Author: Denver Gazette Editorial Board

Let’s start with the good news on a bad bill under consideration at the Legislature: Gov. Jared Polis is adamantly opposed to it. So, while HB24-1028 is still on the calendar for a vote by the Colorado House of Representatives, the word around the Capitol is it won’t go very far. The bill attempts to…

The day cops say an illegal immigrant disfigured and killed young college student Laken Riley is the day radicalized Democrats killed a bill written to help prevent such crimes in Colorado. The so-called “kill committee” – State, Veterans, & Military Affairs – favored tying the hands of law enforcement and easing the ability of foreign…

No one is above the law – certainly not those charged with enforcing it. It’s why Denver sets high standards of conduct for its police and, by and large, its officers meet and exceed those standards. Which means the men and women in blue cannot be lawbreakers. A couple of Denver City Council members now…

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this editorial named two Democrats who no longer serve on the State Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs committee. The Gazette regrets the error. Colorado falls in the top 20 states for human sex trafficking, often of children. We could top the list after Colorado legislators rolled out a welcome mat for…

Each fall, Colorado parents have ever greater misgivings as they send another round of freshmen to the state’s colleges and universities. Foremost among their concerns has to be the skyrocketing cost of higher ed, with tuition ratcheting up year after year. The spiraling price of a college degree seems to outpace even inflation. Colorado students…

The pandemic gave Americans a lesson in scarcity. Consumers fought over toilet paper, hand soap, and other items they had long taken for granted. One cannot buy a non-existent roll of Charmin at any price. We had the energy crisis of the 1970s when finding gasoline was hard. Americans somehow survived the 1983 shortage of…

Remember the special legislative session convened by Gov. Jared Polis in November? The one that was supposed to head off anticipated, massive property-tax hikes for Colorado homeowners this spring? It’s understandable if you’ve forgotten – and Polis and state lawmakers would just as soon you did. They accomplished very little – some might say next…

While Mayor Mike Johnston has spent $45 million so far putting roofs over the heads of Denver’s street dwellers at a dizzying pace – rank-and-file residents have been waiting for City Hall just to let them fix their own leaky roofs. Those and other household repairs, upgrades and renovations requiring city building permits have been…

We’re all taught crime doesn’t pay, but some lawmakers in Colorado’s Legislature apparently didn’t learn that lesson. They propose to hand $3,000 in cash to ex-cons leaving prison. Yes, really. Senate Bill 24-012 is yet another proposal from the upside-down world of “justice reform,” in which criminals are recast as victims. The bill’s premise is…

Even for a State of the State address, Gov. Jared Polis did plenty of bragging. In his sixth such speech Thursday, he touted his administration’s strides on preschool and public ed; health care; climate change; the crime fight; affordable housing, even the introduction of gray wolves. It was as if he were seeking to burnish…