Today is March 26, 2024, and here’s what you need to know:

Colorado lawmakers adopt cuts, hard choices as state faces $170 million budget shortfall

The news that revenues would make for a tight budget year wasn’t unexpected.

And even with the hole, the JBC went with the more optimistic forecast from the governor’s economists. Even so, that put the anticipated shortfall — unless budget writers decided to tap into the state reserve, which they didn’t want to do — at around $170 million.

“I’ve never had to find those kinds of funds before,” said Rep. Rick Taggart, R-Grand Junction.

It was the assurances from his JBC colleagues that they would find a way to fill the hole that made the situation less frightening, Taggart said.

Colorado Supreme Court upholds DPS search of student on 'safety plan'

The Colorado Supreme Court agreed on Monday that Denver Public Schools personnel acted constitutionally when they searched a student’s backpack without a warrant or suspicion of wrongdoing, but instead pursuant to a “safety plan” created after his prior criminal conduct.

The case appeared to be the first to address how the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to students when school officials’ actions are based on an agreed-upon, but open-ended framework subjecting a student to searches.

Without saying how long a safety plan could remain in effect before it became unreasonable, Justice Melissa Hart concluded in the March 25 opinion that a safety plan in existence for one year gave reasonable grounds for administrators to search a student identified as J.G.

“A search carried out in accordance with a previously established safety plan is reasonable at its inception because the plan diminishes the student’s expectation of privacy,” she wrote. “Additional individualized suspicion stemming from the student’s behavior is not required. Therefore, the search of J.G.’s backpack was justified at its inception.”

Colorado unemployment inches up to 3.5%, but job growth among strongest in U.S.

Colorado’s unemployment rate inched up in February to 3.5% from 3.4%, according to data released Friday from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The state saw the number of unemployed grow about 4,200 people.

The state is still below the national average, which increased by two-tenths of a percentage last month to 3.9%.

“It’s reasonable that it can continue to climb,” state senior economist Ryan Gedney told reporters on a call. “But at this point, it’s more something to look at rather than worry about.”

It wouldn’t be surprising to see 2024 end with a 4% rate, he added, though it’s hard to predict.

Senate committee kills bill to give regulatory relief to appraisers

In his latest, Ed Sealover, Editor of The Sum & Substance Appraisers, explores how appraisers won’t be getting regulatory relief this session.

A Senate committee killed a bill to give appraisers a five-year statute of repose — an attempt to shield them from delayed lawsuits that can jack insurance rates and cost them work with financial institutions, regardless of the outcome of the legal action. The House had passed the bipartisan bill on Feb. 12 with a bipartisan 46-18 approval, leaving hope for at least one sector to get regulatory relief at a time when state business leaders have said increasing regulations have become their No. 1 obstacle to growth.

However, Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee said they were not convinced that there was an actual problem that the bill could solve — or that it would impact the commonly identified problem of insurance carriers dropping appraisers hit with suits. Though similar bills have passed in 14 states largely without opposition, both trial lawyers and mortgage lenders came out against House Bill 1085 in Colorado, saying that state law should not protect one sector over others during cases of foreclosure.

“I was waiting to hear testimony as to what the problem is and what problem we are trying to fix,” said Sen. Dylan Roberts, the Frisco Democrat who was viewed as the swing vote and sided with other committee Democrats against Republicans to kill the bill by a 3-2 tally. “I frankly didn’t hear of a single lawsuit today that happened more than five years after an appraisal … so I find myself confused to be honest, about the need for a bill.”

Colorado joins multi-state coalition to defend EPA methane rule

Battle lines have been drawn in a fight between oil-producing red states and environmentally-driven blue states over a new regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics say is an unauthorized expansion of the EPA’s regulatory authority. But proponents said it’s important to control pollution from methane emissions.

Led by the attorneys general of Texas and Oklahoma, 26 states are suing the EPA over a final rule published March 8 that, in part, sets new regulations for existing methane infrastructure.

Twenty other states, including Colorado and the District of Columbia, filed a motion to intervene in the case in support of the new federal regulation Tuesday.