Author: Paula Noonan

Paula Noonan Recently, two district courts have come down on opposite sides on our state’s “sunshine laws.” Our state’s Open Meetings Law requires government policy be debated and decided in public with proper notice to allow for public oversight. The law states policy-making meetings must be properly announced and agendas must accurately describe the subject…

Paula Noonan Scofflawing is becoming a habit in the state. The legislature passes laws and many affected parties ignore them. The legislature passed SB19-181 in 2019 to protect the health and welfare of us and the environment related to oil-and-gas extraction. We’re waiting for its full implementation and industry compliance. Then there’s HB22-1348, an auxiliary…

Paula Noonan The 2025 General Assembly finished in a timely and modest fashion last week. Out of 667 introduced bills, 486 passed and 171 bit the dust. That’s a 73% pass rate, but whether 486 survive Gov. Jared Polis’ veto pen is still an open question. If 2025 will be remembered in the record book,…

Paula Noonan Sometimes, what this country committed to 150 years ago merits continuation. In 2026, Colorado will be 150 years old. When our Centennial State was brought into the union in 1876, the federal government gave us 2.8 million acres of federal land and more than 4 million acres of mineral rights. These lands and…

Paula Noonan Douglas County citizens may vote on the most politically fraught propositions related to their governance since 1861 when the county was formed by the Colorado Territorial Legislature. The propositions, set in motion by the county’s three commissioners in March, will determine whether 380,000-plus residents turn to county home rule as their governing structure.…

Paula Noonan Flouting Colorado’s state statutes has become a too-frequent occurrence among our elected officials related to our so-called Sunshine Laws. The Colorado General Assembly has had its sunshine problems. It’s apparent now a school district has also broken the sunshine rules, probably more than once. Jessica Capsel, a resident of the Elizabeth School District,…

Paula Noonan President Donald Trump this week issued a “Make American History Great Again” Executive Order 911 at a press conference at the White House Rose Garden. The EO sets out Trump’s K-12 American history standards. “I’m declaring a total history emergency. It’s a five-alarm fire — so terrible, the worst.” Trump explained the EO begins…

Paula Noonan Elizabeth School District is trying to ban 19 books from its school library shelves and a federal judge is having none of it. The books represent everything radical conservatives and the Trump administration don’t like about diversity, racism, sexual gradations and gender identity. Dan Snowberger, superintendent of Elizabeth School District, says the books…

Paula Noonan Dipping a toe into how history is taught in today’s schools is perilous as President Donald Trump issued this executive order recently: “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order challenges comprehensive history in favor of Patriot History. Patriot History stresses American exceptionalism, progress and heroism. Its K-12 curriculum comes from the…

Paula Noonan Two events converge in Colorado’s K-12 education world: the Trump administration is dissolving the Department of Education and the legislature is re-doing the state’s education accountability system. With President Donald Trump’s action, federal mandates related to standardized testing and federal education program funding are up in the air, if not yet up in…