Today is July 14, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

When a walkout by Republican legislators threw the Colorado House into chaos on the last day of the 2023 session, the Democratic caucus hurried off the House floor and into a backroom.

What followed were discussions of decorum, legislation soon to be lost, legislation soon to be passed and priorities for next year’s work. But, as a handful of reporters feverishly searched the Capitol for the undisclosed meeting location, one Democratic lawmaker waited in the hallway. Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver did not enter the caucus meeting until members of the press were present.

Epps refused to join her caucus because these meetings, she argues in a new lawsuit, are illegal.

The lawsuit, also filed by Democrat Rep. Bob Marshall of Highlands Ranch, claims legislators from both parties with support from House leadership regularly participate in meetings that violate the Colorado open meetings law (COML). The law requires advanced public notice for any meeting of two or more legislators discussing public business, as well as for minutes to be taken of the meeting and made available to the public.

Besides impromptu meetings, like the one held the last day of the session, the lawsuit alleges intentional and repeated skirting on the law.

Those of us in the Capitol press corps know about it, and we don’t challenge it enough. 

When we find out about one of these closed-door meetings, which is harder than it sounds, we try to get into those meetings. But learning about it is a rarity, often reserved for when a lawmaker is annoyed enough to tip us about it.

Frankly, we aren’t doing our job to the best of our abilities if we aren’t being your eyes and ears on the legislature, including when lawmakers go behind closed doors that they are not allowed to keep us, and you, out of.

The question, then, is why we don’t challenge it?

Earlier this week, the Colorado Republican who lost one of last year’s closest congressional races announced that she was passing on another run for the seat.

State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer declared that she plans to seek another term in the legislature – her Weld County-based seat is up in 2022. She’ll run for that seat rather than seek a rematch with U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the Thornton Democrat who barely edged past Kirkmeyer to win Colorado’s newest congressional district, the evenly divided 8th CD in Adams, Weld and Larimer counties.

After falling less than a percentage point short – Kirkmeyer trailed Caraveo by just over 1,600 votes, for a 0.69% margin – Kirkmeyer has been facing calls to give it one more try.

Repeat candidates for major office, especially those who kept it close, can come with built-in advantages over fresh faces. Those usually include higher name ID, a seasoned campaign team, a proven list of donors and experience navigating the rocky shoals of a modern campaign.

Kirkmeyer says she gave it “careful consideration and deliberation” but ultimately decided to run for reelection to the legislature, where she’s become one of the most effective voices of the opposition at the statehouse.

Since Mayor Michael Hancock committed to eliminating traffic deaths seven years ago, Denver’s roads have only gotten deadlier. As Mayor-elect Mike Johnston prepares to take the city’s reins, Denverites are asking for change. 

More than 100 Denver residents squeezed into a packed rec room on Thursday evening for the chance to tell Johnston how he should improve the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. This was the latest of Johnston’s 28 public forums aimed at collecting community feedback to develop the priorities for his first 100 days in office. 

During the public forum, the weight of the more than 400 people who have died on Denver roads since Hancock’s “Vision Zero” plan was announced in 2016 weighed heavily on the room. 

“We tend to talk about those fatalities as private or very personal tragedies … but it’s a communal tragedy,” said Jill Locantore, co-chair of Johnston’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and executive director of the Denver Streets Partnership. “It is the result of communal decisions that we have made about our transportation system.” 

“We can make different decisions going forward,” Jill Locantore added.  

A jury will decide whether Colorado Springs police officers unlawfully arrested and searched a woman who, moments prior, helped resuscitate a man who had stopped breathing from a drug overdose.

Colorado Springs asked U.S. District Court Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello to find its officers acted reasonably when they handcuffed and cited Sasha Cronick for “failure to disperse” from a motel parking lot where first responders were rendering aid to the unconscious man. However, Arguello believed a jury could ultimately find Cronick’s arrest did not stem from any police order to leave the scene, but rather because she shouted at officers after being touched.

“The Court therefore finds that, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, no reasonable officer would have believed that they were justified in arresting Plaintiff merely because she yelled,” Arguello wrote in a June 20 order.

At the same time, she agreed officers were not liable for using excessive force when handcuffing Cronick, as there was no evidence of anything more than a minimal injury.