Statetap: Happy Tax Day for everybody but Douglas Bruce

April 15, 2015

Taxing Days

Happy Tax Day. For Douglas Bruce, the author of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, things aren’t so happy. He was convicted of tax evasion in 2012 and is facing a Colorado Springs hearing in July. But those are just a few of Bruce’s legal woes. He also faces a warrant in Ohio after skipping court where he faced charges about a misdemeanor code violation for a building he owns; he also faced a health code violation for the same property. In Cleveland, he owes back-taxes. In Wisconsin, he faces a lien on a property that residents complained was “a blight on the town,” reports The Gazette.

Cheap Shot

Last month, Michelle Wilkins was attacked and her fetus was killed. Many have raised the question: Should the killers of fetuses be charged with murder? Republican state Senate President Bill Cadman thinks so. He introduced the fetal homicide bill in the Senate yesterday. “I am disappointed that the Republicans are choosing to use what happened to the Wilkins family to get ‘personhood’ into law,” Senator Pat Steadman told The Denver Post.

Fueled Up

Students at CU Boulder are urging the state’s flagship public university to join cities, towns and universities around the world in the growing fossil-fuel divestment campaign. Students are setting up tents and camping out on the quad leading up to a Thursday Board of Regents meeting. Sympathetic Regent Linda Shoemaker is working to set up a study group. She has an uphill climb. The board is controlled by Republicans in a state with a long history of mineral extraction. CU President Bruce Benson made his fortune in the oil-and-gas business. But the city of Boulder, Colorado, has committed to divestment. Naropa University in Boulder, right off of the CU campus, has committed, as have major U.S. universities such as Stanford and the New School in New York City. There’s a major push underway now by activists and students at Harvard to convince the iconic university to divest.

Testing Fails

Blame it on hackers or just faulty technology. A technical problem with a computer server interrupted the Colorado Measures of Academic Success test on Monday. It took over two hours to find a fix, reports The Gazette.