Author: Paula Noonan

Eight years have passed since Colorado has faced such a significant election season. Our choices now will set another eight years of our collective future. It’s temperature-taking time. The Women’s Foundation of Colorado recently completed a poll of 725 women voters on the state of their lives in our state. CapitolCommons.ai has presented a survey…

As they say on Colorado Public Radio’s Marketplace, let’s do the numbers. April 2026 voter registrations continued a long-term Colorado trend with a large majority of new or changed voter registrations joining the unaffiliated cohort. Total registrations of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated active voters increased from April 2025 to April 2026 by 566,731. Unaffiliated voter…

The knock on the word “assume” is it can make an “a**” out of “(yo)u” and “me.” Let’s nevertheless assume the 2026 General Assembly addressed big problems facing the state. Let’s further assume the current governor can move on these problems by signing bills into law. Let’s additionally assume candidates running for governor should directly…

The General Assembly finished its work with a flurry, not a whimper. The Joint Budget Committee (JBC) managed to outplay Gov. Jared Polis with its final amendments to the School Finance Act. Polis is all in on “innovation” with public school money, even if innovation includes jiu-jitsu lessons for private school students. He didn’t want…

Gaslighting has become a contagious political virus. The contagion has spread from the White House to state, county and school-board government. Shame doesn’t prevent its spread. President Donald Trump fails to justify his attacks on Iran to Congress or to the American people. Gov. Jared Polis is stiff-arming the General Assembly with his bill to…

The primaries are about 60 days away. The large majority of statewide races will be decided on June 30. Those contests will be between moderate and progressive Democrats and moderate to super-conservative Republicans. Analysis of voter registrations does not look pretty for either party. Coloradans are not reupping or registering in either party. The sum…

Colorado Senate President James Coleman and state Rep. Jennifer Bacon have introduced a bill, Senate Bill 26-170, to form an education task force, for the umpteenth time, to identify and expand “effective public schools.” Their goal, for the umpteenth time, is to find public schools that have addressed “opportunity gaps” based on race, geography and…

Colorado’s K-12 school finance, transparency and accountability systems have urgent, connected problems with a slow-motion state response. Money is spilling out of school finance funds to home-schooled and private-school students. This multi-million-dollar flood of funds to cooked-up micro schools, home-school “campuses,” and ersatz “enrichment” programs reveals the grift at the heart of Colorado Department of…

It’s dangerous, even fatal, when government goes rogue whether in a democracy or autocracy. Government officials who ignore or taunt laws that constrain bad acts should be given the heave ho. We’re witnessing these egregious scenarios now at the federal and the Douglas County level. Scorn of basic rules of governance at the federal level…

It’s April Fool’s week and ERBOCES, Education Re-envisioned BOCES, is one of the state’s biggest jokers. This untraditional education platform authorized through five founding school districts including Falcon School District 49 in El Paso County has played the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and its state board for chumps. The legislature has yet to stop…