted on social media, and that viewers have harassed court participants, undermining the integrity of the judicial process. (Denver Post / Shelly Bradbury, read the Supreme Court directive)

🖊️ The Colorado secretary of state’s office is taking action on fraudulent business registrations under a law that went into effect in August. Officials marked nearly 13,000 entities as fraudulent and deleted more than 10,000 others over the last month, using expanded powers in the new law to target fraud networks using fake companies to cover their tracks. (Denver Gazette / Mark Samuelson, read the secretary of state’s press release)

FOLLOWING UP

🔍 I mentioned last week that I’d be doing more “ask me anything” videos. Here’s the latest installment. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about “bias” in my reporting, so I decided to lay out what I think about it. Let me know your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Colorado voters will decide on two ballot measures this fall that could impact trans kids’ ability to participate in sports and receive gender-affirming healthcare.

The measures, known as propositions 134 and 135, come as Colorado is fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to force schools to abandon trans-inclusive policies and hospitals to stop providing gender-affirming care for trans kids.

Both ballot measures would implement policies that are in line with the Trump administration’s agenda.

Colorado has high levels of support for pro-LGBTQ policies, suggesting the measures could face an uphill battle at the polls.

“They’re kind of anti-Colorado,” said Bruce Parker, the executive director of the non-profit advocacy group Rocky Mountain Equality, which is opposing the measures. “I’m just not interested in it and I don’t think the state is either.”

Watch the full interview with Parker below 👇

Who is behind the ballot measures?

The conservative activists Erin Lee of Protect Kids Colorado and Michele Austin of Protect Our Children are behind both anti-trans ballot measures.

Lee and Austin are also the backers of a third ballot measure that would require lifetime prison sentences for child sex trafficking convictions. The Blanket reported last week that tougher penalties may not be the best way to address that issue.

Neither Austin nor Protect Our Children maintain much of a public profile, but Protect Kids Colorado advertises that its mission is to “mobilize the people of Colorado and the Church to engage with biblical and biological truth.”

Lee said she shares her organization’s “biblical worldview” but denied the measures are inspired by Christian beliefs.

“I’m not ashamed of being a Christian, but I can’t emphasize enough that we are a we-the-people grassroots movement, where absolutely everyone is welcome,” she said.

Watch the full interview with Lee below 👇

How would Proposition 134 impact trans kids in sports?

All school sports in Colorado, from elementary through the collegiate level, would be impacted by proposition 134.

The measure would ban transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams, and it would only allow transgender boys to play on boys teams if there’s no girls team to play on. Co-ed teams would remain open to any student.

Schools would be required to adopt policies for determining athletes’ biological sex, which Lee suggested could include DNA testing in the form of a cheek swab.

“Any person who plays sports has to go through a sports physical,” she said. “This would be the least invasive part of that private sex test in the privacy of your doctor’s office.”

The supporters of the measure say it’s meant to ensure fairness and safety for athletes. But multiple studies in recent years have found little evidence of competitive advantages for trans athletes.

Opponents say excluding trans students from school sports puts kids who are already vulnerable to bullying and discrimination at even greater risk.

“It sends a message to their peers that they’re not equal and that they’re different – and it’s dangerous,” Parker said.

How would Proposition 135 impact trans kids’ healthcare?

Doctors would be banned from performing surgeries “altering the biological sex characteristics” of children, if proposition 135 passes. The measure contains exemptions for circumcision and people “born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development.”

The measure’s backers point to a lack of consensus in the medical community about whether gender surgeries are appropriate for minors. But it is important to note that major medical associations agree that transgender youth should receive gender-affirming care short of surgery.

Gender surgeries for minors appear to be extremely rare in the United States.

Lee said her support for the ban on gender surgeries for minors is informed by her experience of her own child identifying as transgender.

“I have been bullied by medical professionals who said, if you don’t put your child on a medical pathway to transition, she will commit suicide. And that is an impossible position to put parents in,” she said. “I knew it was not right for my daughter.”

Opponents say the measure would interfere with decisions that should be made by families and their doctors, and some warn it could be a step toward further attacks on healthcare for trans people.

“I think that anyone who thinks that this is just about trans youth surgeries is not paying attention,” Parker said. “They’re going to go after the ability to make that decision for adults next.”

NEED TO KNOW

⏱️ Term limits for Colorado legislators implemented in the 1990s have prevented lawmakers from accumulating experience that could make them more effective. A data analysis, combined with a social science research review, found term limits here led to “a weaker legislative branch that is less capable of meeting the complex challenges that the state faces.” (Colorado’s Political Landscape / Brad Jones)

🍃 Colorado marijuana regulators are slow to take action on potentially harmful products, and retailers use loopholes to keep selling them after they’re identified. The state’s rules for ensuring the safety of marijuana products are also more lax than those in other states. (Denver Gazette and ProPublica / Christopher Osher and Evan Wyloge)

🌲 Coloradans are fighting back against the Trump administration’s ramped-up sales of land leases for oil and gas drilling. A pair of wilderness protection groups is suing the administration, and rural residents are banding together to pressure the federal Department of the Interior to stop or slow the sales. (Colorado Newsline / Chase Woodruff, Colorado Sun / Mark Jaffe)

🔬 Missy Woods, a former forensic scientist for Colorado’s state crime lab, was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges related to manipulating over 1,000 DNA tests over nearly three decades working with the agency. (See our previous coverage)

COMING UP

👋 The Blanket’s audience has been growing steadily over the past few months, so I’m taking the opportunity to reintroduce myself to all the new folks. In the video below, I give my two-minute local news reporter origin story. It’s part of an ongoing series of “ask me anything” videos where I answer your questions about how I do my work. Let me know if there’s something you want me to talk about in a future installment.

Coloradans will decide this fall whether to require lifetime prison sentences for child sex trafficking convictions, even though tougher penalties may not be the best way to address the issue.

Popular portrayals of child sex trafficking have reinforced stereotypes of victims as young girls kidnapped at random by strangers, but in reality traffickers often have close relationships with their victims, like family members or significant others. Many traffickers use social media to recruit and groom their targets.

Child sex trafficking and human trafficking may have increased in Colorado since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Colorado-based Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking, the National Human Trafficking Hotline and law enforcement statistics reported to the FBI.

Sex trafficking accounts for the majority of human trafficking cases, and over three-quarters of sex trafficking victims in Colorado in the last ten years have been under the age of 20, according to the FBI data. Women and girls accounted for roughly nine out of ten victims.

A lot of human trafficking goes unreported, meaning the numbers are likely an undercount. On the other hand, an increase in reports might reflect greater public awareness or increased attention from law enforcement, rather than an actual increase in these crimes. Organizations also track data in different ways, which can make comparisons across data sets unreliable.

While it’s difficult to know whether child sex trafficking in Colorado is getting worse, a conservative activist group called Protect Kids Colorado argues that the state’s current laws are too lax. The group is promoting ballot measure 108, which would mandate life sentences for anyone convicted of child sex trafficking.

“Really the goal here is to be a deterrent – to make sure people know, perpetrators know that, you know, this is not a child trafficking friendly state,” the group’s co-founder, Erin Lee, said.

Watch the full interview with Lee 👇

What would the ballot measure do?

Ballot initiative 108 would require a life sentence without the possibility of parole for people convicted of child sex trafficking. The measure does not change the penalties for any other human trafficking crimes, including child labor trafficking.

The change would apply to only about three convictions per year, according to estimates by non-partisan analysts who work for the state legislature. Because of that small scale, the measure wouldn’t generate a significant cost to the state budget – an estimated $100,000 over the next 15 years.

Current law provides for sentences between eight and 24 years for child sex trafficking, though the actual time people spend in prison can be longer due to sentencing enhancements and multi-count convictions.

Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty emphasized his belief that human trafficking crimes deserve harsh punishments, and he said current laws already allow for sending perpetrators to prison for long stretches that are sometimes effectively life sentences.

“We’ve never had – not once – a human trafficking case where we’re able to secure conviction where we’re left thinking, this person, we wish we could have sent this person to prison for longer,” Dougherty said.

Lee and other supporters of the measure say the requirement for life sentences without parole would more strongly deter child sex trafficking. But research shows the perceived likelihood of getting caught and prosecuted for a crime plays a bigger role in deterrence than the severity of the eventual penalty.

“Merely upping criminal penalties to the maximum level like this bill does, doesn’t by itself effectively deter,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh said. “I’d rather prosecute a hundred 10-year-penalty cases in this world than two life-without-parole cases, because we’re going to have a bigger impact if we do.”

Concerns about the ballot initiative

Experts who work with victims and study human trafficking say measure 108’s severe penalties could be applied to victims who are forced or coerced into helping their traffickers recruit other people.

Current law says victims can use their victimization as a defense in court. Prosecutors also have the discretion to avoid bringing charges against victims, and the governor has the power to issue pardons.

But even if victims aren’t actually charged or convicted, traffickers may misrepresent the law to dissuade them from coming forward.

Amanda Finger, the co-founder of the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking, said her organization already deals with this issue.

“We’re hearing people’s experiences of exploitation but fear to report,” she said.

Watch the full interview with Finger 👇

Another concern is that measure 108 could face legal obstacles in its implementation based on the argument that it is unfair to treat child sex trafficking so much more harshly than other human trafficking crimes.

“That will get a challenge on equal protection grounds that, you know, we’re going to have to be litigating probably for years and will only throw further uncertainty into our ability to prosecute these cases,” Denver District Attorney Walsh said.

What works to fight human trafficking

Many traffickers take advantage of people with unmet economic and social needs, so reducing vulnerabilities like financial precarity, housing insecurity and family instability can help with prevention.

Expanding victim services and using trauma-informed practices can foster the conditions for people to feel safe coming forward and asking for help.

Finger and other advocates have been working to train healthcare workers, educators, law enforcement officers and prosecutors in Colorado on how to work together to help victims heal and seek justice while minimizing the chances of retraumatizing them.

Education can also help victims and their loved ones recognize trafficking and learn where they can get help.

“Every training we’ve done with youth, there’s been some disclosure of an attempt – of someone they knew or of themselves – who experienced exploitation that would rise to the level of labor or sex trafficking,” Finger said.

She said conversations like those can help people recognize exploitation and connect with support.

“That makes a difference when you can have the conversations and just know where to turn,” she said.

NEED TO KNOW

💸 Republican candidate Victor Marx’s campaign for governor is facing a potentially historic fine for alleged fundraising violations. State officials are seeking to fine the campaign over $50,000 for allegedly collecting contributions above legal limits. The campaign could also have to return the excess money or donate it to an unaffiliated charity. Marx has denied intentional wrongdoing and said he will fight the charges, which will be decided at a hearing this month. (9News, August 7 newsletter)

🏳️‍⚧️ Colorado and 20 other states are suing the federal government over a new rule meant to block federal funding for gender-affirming care. The states argue the feds don’t actually have the authority to enforce the rule and that it conflicts with laws requiring states to cover medically necessary treatments. (Erin in the Morning / Erin Reed, Colorado Attorney General’s Office, July 3 newsletter)

🤡 The most powerful conservative activist group in the state, Advance Colorado, dodged my attempts to interview them about a ballot measure they’re supporting, then stole a graphic from the article I published about it. I lay out the full story in this video.

🤓 I attended the Local News Solutions conference in the Denver area last week, and these are my biggest takeaways:

1.) High-quality journalism is not enough; local reporting has to be relevant and actionable in addition to being accurate and timely.

2.) Local reporting has to meet audiences where they’re at, in multimedia formats and styles that they prefer.

3.) There’s still a lot of resistance in Colorado local media to adapting to changes in audience preferences. Many recognize the need to try new things, but few seem to be willing to invest in bold experiments.

I explain my thoughts more fully in this video.

COMING UP

🗳️ Colorado voters will decide 13 ballot measures this fall, covering issues ranging from tax policy and public safety to transgender rights and conservation. Here’s a breakdown of what each measure proposes and who supports it.

The conservative activist group Advance Colorado is backing six of the measures.

Measure 85 would increase penalties for low-level fentanyl offenses. I reported last week on why it likely would not reduce overdose deaths in Colorado.

Measure 95 would require Colorado law enforcement agencies to notify federal immigration authorities when they charge an undocumented person with a crime. Some agencies, including the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office, have said they do not want to cooperate with ICE, but this measure would leave them no choice.

Measure 177 would amend the state constitution to establish a right to buy and sell natural gas. Opponents say the initiative could undermine health and safety protections. I’m actively reporting on this one and will have more information soon.

Measure 234 would prohibit ballot measures from using language above an eighth-grade reading level. And measure 256 would prevent state officials from redrawing congressional districts to favor a particular political party. I’m still looking into these.

The sixth measure backed by Advance Colorado is measure 232, which would maintain Colorado’s income tax rate at 4.4% for all taxpayers. The initiative is intended to counter measure 195, which would create a graduated income tax system. Under initiative 195, taxes would decrease for Coloradans earning less than $500,000 per year and increase for individuals and businesses earning more than that. I covered measure 195, which is sponsored by the progressive group Protect Colorado’s Future, in a previous post.

Three other ballot measures are backed by the conservative activist group Protect Kids Colorado.

Measure 108, discussed in this newsletter above, would require judges to impose life sentences on anyone convicted of trafficking a minor.

Measure 109 would bar transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, while Measure 110 would ban gender-affirming surgeries for minors. I’ll have a report on those measures in the coming weeks.

Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management is backing measure 302, which would amend the state constitution to establish a right to hunt and fish using “traditional methods.” Hunting and fishing are already legal in Colorado, and opponents say the measure could interfere with wildlife management.

Keep It Colorado is supporting measure 308, which would direct taxes from sports-equipment sales toward conservation. I don’t know much about these conservation issues, but I’ll see if I can squeeze in some reporting on them before the election.

The final initiative is measure 362, which is backed by conservative activists and would require Coloradans to verify their identities in order to vote by mail. Opponents say the measure would make voting more difficult without improving election security.

Stay tuned for more on these initiatives as we head toward the election.

Colorado voters will decide this fall whether to enact stricter penalties for possessing and distributing fentanyl, even though harsher punishments are unlikely to address increasing overdose deaths.

Colorado started seeing an increase in overdose deaths related to fentanyl and other synthetic opioid drugs in late 2024, even as overdose death rates at the national level continued a decline that started in 2023.

The factors behind the changing overdose rates are complex. The nationwide decline likely stems from a combination of decreased fentanyl production by organized crime, increased seizures by law enforcement, greater drug tolerance among users, and improved access to addiction treatment and overdose-reversing medications.

The reasons why Colorado is defying that national trend are murky. But the data – and the devastating human stories of fentanyl addiction and overdoses – have become talking points for the conservative, billionaire-backed advocacy group Advance Colorado, which is pushing the dubious idea that the stiffer penalties proposed by ballot initiative 85 would deter drug trafficking and drug use.

Advance Colorado did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

What is fentanyl?

Fentanyl was first developed in the mid-20th century as a painkiller, and for decades its use was mostly limited to legitimate medical settings.

In more recent years, however, criminal organizations figured out how to manufacture and traffic the drug illegally to meet a growing demand for opioids in the United States, spurred in part by overprescription of legal painkillers.

Illicitly produced fentanyl was a big driver of a spike in drug overdose deaths in the United States that started in the mid-2010s and continued until 2023.

Not only are synthetic opioids extremely potent, but the quality and purity of underworld drugs can vary greatly from batch to batch, making it difficult for users to administer consistent dosages. Moreover, fentanyl is sometimes mixed into other illegal drugs, so some users may not even be aware that they are consuming it.

The rapid and substantial increase in overdose deaths across the country in the 2010s and early 2020s contributed to the spread of misinformation about fentanyl and spurred many states including Colorado to enact harsher penalties for the drug. At the end of 2025, the Trump administration labeled illicit fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction.”

What would the ballot measure do?

Ballot initiative 85 would increase the penalties for people who possess and distribute smaller amounts of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, without increasing penalties for the most prolific traffickers.

Under current law, possession of less than a gram of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids is a misdemeanor and criminal charges for distribution get more severe for distributing larger amounts of the drug.

If voters pass initiative 85, it would change the current law and make it a felony to possess any amount of fentanyl. That could include drug users who aren’t even aware of fentanyl mixed into other drugs.

Initiative 85 would also apply the harshest trafficking charges available for the distribution of any amount of fentanyl. That would mean that someone who shared a single dose of fentanyl with a friend would face the same potential prison sentence of 8 to 32 years as a trafficker moving large amounts of the drug.

The measure does not provide any additional funding for prevention or treatment of fentanyl addiction and overdoses, though it does mandate treatment for people who are convicted on drug charges.

What could be the consequences?

The measure, if passed, likely would not reduce overdose death rates in Colorado.

A state-commissioned report published in 2024 found that a 2022 law that increased penalties for fentanyl possession in Colorado “did not change” drug overdose death rates. Moreover, those harsher penalties have failed to prevent the increase in overdoses observed since the study was published.

Some experts warn that ratcheting up penalties even more could cause overdose deaths to increase further, in part because users will be more afraid to reach out for help.

The measure could also cost Colorado millions of dollars per year, according to nonpartisan analysts who work for the state legislature.

The increased penalties for fentanyl possession and distribution would send hundreds more Coloradans to prison each year, the analysts estimate. Not only would that further stress a system that is already near capacity, it would also redirect more resources toward incarceration that could otherwise be used for programs to prevent and treat problematic drug use.

Many experts have argued for years that drug addiction and overdoses should be treated as a public health problem rather than as a criminal issue.

“If the war on drugs worked in the 80s and 90s, there wouldn’t be a drug problem,” said Kyle Giddings, the deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “We have learned from history that increasing penalties just doesn’t work.”

Watch the full interview with Giddings 👇

NEED TO KNOW

💧 Colorado will not face mandatory water restrictions under a new, short-term federal water management plan for the Colorado River. The federal government’s two-year plan released last week spared Colorado and the other “upper basin” states of Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — where most of the river’s water originates — while imposing cuts on the “lower basin” states of Arizona, Nevada and California that use more water. The two groups of states have struggled to reach an agreement on how to manage the river, which some measurements show is at record lows after a historically hot and dry winter. (Colorado Sun / Shannon Mullane, Colorado Newsline / Chase Woodruff)

📚 Colorado’s most controversial education cooperative is dissolving after 13 years. Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES, attracted scrutiny recently over its involvement in the launch of a “public Christian school” aimed at testing laws against public funding for religious education as well as its creation of dozens of homeschool enrichment programs that used public money to pay for a wide variety of activities including ski trips and sports camps. ERBOCES was one of 21 co-ops formed by school districts statewide to offer educational programs that a single district might not be able to provide. The co-ops need at least two members, and one of ERBOCES’ last two members voted last week to disband it. (Chalkbeat / Ann Schmike)

🏫 Colorado students showed improvements in math scores and mixed results in literacy on statewide standardized tests called the Colorado Measures of Academic Progress, or CMAS. Newly released data for 2026 showed math scores rose for elementary and middle school students, while fourth and fifth graders’ reading and writing scores increased and middle schoolers’ declined. The data also showed big racial disparities in the scores. The scores come with several caveats, including the fact that parents can opt out, so not all students take the tests. (Chalkbeat / Melanie Asmar, Colorado Sun / Erica Breunlin)

📱 Colorado will get about $615 million from a legal settlement with Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta over mental health harms allegedly caused by social media. The payout comes as part of a broader, $18 billion settlement with 47 states that had sued the company. The money will be used for programs to support youth mental health. As part of the deal, Facebook and Instagram will roll out new features designed to limit when and how long kids can use the apps, in addition to stronger filtering of potentially harmful content. (Denver Post / Meg Wingerter)

COMING UP

🏊🚴🏃 I’ve been busy this week getting ready for the Local News Solutions conference in the Denver area (in addition to preparing to compete in the Boulder Sunset triathlon this weekend). Ahead of the conference, I published a video asking for ideas about how to improve local news in Colorado, and I got some great responses. I think conversations about the future of journalism would benefit from more input from audiences, so I’m always open to comments, questions and criticism. Send me a message anytime. I’ll report back next week about what I learn at the conference.

This exclusive investigative reporting is made possible by your support. Please consider a subscription or one-time financial contribution to help us keep bringing you independent solutions and accountability news.

Colorado has updated its official data on complaints against insurance companies, correcting errors and adding missing information identified by The Blanket.

The state’s insurance regulator, the Division of Insurance of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, told The Blanket this week that it has fixed flaws in a public database containing statistics on complaints against health, auto, home and life insurance companies.

“Since you brought this to our attention, we took a look at the data comprehensively to make sure it was accurate,” the agency’s communications director Genna Morton said. “We recognize that some of the data had glitches and inaccuracies in it and we made efforts to correct it.”

The database lists annual statistics stretching back to 2006, showing how many complaints were made about each company in each sector and assigning each company an index score that shows how it compares to its competitors.

But the database has demonstrated shortcomings in terms of timeliness and reliability.

In April, The Blanket notified the Division of Insurance that data from 2020 had never been uploaded and that data from 2024 contained errors that affected the calculations of the index scores. In July, the agency updated the database to correct the 2024 data and add data from 2020 as well as 2025.

However, when the agency was notified that the 2025 data also contained errors, officials decided to go back and verify data from all previous years.

As of August 18, Morton said the agency is “not aware of any further issues at this time.”

What the data shows

The newly validated database provides information that could help consumers when shopping for insurance.

One of those data points is an index score that shows how companies compare with their competitors. An index score over 1 means a company got more complaints than average for a company its size.

For example, Rocky Mountain Health Plans, the worst-rated health insurer with more than 1% market share, had an index score of 4.88, meaning it got 4.88 times more complaints than average for a company its size. The company, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare, has a 3.4% market share.

In the auto sector, the worst-rated large insurer was Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance Company with a score of 1.6 and a market share of 1.19%. Another Liberty subsidiary, LM General Insurance Company, had a score of 1.01 and a 0.3% market share.

The worst-rated large home insurer was Nationwide Property and Casualty Insurance Company with a score of 1.53 and a 1.7% market share. Nationwide Insurance Company of America, another company belonging to the same insurance group, had a score of 1.84 and a market share of 0.46%.

The worst-rated large life insurer was Transamerica, belonging to the Aegon insurance group, with a score of 3.6 and a market share of 1.89%.

None of those companies responded to requests for comment. Insurance industry trade groups including the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, the Colorado Association of Health Plans and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association also did not respond to requests for comment.

The Division of Insurance doesn’t appear to subject companies with worse scores to increased scrutiny. When asked about this, Morton, the agency spokesperson, responded that the purpose of the database is “to allow consumers to compare insurance carriers.”

A high index score could be a red flag for consumers when considering a particular company.

“Usually when somebody’s going out of the way to complain, it means they’ve had a pretty big problem,” said consumer advocate Danny Katz, the executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.

But the company with the lowest complaint score may not always be the best choice. Consumers should shop first by looking for companies that offer coverage that fits their specific needs, Katz recommended.

“Start by just being very clear on what you want,” Katz said. “You may use this [complaint data] later in the process when you start to circle around a couple of options.”

Watch the full conversation with Katz 👇

Limitations of the data

Beyond the errors identified by The Blanket, the database has additional shortcomings.

For one, the Division of Insurance doesn’t track the percentage of complaints that result in a favorable resolution for the consumer.

The database tracks only a single statistic of “confirmed complaints,” which includes complaints that result in a favorable resolution as well as complaints where the company is found to be at fault, even if the consumer doesn’t get a favorable resolution.

The agency publishes annual reports that provide summaries of its work investigating and addressing the thousands of complaints and questions it receives each year.

The agency says it has recovered more than $85 million for consumers since 2021. It also fields many consumer inquiries that resolve issues short of filing a complaint, and it offers consumer education resources.

Still, more data about how complaints are resolved could provide a clearer view of the agency’s effectiveness and companies’ responsiveness.

The database also doesn’t contain any information about the reasons for the complaints, so it’s not possible to determine how many were related to wrongful coverage denials, delayed or incorrect payments, or other allegedly improper business practices.

“Every detail will give us a little bit more information as a consumer to be able to make smart decisions and as a regulator to be able to identify, is there a consistent problem with a specific company,” Katz said.

How to improve the database

Even though Colorado’s insurance complaint database could be useful to consumers, few know about it.

The Division of Insurance typically doesn’t announce publicly when it posts new data, and it doesn’t actively promote the database beyond simply publishing it on its website.

“We are always happy for the support of journalists to help us promote this kind of data and information for consumers,” Morton, the agency spokesperson, said.

The Blanket was not able to find any other news reports mentioning the database.

In addition to raising awareness, another way to make Colorado’s database more useful would be to improve the user interface.

Currently, the data is only accessible in individual spreadsheets – one dataset per sector, per year. To see trend lines of how companies’ complaint scores change over time, the spreadsheets must be downloaded separately and manually combined into a new dataset for analysis and visualization.

“This would be an easy thing for the state to do,” Katz said.

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has maintained a public database of complaints against financial companies with data visualizations and narrative details about individual complaints, which keep the complainants anonymous. Katz pointed to it as a model that Colorado could follow.

But after Katz spoke with The Blanket, the CFPB announced last week that it will stop publishing the visualizations and narratives, calling them “misleading” and saying their publication “needlessly harms companies’ reputations.”

NEED TO KNOW

👀 New evidence suggests the Trump administration weaponized federal aid to put pressure on Colorado to release election denier Tina Peters from prison. Lawyers for the state say an internal White House email proves the administration coordinated efforts to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to Colorado over Peters’ case and Colorado’s election management more generally. Governor Jared Polis granted Peters clemency earlier this year, but he has consistently denied that pressure from the Trump administration had anything to do with his decision. (Denver Post / Seth Klamann, Denver Post / Seth Klamann)

🧑‍⚖️ Colorado can’t enforce part of law that targeted private immigration detention facilities with extra health and safety requirements, a federal judge ruled this week. The judge agreed with ICE contractor The GEO Group that the law improperly singles out immigration detention facilities. The judge left some parts of the law intact, but largely because they hadn’t actually come into force yet. And he said the block is only in place until GEO’s current contract with ICE runs out in October. A new contract could “alter the analysis significantly,” the judge said. (read the order)

⚕️ Colorado is suing The GEO Group to get information about an alleged tuberculosis outbreak at the Aurora immigration detention facility. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had ordered GEO to provide information by this week, but the company failed to comply. GEO had also rejected a similar, previous order from Adams County officials. U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper visited the facility this week and told reporters that GEO employees had been instructed not to provide any information due to ongoing legal fights over the power of state and local officials to regulate federal immigration detention facilities operated by private companies. (Colorado Attorney General’s Office, Colorado Newsline / Sara Wilson, Colorado Sun / John Ingold)

👉 Learn more about the legal battles between state and federal authorities with respect to immigration enforcement

🧊 ICE owes UCHealth almost $4 million for care provided to people in immigration detention. The hospital – along with others across the country – hasn’t been able to get reimbursed by ICE since October last year, when a disruption affected the federal agency’s medical payment system. The agency blamed the problems on fights in the U.S. Congress over its funding. The hospital is continuing to provide care to people who are detained despite the disruption. (CPR / Allison Sherry)

⚡ Colorado’s biggest energy company Xcel won approval this week to increase electricity rates. The new rates will raise about $157 million for the company while the average residential bill will go up by about $5 a month. The increase is about half of what Xcel originally requested. The company, consumer advocates and large electric consumers could still request a rehearing from the Public Utilities Commission. (Colorado Sun / Mark Jaffe)

🍎 Colorado families missed out on more than $20 million in federal food aid last summer. Over a third of eligible students never used a one-time, $120 Summer EBT benefit to help their families buy groceries while kids are not getting subsidized meals at school. Families may not have known about the program since it was only in its second year, and benefits are issued on a separate card that may have been mistakenly discarded or sent to outdated addresses. Officials are trying to improve awareness about the program this year. (Chalkbeat / Melanie Asmar)

⛓️‍💥 A new statewide prison newspaper project is giving people incarcerated in Colorado a voice and providing them with information behind bars. The Messenger Quarterly seeks to publish creative writing as well as “solutions-based journalism” that can help make life inside better, in addition to letting incarcerated people know about support resources. (Rocky Mountain PBS / Carly Rose and Chelsea Casabona)

COMING UP

🤝 Next Thursday and Friday, I’ll be attending the Local News Solutions conference in the Denver area. I’m excited to be part of conversations about how we can better serve communities in Colorado with useful news and information. I’ll report back about what I learn. Say hi if you see me!

New restrictions on sports betting in Colorado took effect this week, highlighting the importance of addressing addiction and problematic wagering.

State lawmakers passed new sports betting limits earlier this year amid continued growth in gambling in Colorado.

The new law says gambling companies can no longer accept credit cards or more than six deposits from a single gambler within 24 hours. The law also bans gambling companies from advertising to people under the age of 21.

Sports gambling has exploded in Colorado since voters legalized it starting in 2020. Last year, Coloradans bet a record $6.3 billion on sports, up from less than $4 billion in 2021, according to data from the state’s Division of Gaming analyzed by researcher Brad Jones in his newsletter, Colorado’s Political Landscape.

That’s an average of well over $17 million per day – and that figure doesn’t count prediction markets, cryptocurrency investments, stock trading and other financial activities that can resemble betting.

“Everything in our world is becoming gamble-fied,” said Jamie Glick, a licensed social worker and the executive director of the Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado, a nonprofit funded by the gambling industry.

As gambling has expanded, more Coloradans have been seeking help from Glick’s organization. But he says fewer than one in 10 people with a problem actually reach out.

“So if we’re seeing an increase, I think it’s only scratching the surface,” he said.

Many gamblers and people affected by problematic gambling think that quitting is simply a matter of willpower – a misperception that can be a barrier to reaching out for help.

“With an addiction, your brain becomes hijacked,” Glick said. “It’s not that easy to just stop.”

The Problem Gambling Coalition offers free services through its website and the 1-800-Gambler hotline, including financial counseling and education. But Glick says the organization’s most significant work involves connecting problem gamblers and their loved ones with support groups and communities that encourage their recovery.

A forthcoming study from the Butler Institute for Families at the University of Denver will examine the organization’s impact, Glick said.

But relying on the gambling industry to fund studies and responses to the issue can create perceptions of bias. Although Glick maintained that industry funding doesn’t affect his organization’s independence, he acknowledged that the current model could be improved.

“Unfortunately there’s not a lot of people standing in line to contribute to the cause of problem gambling,” Glick said. “I also think that there’s an obligation of the industry to contribute to intervention and prevention.”

Many critics of the gambling industry point out that a small fraction of highly active bettors account for most of the industry’s profits, giving companies little reason to try to curb those customers’ activity.

“You’re not going to find record profits year after year from recruiting a bunch of casual gamblers to make one bet and then never gamble again,” said Rob Minnick, a gambler recovering from addiction who runs a support organization. “This is just one type of industry where your most valuable customer is almost always the sickest person that you can find and take advantage of.”

Minnick said many gamblers aren’t aware of how gambling companies monitor and analyze data on individual bettors to target them with ads to encourage further wagering.

“People that are gambling have no idea that they’re using a dangerous and addictive product that’s tracking them and then being weaponized against them,” Minnick said.

While the new sports betting restrictions in Colorado may help mitigate some of the harms of problematic gambling, experts like Glick and Minnick say other measures should be considered – like further limits on advertising and push notifications, and encouraging doctors to screen for gambling addiction in standard medical check-ups.

“We just want to start normalizing these conversations,” Glick said.

NEED TO KNOW

🧑‍🚒 Colorado fire departments are overwhelmed and under-resourced, according to a new report from the state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control. Departments across the state are facing rising costs for equipment and trained personnel, at the same time as firefighting demands are increasing due to wildfires and fires started by batteries for electric vehicles and other devices. Fire departments in Colorado are largely funded by property taxes, and some departments are planning to seek funding increases from the communities they serve. (Denver7 / Veronica Acosta, read the full report)

♻️ Colorado’s plan to expand free recycling statewide is facing a new, federal lawsuit backed by companies who would pay the fees to fund the program. The initiative is supposed to roll out later this year, but the lawsuit asks the judge to block it while the case proceeds. The recycling expansion was also challenged earlier this year in state court by a separate group of companies. In both suits, the companies argue the system doesn’t give them a fair say in how the fees are determined. (Colorado Sun / Michael Booth, read the court documents)

📵 State agencies should improve their management of employee cellphone programs, according to a recent audit. Information on employee cellphones is decentralized, making it hard to track costs and inventories at an agency-wide level. Unused cellphones might have cost the state $173,000 last year, though the auditors called that “a very rough estimate” and noted that some cellphones might go unused for good reasons – for example, if they are only for emergencies. (Colorado Politics / Marissa Ventrelli, read the full report)

🔎 A Colorado school board violated open meetings laws by hiding the true nature of a “public Christian school” and improperly appointing a person with ties to the school, a state judge ruled this week. The school, Riverstone Academy, closed earlier this year, but the court ruling could open the way for the state to claw back around $300,000 in public funding that it received. (Chalkbeat / Ann Schimke, July 31 newsletter)

🧊 Contrary to some reports, Glenwood Springs is not planning to sue the federal immigration agency ICE. The city is instead suing a private landlord that leases a property to ICE, which the agency has used to detain people. This video explains why the distinction between suing ICE and suing its landlord is important.

COMING UP

🗳️ I’m preparing a series of explainers related to the ballot initiatives that Coloradans will be asked to vote on this fall. (Here is a helpful list.) Send me your questions so I can make sure to find out what you need to know to help you decide. Ballots will be sent out starting in October, so don’t wait!

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 evidence.

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!