referendum
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County voters cannot pursue referendum on land-use change, appeals court says
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Colorado’s second-highest court told a collection of Delta County voters on Thursday that they cannot file a referendum to repeal a zoning change, as the state constitution does not allow it. After Delta County’s commissioners adopted a resolution updating the land-use code in 2024, a group of landowners tried three times to file a referendum…
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Will Denver become the next Amsterdam? The story behind the surprising turnaround of the magic mushroom initiative
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Cindy Sovine went to bed on election night thinking that the initiative she and others has worked on for the last 17 months, to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, had gone down to defeat. True, it had garnered a decent-enough 9 percentage-point loss for a long-shot, first-in-the-nation measure, but it was still a defeat. But when the…
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DENVER ELECTION 2019: Voters reject homeless camping measure
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UPDATE 5 PM 5/8: Initiative 301, the magic mushrooms decriminalization measure, reversed a 9-point deficit and was narrowly leading by fewer than 2,000 votes in final unofficial returns Wednesday, with overseas ballots yet to be counted. Initiative 300, the ballot measure to allow camping on public property across Denver, was defeated in Tuesday’s city election…
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COVER STORY | Magic mushrooms in Denver: Medicine or mayhem?
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Denver voters will head into uncharted territory when they decide whether to decriminalize possession of small amounts of psilocybin, better known as “magic mushrooms.” Initiated Ordinance 301 on the ballot mailed to city voters starting April 15 would make use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms “the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.” And while the mushroom referendum…
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COVER STORY | Debate over Denver’s streets: As homelessness grips the city, voters ponder scrapping camping ban
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Take a walk along any street in downtown Denver, and chances are good that on any given day you’ll come face to face in vivid and sometimes tragic detail with the extent of the city’s grinding and intractable homelessness problem. A man sprawls unconscious on a sidewalk outside the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Another man…
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U.S. Supreme Court gerrymandering cases could influence Colorado
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court could have an impact on a potential Colorado vote on gerrymandering. Supporters of a change in Colorado’s redistricting law want to get the issue on the upcoming ballot in November. On March 28, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Benisek v. Lamone concerning…
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Lundberg: ‘Absolutely’ it would be ‘messier’ to do away with Joint Budget Committee
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State Sen. Kevin Lundberg doesn’t sound very enchanted with plans House Republicans have recently floated to change the way the Legislature writes the state’s annual budget. The Berthoud Republican, a member of the powerful Joint Budget Committee, suggested in a recent interview with The Colorado Statesman that the six-member panel – three from each chamber…
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Paul Lundeen proposes shorter legislative sessions, biennial budget process
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State Rep. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, wants to shorten Colorado’s legislative session and overhaul the way lawmakers approve annual budgets by doing away with the Joint Budget Committee and moving to biennial budgets. “Mark Twain said it best,” Lundeen says, setting the tone at the beginning of a brief video posted online by the Independence Institute.…
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Americans for Prosperity targets four GOP senators over transportation funding legislation
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Americans for Prosperity Colorado announced plans Wednesday to rain down pressure on four Republican senators who have yet to state a position on a bipartisan transportation funding package unveiled last week by legislative leadership. The conservative advocacy organization’s state director, Michael Fields, said the four GOP lawmakers – Senate President Pro Tem Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling,…
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Reading transportation tea leaves in Grantham’s note to constituents
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Senate President Kevin Grantham seems confident a quarter of the way into the legislative session that lawmakers are moving toward tackling the session’s big priority item: They’re going to agree to raise funds for desperately needed transportation upgrades around the state. That’s what he told constituents in his periodic “Dome to Home” newsletter this weekend.…
