Author: Paula Noonan

Paula Noonan Colorado’s state elections have returned to an old-fashioned status. Individual candidates are not spending multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to win seats that pay just more than $40,000 per year. This is not to say money isn’t washing around. But how much individual candidates have ginned up is less this year than…

Paula Noonan Amendment 80, Constitutional Right to School Choice, has the singular benefit of asking Coloradans to settle our public education arguments. Every voting citizen is, in essence, a legislator determining a future for public education in our democracy. Amendment 80 adds new premises to the state’s promises for K-12 education. The state constitution currently…

Paula Noonan Political accountability means ensuring responsible parties make transparent decisions based on sound, comprehensive information to create responsive, effective policy. The state’s 1241 Task Force, named after legislation to study our K-12 public education accountability program, has now produced its second “final” draft report, ready for feedback. The title of the 26-person committee is…

Paula Noonan These math problems will appear in the fifth-grade Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) test. The questions are designed to engage the critical thinking of 10- and 11-year old students related to the state’s oil and gas well-plugging policies. These are “real life” problems that will affect these students as taxpayers well into…

Paula Noonan Politics, not data, have dominated education policy during the last decade. Little good comes from that method of decision-making. The political fads legislated into education “solutions” are standardized testing to determine who is a good teacher (2010), and charter school/school choice options that claim to offer the “best schools” to minority students. The…

Paula Noonan Citizens concerned about the cumulative impacts of energy development in Colorado will have to throw their hands up in despair and frustration. The legislature has written four bills, SB19-181, HB23-1294, HB24-1346 and SB24-229, to force the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) to come up with a comprehensive program to assess how fossil…

Paula Noonan Advance Colorado and Colorado Concern, political organizations funded by millionaires and billionaires, have achieved a bifecta: they are bullies and cowards simultaneously. They bullied the state legislature into an “extraordinary session” to “compromise” on a property tax bill but were too chicken to appear before the House Appropriations Committee to defend their Propositions…

Paula Noonan Who are the chief executives running the state’s tax policy out of Colorado Concern? They are the dukes and earls comprising a royal feudal court with our anti-tax governor as leader shaking down our elected and appointed serfs in our legislature. These CEOs have successfully demanded a special legislative session on property taxes…

Paula Noonan The most recent voter registration numbers as of July show a one-month decline of 39,375 voters from June. These lower numbers may be a result of purging registrations and/or disgusted citizens. Regardless, new registrations did not exceed lost voters. Here’s a fact that can spin your eyeballs: voter registrations between June and July…

Paula Noonan Political parties in Colorado are in the dumper. We’re in the midst of the busiest general election season, but voter registration data from the Secretary of State show a steady drip, drip, drip of Coloradans lost to both parties. Of 65 State House districts, 32 have an Unaffiliated registration of 49% or higher.…