Tag: Charlie Brown

News outlets in Colorado reported last week that researchers at the University of Denver recommended tax hikes to fill yawning future budget gaps. In fact, the researchers made no recommendations. What they did was offer two scenarios for public consideration by which the state could meet its obligations (download the study summary). The first scenario included only program cuts. The second included only tax hikes. Even though the tax-hike scenario has already drawn fire, it is no radical proposal. The hikes, as detailed to the Colorado Independent by the director of the study, would establish rates that would still compare favorably with those in its neighbor-state competitors of the Great Plains and Mountain West.

There is nowhere near enough money for Colorado to continue to do the business of the state as things stand, according to an influential team of researchers at the University of Denver. State lawmakers will either have to raise more money or cut away the kind of programs and services most Americans view as measures of the baseline quality of life achieved over centuries in the world's wealthiest nation.

A full scale invasion of Wyoming by Colorado was one of the recommendations the presenters of a University of Denver study facetiously proposed as it was explained that Colorado's revenue structure is broken and would not be fixed even by a good economy.

DENVER-- Members of the city council here are considering eliminating a controversial vehicle impound law that has raised financial and constitutional questions. Dan Hayes, the main backer of the law, which passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, told the Colorado Independent that council members opposing the law are merely protecting laws that make Denver a so-called sanctuary city for illegal aliens.

City planning is an art and a science. It's theoretical and practical. You have to think like a painter and an attorney, like a...

The future of controversial so-called clean government Amendment 54 has been fast-tracked by the Colorado Supreme Court. This week the Court directed attorneys to submit records by next Friday, Sept. 4. Court arguments will begin in the fall. "There's a perceived obligation to get appellate clarity when the voters have adopted a law and it has been declared unconstitutional," said Mark Grueskin, one of the high-powered attorneys who represented plaintiffs fighting the amendment. "There's just added importance to getting the Supreme Court to weigh in and say there is or is not a problem."

Building taller transmission towers is serious business for Xcel Energy and the company's lobbyists. Since May, Xcel has been trying to surpass a Denver...

The saying goes that a good lobbyist is a ubiquitous lobbyist. That is, being completely accessible to talk with public officials about a particular...