Tina Peters clemency, trans kids’ healthcare, data center bans
The top stories from Colorado this week
📨 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.