Author: JAMES ANDERSON The Associated Press
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Colorado, Nebraska jostle over water rights amid drought
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Shortly after daybreak on the high plains of northeastern Colorado, Don Schneider tinkers with seed-dispensing gear on a mammoth corn planter. The day’s task: carefully sowing hundreds of acres of seed between long rows of last year’s desiccated stalks to ensure the irrigation water he’s collected over the winter will last until harvest time. A…
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Drama-laden open records bill survives another hearing
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A bill aimed at modernizing Colorado’s Open Records Act has survived its first Senate hearing – but with an amendment that could mean trouble down the road. The GOP-led Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee voted 4-1 Wednesday to send Senate Bill 40 by Democratic Sen. John Kefalas to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill would, in…
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Crowder, Thurlow team up to fix TABOR ‘constraint on overdrive’
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Two Colorado Republican lawmakers are delivering on their promise from earlier this year to fine-tune TABOR, a 25-year-old constitutional restriction on how much the state can receive – and spend – without triggering tax refunds. Rep. Dan Thurlow and Sen. Larry Crowder have introduced House Bill 17-1187 that seeks to change the way annual revenue…
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Riding libertarian populist wave, Hill and Lebsock clear first hurdle to end switchblade ban
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The switchblade knives wielded six decades ago by the fictional Jets and Sharks street gangs in the legendary Broadway musical “West Side Story” and in Hollywood films spooked lawmakers across the U.S. and helped usher in state bans. But 54 years after Colorado enacted its prohibition of the folding knives with blades that pop out…
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Hickenlooper won’t issue clean-air executive order
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Citing backlash from Republicans, Colorado’s Democratic governor said Tuesday he has abandoned the idea of issuing an executive order to seek a one-third cut in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But Gov. John Hickenlooper insisted he hadn’t given up on the proposal’s goals – or his own commitment to maintaining Colorado’s status as a…
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New legislative session brings $500M deficit, uncertainty
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With one eye on a $500 million state budget gap and the other on Washington, Gov. John Hickenlooper and a split Colorado Legislature enter the 2017 lawmaking session with little expectation of fiscal reform and plenty of uncertainty over transportation, the state’s Medicaid bills, affordable housing and illegal pot sales. Last year, Hickenlooper and fellow…
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UPDATED: Hickenlooper’s proposed $28.5B Colorado budget affects transit, health care
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Colorado’s transportation, education and health care spending will not grow as hoped for by Gov. John Hickenlooper under a proposed $28.5 billion budget for the 2017-2018 fiscal year that he sent to lawmakers Tuesday. The proposed budget is 3.3 percent larger than this year’s, and it includes requests to use marijuana tax dollars for affordable…
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Colorado to decide on adopting a presidential primary
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For many, this year’s major party caucuses in Colorado were messy and confusing: Democrats struggled to accommodate every voter, and Republicans didn’t choose presidential delegates because the national party insisted the vote be binding. Independent voters were left out in the cold. But party loyalists swear by the grassroots give-and-take of these straw polls that…
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Colorado to decide whether to triple cigarette tax
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Colorado voters will decide in November whether to triple cigarette taxes after tobacco sales rose for the first time since the last state tax increase in 2004. An initiative certified Monday for the November ballot would raise the state tax from 84 cents to $2.59 per pack starting Jan. 1. That’s nearly a dollar more than…
