Today is March 28, 2024, and here’s what you need to know:

Colorado lawmakers are proposing to spend $40.6 billion in the next fiscal year – $2 billion more than last year – driven by bigger allocations for health care, a significant expansion in the state’s workforce and more money for schools seeing increased enrollment of immigrant students.

Lawmakers began tackling the spending proposal on Wednesday, with the House Appropriations Committee reviewing House Bill 1430 and its accompanying measures.

The House then broke into caucuses to discuss the budget and lawmakers’ proposed amendments with each caucus’s Joint Budget Committee members. The budget bill will then head to the House floor for debate on Thursday, with a final vote expected on Monday.

A federal judge last month barred the government from using more than two dozen pounds of narcotics seized from a vehicle as evidence against the defendants because a Colorado state trooper violated the prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

When Trooper Joshua St. Onge pulled over Ezequiel Pita-Chavolla and Manuel Pacheco for a traffic infraction, he grew suspicious the two men were trafficking drugs. He eventually called in a drug detection dog and his belief proved correct – there were around 30 pounds of methamphetamine and 12,000 fentanyl pills hidden in the vehicle.

However, the defendants moved to suppress the evidence and Pita-Chavolla’s subsequent confession from being used at trial. The Fourth Amendment requires police officers, if they want to prolong a traffic stop and investigate some other crime, to have reasonable suspicion to do so.

Colorado lawmakers substantially modified a proposal that originally listed nearly 20 places where a person would be prohibited to carry a firearm – even with a concealed weapons permit – to only a handful of areas, notably including higher education institutions.

In narrowing down that list, the legislators added a new place where guns would be banned – the state Capitol. And, under the modified bill, that ban would apply to legislators.

The amendments allowed Senate Bill 131 to secure the support of Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Summit County, and ultimately the approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 3-2 party-line vote.

As she spread her son David’s ashes in Utah, Crystina Page was struck by the extraordinary beauty of the landscape.

She was also struck by the memory of being there before – having done the same thing.

The ashes she spread last time, however, belonged to a stranger, whom she sardonically calls “grandma Fido” – because she’s not completely sure whether they belong to a human or an animal.

All she knows is that when she received them, the funeral home told her they belonged to her son.

The Denver City Council on Tuesday moved to prohibit restaurants within city limits from including sugary drinks on children’s menus, arguing it would help counter America’s obesity epidemic.

The measure defines “default” beverage in a “children’s meal” to mean two things – water, which may be “still or sparkling, with no added sugar” or “dairy milk or non-dairy milk substitute with no added sugar.”

In pushing for the measure, District 10 Councilman Chris Hinds pointed to other cities in the Denver area – as well as in the country – that have adopted similar measures.

No wolf mortalities and no reported livestock depredation in the last 30 days have been reported by officials with Colorado Parks and Wildlife as the agency continues to track gray wolves in Colorado.

The updated map published Wednesday on CPW’s website continues informing the public, recreationists, and livestock producers on where collared wolves have been in the past month.