Colorado News Miner: February 28, 2025

Pettersen Goes to Washington: CNN: "Rep. Brittany Pettersen flew with her 4-week-old baby to make it in time for the vote" on the budget. The Republican measure passed despite her efforts, but not before she had a chance to speak against cuts to Medicaid, which, she said, actually will increase costs by pushing more people into emergency rooms. See also CPR's story. Regardless of what you think of what reforms ultimately are best, the Republican effort is reckless. That Pettersen's "pro-family" Republican colleagues refused to let her vote remotely is shameful.

Spending Priorities: Consider the following three headlines in juxtaposition. Chalkbeat: "Cuts to Colorado Early Intervention program threaten therapies for young children with disabilities." CBS: "Colorado legislative leaders spend millions on office renovations, new furniture amid budget crisis." CPR: "Colorado signs off on $1 million to turn iconic hotel into Stanley Film Center." Rather than prioritize within the existing budget, leading Democrats want to raise the TABOR spending cap.

Opportunity Caucus: Some Colorado Democrats have formed an "Opportunity Caucus" to focus on real-life issues including affordability and crime. Offhand sounds good to me. See John Frank's report. One thing the group is doing is running a construction defects bill to limit lawsuits.

Construction Lawsuits: Ed Sealover reviews: "House Bill 1272 . . . would make it more difficult to file lawsuits over reputed defects in owner-occupied multifamily housing, would offer developers more affirmative defenses against such suits and would prioritize repair over reparations. . . . HB 1261 . . . would void provisions in development contracts mandating arbitration before court action, give longer periods for defects claimants to file suit and require courts to award prejudgment interest to prevailing plaintiffs." The bit about voiding arbitration is an especially bad idea.

Voting Rules: CPR relates that cities are pushing back against the so-called "Colorado Voting Rights Act." See also my review of the serious problems with the bill.

Payday Access: House Bill 1020 requires an "earned-wage access service provider" to be licensed by the state and limits associated fees to $7. What are we talking about? Brian Eason reports, "Earned wage access services give workers an advance on their paycheck for a transaction fee—typically about $3." Payday loans already are tightly restricted. It seems the purpose of the legislation is to hassle most providers out of existence. Apparently Democrats running the bill think the people who use such services are just too stupid to run their own finances.

Unions and Farmworkers: Sam Tabachnik: "SB21-87 provided a host of new protections for Colorado’s farmworkers. . . . In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the conservative [Supreme Court] majority ruled a California law granting labor organizations a right to access an agricultural employer's property to solicit support for unionization to be unconstitutional. Senate Bill 25-128 . . . argues the Supreme Court decision also invalidates the service access provision of Colorado's law." I haven't closely examined the language at issue. But union reps definitely should not be able to violate others' property rights.

Right to Work: The Wall Street Journal called out Jared Polis over the bill that would make it easier for unions to compel employees to pay union dues. In related news, the title board already has approved language for a "right to work" ballot measure.

Police Raids Wrong Apartment: Denver SWAT allegedly raided the wrong apartment, terrorizing a woman, her mother, and her two young daughters. At least police did arrest a "suspect who was wanted for serious violent crimes," at another apartment, Denverite reports. See also Emma Camp's article for Reason.

Threat Against Clark: Someone on X called 9News journalist Kyle Clark "evil" and likened him to Alan Berg, who was murdered by white supremacists. Clark responded, "This isn't subtle but it will not dissuade me from continuing our journalism." I certainly hope law enforcement is taking this implicit threat seriously.

Corrupt GOP: The Republican Party of Colorado is morally corrupt, the latest sign of which is its invitation of Steve Bannon to its upcoming fundraising dinner.

Titone Runs for Treasurer: Rep. Brianna Titone is running. I think she'd do a good job, although from a policy perspective she's antagonistic to TABOR. Titone is transgender, which shouldn't matter at all but probably will.

Hannan Opposes Tariffs: At the recent Leadership Program of the Rockies retreat, speaker Daniel Hannan spoke out against Trump's tariffs and Ukraine policies, Heidi Beedle reports. Veronique de Rugy also warned that the tariffs "will very likely backfire."

Gun Show Restrictions: Democrats continue their harassment campaign against peaceable gun owners. Sherrie Peif: House Bill 25-1238 imposes "onerous new restrictions on gun shows in Colorado," including one to "limit vendors to Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) only."

Notes on the Semiauto Gun Bill: In my article on the amended semiautomatic gun bill, I mention several areas where Democrats would not accept similar government controls. Someone on Bluesky offered more examples: "Imagine you had [people] take a 12 hour civics course before they could vote, forcing them to get fingerprinted and pay the toll every 5 years. Or even a 12 hour course on drug safety and get an ID card before they could buy marijuana." I also could add the example of buying alcohol, a drug associated with a lot of violent crime.

Concealed Carry Up: See Mike Krause's report.

Bug Bill: Heidi Beedle reviews Scott Bottoms's bug bill, which would ban "commercial insect production for human consumption." The bill was roundly defeated in committee. True, a few years ago, the World Economic Forum promoted the increased consumption of insects. One person who testified in favor of the bill said growing insects for human consumption would not be economically viable. I tend to agree, meaning the bill is a solution in search of a problem. The main criticism against insect production is insects could escape and mess up regional ecosystems. Isn't it funny how some Republicans selectively turn into protectionist anti-capitalist environmentalists. Even if "insect escape" were a real concern, the solution would be targeted regulations and torts. Compare: Livestock agriculture brings some risk of "disease escape," and regulators do things like require chickens exposed to bird flu to be killed.

Denver Fires Atheist: According to a lawsuit, someone working for the Department of Transportation, after complaining about being hassled about religion at an office party, suffered retaliation and eventually was fired. That's only one side of the story, of course. See Kyle Harris's review.

School Funding: I read most of this article and still have little idea what was the basis of the "funding miscalculations" at the basis of a debate over school funding. The main conclusion I draw is that creating these sorts of hyper-complex, conditional funding mandates is stupid.

Psilocybin: Colorado is now licensing it.

Gender Affirming Care: CPR: "Some Colorado hospitals are set to resume some gender-affirming care for youth after challenge to Trump order." Remember that at issue is gender-affirming care specifically for transgender youth; nobody gets worked up about gender-affirming care for cisgender youth.

ICE Coordination: Sara Wilson: "Colorado lawmakers voted down a bill that would have allowed local law enforcement to work with immigration authorities by repealing state law that limits coordination." CPR's Caitlyn Kim, however, reports that "local law enforcement . . . does work with federal immigration officials." U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans is running a bill to authorize "Colorado law enforcement . . . to hold someone solely based on whether they suspect the person is in the country unlawfully" and "disclose personal information of an undocumented person suspected of a crime to federal immigration agents without a subpoena, warrant or court order," and to authorize "local governments . . . to contract with private facilities for immigration detention," Kim reports. Republicans are for local control except for when they're not.

Limits to City Punishments: Cassandra Ballard: "House Bill 1147 . . . would cap non-felony criminal sentences imposed by city courts, limiting them to state court sentencing levels." Offhand that seems reasonable.

Juvenile Detention Beds: Evan Kruegel: "Colorado lawmakers are debating a proposal to raise the cap on the number of beds available in the state's juvenile detention centers. Currently, Colorado law caps that number at 215 beds." It seems crazy to arbitrarily limit the number of beds. Government should fund the capacity needed, in the context of trying to curtail juvenile crime.

Transgender Death Certificates: House Bill 1109 would require people who fill out a death certificate to include someone's gender identity, Westword reports. I'm not sure about this. Is there any good reason for death certificates to include any information about a person's chosen gender identity? If not, leave the memorializing to obituaries and the like. More broadly, I don't think government has any proper business tracking people's chosen gender identities. Rather than list someone as "male" or whatever, a government ID document should instead list a person's chromosomes (XX, XY, etc.), which do not change. Photo ID is far more useful in making identifications.

Gendered Restrooms: A student at East High wrote in to the Post to complain that a girls' restroom had been converted to a gender-neutral restroom. The student offers pretty solid reasons: "Due to the fact that anyone can go in the gender-neutral restroom, most girls, myself included, do not feel comfortable going into the bathroom by themselves or at all, in fear of an act of sexual harassment or misconduct happening. There is not the essential component of complete privacy of floor-to-ceiling enclosure between each stall and it is now anxiety-inducing to just use the bathroom. Although the stalls are 12 feet tall, it does not prevent someone from putting their phone underneath the stall and taking an unsolicited photo." Obviously turning one-seaters into gender-neutral restrooms is not a problem. Converting restrooms with multiple stalls is a lot tricker, because, as this student notes, it's harder to preserve privacy.