paul lundeen

House Republicans hit the road on spending curbs in new video

Mar 13, 2017

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JOEY BUNCH

House Republicans aren’t taking a tax hike lightly. Since before the session began two months ago, House Minority Leader Patrick Neville said lawmakers should be reshuffling the existing budget to put money into transportation instead of figuring out a way to sell a tax hike to voters. Instead, the House GOP got House Bill 1242…
Cynthia Coffman’s budget request torpedoed by politics

Feb 17, 2017

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JOEY BUNCH

Supplemental budget bills usually are boring. Lawmakers check their phones. Reporters get coffee. Thursday’s round dripped with politics, vengeance and common sense, demonstrating politicians’ polite way of extending a middle finger. Attorney General Cynthia Coffman was on the receiving end of the morning maneuver on a supplemental appropriation the Senate had already passed and the process…
Colorado public schools go on trial in legislature over assessments and performance

Feb 14, 2017

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Peter Marcus

The state’s public schools system went on trial Monday in the legislature. Lawmakers heard legislation regarding whether low-performing schools are doing enough to improve and whether assessments are properly evaluating student success. It’s a familiar debate, pitting advocates of charters, vouchers and other alternatives against supporters of a traditional system centered on neighborhood public schools. The assessment…
El Paso County lawmakers reach out to Elaine Chao over I-25

Feb 7, 2017

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Matt Steiner, special to ColoradoPolitics.com

Three El Paso County lawmakers didn’t waste any time sounding an alarm to President Donald Trump and his administration when it comes to state transportation needs, including the almost 20-mile Interstate 25 bottleneck between Monument and Castle Rock. One week after Trump signed an executive order to expedite “high priority infrastructure” projects and less than…
Governor asks CDOT to establish ‘high priority’ project list to submit to feds

Feb 2, 2017

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Ernest Luning

Colorado could get some help from the federal government to speed up highway construction projects, including the nettlesome bottleneck on Interstate 25 between Castle Rock and Monument, but transportation officials caution against expecting the pedal to hit the metal on the projects. Gov. John Hickenlooper this week told the Colorado Department of Transportation to come…
Supreme Court case influences use of Native American names for sports teams

Feb 1, 2017

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Tom Ramstack

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling is pending in a trademark registration case likely to influence policies in Colorado on the use of Native American names for sports teams. An Oregon rock band called The Slants is challenging a denial by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register a trademark for its name. Trademark officials…
Republicans urge Hickenlooper to ask feds to speed up highway projects

Jan 27, 2017

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Ernest Luning

A group of Republican legislators from El Paso County want Gov. John Hickenlooper to petition the federal government to hasten the approval process for transportation projects after President Donald Trump issued an executive order encouraging it. Noting that the governor declared “When it comes to transportation infrastructure projects, time is money” in his State of…
Colorado Sen. Zenzinger stays in the middle of the road in transit interview

Jan 24, 2017

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JOEY BUNCH

State legislatures are about to embark in tough negotiations on how to raise billions of dollars for transportation. How much of that goes into transit is expected to be a sticking point for Republicans. So when Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, a Democrat from Arvada who sits on the Senate Transportation Committee, gives a lengthy Q&A to…
Faulty data doesn’t stop bill to ban corporal punishment

Jan 24, 2017

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Mike McKibbin

Colorado would become the 32nd state in America to outlaw corporal punishment in public schools under a bill approved by the House Education Committee, after lengthy discussion and questions about disputed data about the number of such incidents in the Sheridan School District No. 2 and other districts. State Rep. Susan Lontine, D-Denver, sponsors House…
El Paso County’s Jeff Hays to launch bid for state Republican chairman

Jan 9, 2017

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Ernest Luning

El Paso County Republican Party Chairman Jeff Hays likes to talk football and politics, but chances are that even the most detailed political discussion will soon start sounding like football. “Everything in my life is a football analogy,” he said with a chuckle in a recent interview with The Colorado Statesman, and he wasn’t kidding.…