Tag: Claire Levy

When lawmakers drive to Denver next week to convene the 2018 legislative session, they will see about a dozen cranes across the city’s skyline,...

DENVER— Lawmakers considering a bill that would end capital punishment in Colorado heard 10 hours of emotional testimony here Tuesday, including statements by a...

Colorado’s death penalty is not only massively expensive, critics say it is also unconstitutional because it is so randomly sought.

With a bill to repeal the death penalty likely to be introduced in the 2013 Colorado Legislature, there are bound to be philosophical arguments about the merits of capital punishment. One thing that seems beyond debate, though, is that ending the death penalty could save Colorado taxpayers a lot of money.

State Rep. Claire Levy this week told The Colorado Independent she is writing a bill to eliminate the death penalty in Colorado. Levy, D-Boulder, said she will introduce the bill if she is satisfied it will have a strong chance of passing.

DENVER — Colorado's 2012 Legislature may not have achieved greatness. It may not have risen above partisan divide to solve complex problems and unify a state. It may not have addressed the state's economic malaise or found a way to reliably fund education for the long term.

DENVER-- Outmaneuvered over the last six days in a legislative chess game centered on a gay-rights civil unions bill here, the Colorado Speaker of the House on Tuesday, the second-to-last day of the session, effectively turned over the board. Frank McNulty, a Republican from Highlands Ranch, walked out of the House at roughly 9 p.m. and stayed away for more than two hours, letting a recess run all the while and killing the civil unions bill and nearly 40 other bills in the process.

The Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) has been part of life in Colorado since 1992. Today TABOR was tested in court for the first time in Kerr v State of Colorado. Today's hearing--on a motion by the state to dismiss the suit--may be the end, or it may be the first step in a long hard road.

The Colorado Legislature acted quickly and in bipartisan fashion today to require biweekly campaign finance disclosures in advance of this year's primary elections in June.

If Gov. John Hickenlooper has anything to say about it--and he will--most of a potential increase in state tax collections this year and in 2012 will go to restore some of the money cut from K-12 budgets in the past few years.