I'm Martin Dillard in for Kyle Dyer this week.

And there's a lot cooking with multiple shootings in Denver recently.

Is crime up or is social media just making it feel that way.

Statewide crime is down but the prison population is growing.

What's up with that?

The state budget continues to grind through the legislative process.

The ballot for the June 30th primary is nearly set, and Colorado's reputation as a business and tech hub is looking a little shaky these days.

Plus, Colorado continues to dance with wolves.

Let's dig in on this week's Colorado Inside Out.

Let's get right to our insider panel for this week.

Patty Calhoun, founder and editor, Westword.

Penfield Tate, Denver attorney and former state representative and state senator of the Colorado Legislature Marianne Goodland, chief legislative reporter, Colorado Politics.

And Chris Roark, consultant with Roark Media.

There appears to be an uptick in shootings in Denver over the past couple of weeks.

I say appears because I wonder if it's due to an actual increase.

Is it media coverage, or is it the rise of citizen social media accounts drawing more attention to violent incidents?

Patty, what are you hearing out there?

I would certainly say it's more attention.

You have things like Nextdoor, you people who are able to share information, some of it accurate, some not very, very quickly.

What's significant is that the violence we are hearing about is all over.

It is not like, oh, downtown's so dangerous.

It is murder in the Baker neighborhood last weekend, the two murders in Whittier during the Easter picnic.

So it's all over.

I think the one really significant thing, though, about talking about crime is how both Aurora and Denver over the last six years.

Think about it.

Six years ago, the George Floyd protests, we had police departments that were clamming up that were not really talking to the community.

Now, you see, we were talking about Chief Thomas.

He is out all the time talking to the community.

The police are holding themselves accountable.

You are still going to have shootings like the person who was just killed, who is holding the baby gun.

And that looks like it was a shooting that was not going to be avoided.

You have Aurora, which was clamming up the worst of any of the police departments, really being held a lot more accountable, being more forthcoming.

That doesn't mean you can't improve things, but compared to six years ago, it's night and day how the local big police departments are opening up to the community.

Then you, doctor jurisprudence.

What are your thoughts as an attorney?

Well, I'll start by saying I agree with Patty.

I think the joint George Floyd situation and I also think, the shootings in Minneapolis by Border Patrol and Ice, have done some course correction with local police when, when the largest organization of police chiefs in the, in the country called the Trump administration and say, yo, we need to sit down and talk about how you coordinate with us because your people are out of control.

It shows a different level, I think, of responsiveness.

What's going on now, I don't understand because, you know, we had a high in terms of crime activity coming out of Covid stairs, reason people came out of hiding, knuckleheads go crazy.

And and that's what happened.

But since then, between 23 and 2023 and 2025, violent crimes in Colorado were down 13%.

Property crimes are down 17%, the dreaded motor vehicle thefts are down 34%.

And during the same time, violent crime in Denver is down 10%.

So I don't know if we're regressing to the mean or if it's a full moon and knuckleheads are feeling themselves again, but it does appear that there's some sort of spike in activity.

But I think it speaks to a bigger problem is we don't understand what causes crime in the first place.

Yeah, not getting into the causation is okay, Mary, in your thoughts.

I go back to just a year ago when we at the state Capitol, there was a rash of crime, and a rash of deaths, frankly, right up and up and down along Colfax, right out in front of the state capitol.

And and when I was looking over all of those locations, the one that that was sort of this, this little circle of people are behaving themselves was the state capital of all places.

Given that last year the, Republicans kind of had a fight about it, and they were riding to Denver, to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and to the DPD and said, listen, we've crime is out of control in this, this little square of of the state capital.

And I'm actually rather impressed with the fact that crime seemed to be dropping.

And I will tell you where it's dropping is in, in the Capital Hill area, when you look at all all those locations, Capitol Hill was generally not, represented in, in all those crimes.

And, I'll tell you, it gives us at the state capital just a tad more comfort.

I do recall that several lawmakers spoke to me, and they were very concerned about what was going on.

I think we're kind of and let me be the contrarian here.

We're kind of missing a point here that Denver has some of the strictest gun control laws in the state.

Plus, we have a lot of statewide laws in Denver.

You can't open carry in Denver.

You can't, concealed carry in city buildings.

Whether you have a permit.

There are universal background checks.

There are magazine ground limits.

There's a three day waiting period statewide.

We're going to have to soon take a safety course to buy a semi-automatic pistol, which is, you know, basic nine millimeter.

Anything that qualifies as that.

And none of this is making a difference.

And I've said this time and time again, a lot of people on my side of the fence say this time and time again, gun laws are not preventing gun violence.

And Denver is the perfect example of that.

Well, maybe that's why people are starving.

Could be.

Maybe we need.

To have a remembrance.

Stabbing reports.

But maybe they didn't used to be released as a as often.

Yeah.

Well one of the definitions of a paradox is that two things can be true at once.

As mentioned around the table, crime is down in Colorado.

But Governor Polis is saying that we need more prison beds.

Pen, what's the interconnects there?

And I'll get to the interconnect in the in a moment.

But the legislature needs to tell the governor firmly and politely.

No, no more prison beds.

We're not opening any more prisons because the conundrum we have now is all policy driven, which means we can change policy and fix this.

We've always been headed in the wrong direction, you know, in the in the 2000 is when, crime, the crime rate was dropping.

We were closing prisons But the real problem is it's political pressure or perceived pressure.

The legislature.

There's there's heinous crime that happens.

The legislature says, oh, we got to stop this.

We need to lock people up for longer.

The problem we have in prisons is not more people in prison.

It's the people we have there are staying longer.

We have 4600 people in the prisons now who are past their mandatory parole date.

We haven't figured out a way to come up with a comprehensive parole system that is safe for the community, that is effective, and that releases people to take some of the strain off of the prison population.

The other problem we have is the governor and the administration have been diverting resources in prisons so that prisoners aren't getting services.

They're making teachers and health aides become security force.

They weren't trained to do that, nor should they be doing that.

The legislature, I think, you know, you've got the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition and others.

I think they're all right.

We need to sit down comprehensively as a community and look at this and say, what do we want to do?

I have always maintained we can't call it the Department of Corrections because we don't work correct a thing.

When I served in the legislature, I was always told by heads of DLC, whether they be Democrats or Republicans.

80% of people in prison are coming out at some point.

How they get treated, how they get prepared for reentry, and how society is prepared for them is what makes the difference between whether they successfully integrate into the society or they go back.

The other thing to consider is the best part of a crime prevention technique is an education And again, when I served the data used to be that for every person man incarcerated for one year, the cost was equivalent to the in-state tuition for for CU students.

So if you do the math and you flip that and maybe help for people in this community, go to see you without incurring debt and take one person out of prison, you end up helping yourself on both sides of the equation.

Marianne, you've got the finger on the pulse down at the dome.

What are you hearing down there?

first of all, lawmakers don't trust Doc's numbers.

You know, one week they'll say, we need 200 beds, and another week they'll say we need six.

The budget that they just approved in the Senate on Thursday, 941 more beds for corrections for the upcoming year.

They said very clearly to the governor, you're not getting new presents.

If you need more beds, you can lease them from the private prisons.

And that's that's how they want to resolve at least this problem.

there are some jails with excess capacity that also could be helping to relieve that strain just a little bit.

It will cost and it will cost the state more, because it's more expensive to house people in the jails and in the private prisons than it is to put them in corrections.

But the, you know, the backlog is just turning into a stranglehold on the legislature.

they have demanded that at least a joint budget committee has a plan, a comprehensive plan on how corrections is going to fix fix this whole mess, whether they actually get what they want.

A big question.

All right.

We'll keep an eye on that, Chris.

Well, policy change is needed as long as it ensures the safety of the citizenry.

Right now, the Senate is is considering a bill.

It's a second look, law.

It's, SB 26 115.

It's the post-conviction relief for certain offenders law.

And what this would do was based on age.

After 20 years of being incarcerated for, you know, a heftier penalty, someone could be reviewed for release that someone who's either committed a crime before the age of 21 or if they're if the petitioner is 60 years old and older, after they've served this 20 years, but what this would do is it would release some of the most serious offenders.

They're in their 20 years for a reason, the most serious offenders back into the general population.

And I think that disregards victims and their families.

And I think it puts the community at risk.

I don't think this is a time that we should be weakening sentences.

I think it's a time when we're concerned about public safety.

We need to be enforcing them.

Some of those 4600 are probably going to be bad actors who should not be released, but they should be considered.

And if there are systems in place to consider them, you hope there is a place for them to go, your hope, their services.

But to be in their past.

Your mandatory release date is ridiculous and we need to deal with it.

Look at it.

If just one quarter of them were released, you wouldn't need the beds.

You'd be fine.

The other end is the knuckleheads as you would talk about it.

So when you look at the crimes that are happening, there are just some crazy kid crimes or people who are definitely mentally ill, and you need to figure out what kinds of services they need early on.

Can you stop it beforehand, or is there a way to then deal with them, as opposed to some of the other crimes that are happening?

I'm not saying they're great, but some are going to be family or domestic.

But it's the knucklehead syndrome.

How do you identify who's going to go bad and how do you stop it?

You know, when I served in Jordan, Southers ran, the Department of Corrections, he used to always tell us 20% of the people in prison have made the worst mistakes of their lives.

They're remorseful.

Something happened.

Extenuating circumstances.

We will never see them in the system again.

20% of the people are incorrigible knuckleheads.

They've made a career decision.

They want to be criminals.

We need to keep them there.

It's the 60% in the middle that we need to figure out what they need to either rehabilitate, get mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, get additional support in the community so they can be reintegrated in society.

And then we hope we don't see them again.

But if we do, we've got room for them.

That's why we need to make the investment instead of buying another prison.

That's an expensive mistake for Colorado.

Agreed?

Colorado's political and economic identities are under pressure.

The long bill got a whole lot longer this past weekend after a House procedural move sent it to the Senate with a little extra baggage and Colorado's long standing reputation for innovation and incubation that drew businesses here by the hundreds.

Well, the bloom appears to be coming off the rose a little bit.

A bipartisan coalition of 230 business leaders sounded the alarm and sent an open letter to our governor and other elected officials saying, we've got to stop the outflow of business.

And speaking of elected officials, the ballot for the June 30th primary is almost set.

Marianne, where do you want to start?

Oh my gosh, this is one of the most heavily regulated states in the country.

I think fourth, maybe, and this year, we're finally starting to see a little bit of movement in the direction of loosening up some of those regulations.

Colorado, for the first time in several years, is actually starting to see, unemployment numbers jumping and job losses.

And that is that's a big warning, warning sound that, that people should be paying attention to.

And, the Senate and I just I really have to give them props.

There was a 15 hour reading of the long bill, in the house last week, over what one lawmaker, a Republican lawmaker, called a temper tantrum by one of her Republican colleagues.

There hasn't been a ton of collaboration between the two parties in the House.

Now there's going to be a lot less.

Then you go over to the Senate and on Wednesday they started working on the budget and all the orbitals, which are the 64 bills that change state law in order to balance the budget.

They started working on that about 11:00, 64 bills and the bill, and they were done by five.

the Common Sense Institute came out with a report this week, and it has shown that spending has far outpaced growth.

And that's why we are facing a $1.5 billion deficit.

A lot of people are blaming the federal government, but it's been a decade of overspending.

Medicaid, which you mentioned, Marianne, has doubled the spending, has doubled in the last decade, and this is all under Democrat control.

There's also been a huge increase in state employees that's occurred.

And government spending has actually outpaced the population increase plus inflation.

We are 36 and competitiveness with our budget.

We're 50th in the nation in regards to debt service as a percentage of tax revenue.

What that means is we have a state that's not investing in long term debt, which would be a regular payment.

Instead, they're going kind of around this and taking from general funds to pay for long term debt that isn't really considered, debt.

It also can indicate that we're not investing in infrastructure like we should be.

this report estimates that it could go to 2 to $4 billion a year, a deficit.

If we don't have a change, either in the economy or how we are spending.

And, Patty, what are you going to pull out of the grab bag?

Well.

Maybe all of it.

So you still Colorado has to have a balanced budget.

You can see if it was bad this year.

Imagine next year.

And the big scandal I still think will be going through what really happened with Medicaid where there were there was no oversight where we overpaid.

So that'll be unraveling for the next several months.

I'm looking at the ballot, though.

We are going to have some very fun elections.

Wanda James made it onto, the against Diana to get so they're three now competing in the first Congressional district.

But who is endorsing her is interesting.

Like Ken Salazar and Eliot just came out for Wanda James.

So that is going to be a really amazing race and the gubernatorial race in the Republican Party.

Barb, Kirk Meyer and the two pastors, it's going to be it's going to be wild.

So I'll be watching that as for the business climate, remember 20 years ago when Colorado.

Richard.

Richard Florida came here, we were the creative class, Colorado and Denver and specific was attracting so many young, eager entrepreneurs.

Yes, we need to get that back.

And if cutting regulations helps, that's going to be important.

But part of it is just reminding people this can be a great place to live.

We just need to work to make it a little better.

All right, Penn.

You know, when it comes to the business environment, I agree we've slipped a little.

I spent ten years on the board of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

But we've always been cyclical.

There's always been a bit of churn in Colorado's economy.

And even with, when we were booming and bustling, we were turning young people.

They'd come here, work for a couple of years, get some experience, and they'd leave.

They weren't placing roots down.

They weren't getting ingrained in the community, and we were losing a little bit.

Also, we were a house, the fire.

We were growing, but we weren't matching it with what we needed to invest in infrastructure.

To your point, Chris, housing was not affordable and a lot of people were saying, whoa, slow down, baby.

We can't do Colorado anymore.

You know, we don't want our young workers live in 20 to an apartment.

It's it's just not sustainable.

I'm going to say this again because I say it every time I get a chance.

The fundamental problem we have in Colorado with budgeting on every level is Tabor.

It's an artificial, ridiculous constraint that didn't make sense when Douglas Bruce had a fit and got it passed.

And it makes even less sense now because before Tabor, the legislature did something amazing during lean times, they raised taxes.

During good times they reduced taxes, which is what responsible government ought to do.

who would have thunk that this far into the reintroduction of wolves, which the city slickers foisted upon two rural Coloradans, is be clear about that.

Who thinks that was still making headlines after all this time?

There are concerns about the number of wolves killed by humans.

But you add to that the reimbursement fund for ranchers who lose livestock to wolves is running dry.

Chris.

That's our way.

That reimbursement is guaranteed in the law.

And there some lawmakers trying to reduce it and $1.3 million.

Yeah, that exceeds what they predicted.

But those ranchers are deserving of that money.

There is legislation that would restrict general funds from being used to bring wolves here.

There's, again, limiting compensation.

And then we have the feds asking for comment about how ranchers feel about this wolf problem.

I reached out to a man named Josh Womble.

He's an outfitter and he has a lot of data on these wolves.

He tracks them like you wouldn't believe.

But he believes there's 28 to 32 pups that have been born in the last year or so.

You add that to the 13 original reintroduced wolves that are here.

You come up with about 41 wolves.

That's a pretty big number.

Now, there are lawmakers that say, I can't vote to restrict funding for the Wolf program because I don't want to defy the will of the people.

Well, the will of the people.

The ballot language in proposition 114 never specified a number of wolves that have to be reintroduced, nor does the state statute specify a number.

It came about in the restoration plan, which was approved by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission, a commission that has already proven that it will defy its agencies recommendations and vote the way it has been told to by the governor.

All right.

Patty.

Here's my biggest concern.

We are talking so much about wolves, when we should be talking about so many other issues out in the great outdoors.

When you have, you're going to have fire, you have the drought, you have ranchers and farmers facing incredible things.

And the headlines you see about the outdoors is all about wolves.

We have bigger things to worry about.

We need to put this program on hold instead of expanding it for now, and consider the real issues out there.

And.

Well, I don't I don't know how you define city slickers, but I you mean people who live in Denver?

I was opposed to this idea from the outset.

I don't know why we need more wolves.

I'm sorry.

Some are dying.

I'm sorry.

Some are living.

But, you know, we kept.

You know, ranchers and farmers need to be able to to produce our food stock in safety, right?

And they shouldn't be threatened like this.

I, I, I want real smart people to figure this out and deal with wolves.

I'm tired of talking about them.

There is a petition to the Parks and Wildlife Commission to reduce the compensation for ranchers who are losing livestock, because a big portion of that compensation money actually covers reduced, birth, birth rates for, for the cows, because they're all getting spooked by the wolves and lower, market weights when they go to market because they're having trouble keeping the weight on because, again, they're getting spooked by the wolves.

And to Chris's original point about Fish and Wildlife now being really, really curious, they are asking for comments from the ranchers.

They want they want to hear from the people who have been most directly impacted by this.

And it's not the wolf activists, and it's not the people on the front Range who voted for this.

They want to hear from the people whose daily livelihood is being challenged, threatened, and in some cases, we're already hearing about ranchers who are saying, I'm done, I'm out of here.

I can't, I can't deal with this anymore.

So now it's time to go down the line with each of you mentioning a high and the low of the week.

We'll start with Patty and a low note.

Just a few blocks from here at 12 2199 California Street, the former home of the Mercury Cafe, a wonderful gathering place for all kinds of artists and creators and any kind of event you can imagine here.

It was taken over a year ago.

The leases, the Pearl it has blown up.

It is the biggest scandal in the gay community right now.

It is also affecting all the other groups that use that building.

So the that the Mercury Cafe building could really use an angel to come in and rejuvenate it for the community that really needs to use it.

The swing dancers, the poets, you name it, it's one of the greatest spots in Denver already.

You know, the combination of, bad luck and bad policy has claimed another victim motive.

Man.

A long time Denver clothier run by John Johnson, is going out of business.

And he attributes it in a newspaper article in the post that, you know, Covid didn't help.

And then the city closed down the 1400 block of Larimer Street, so he got no foot traffic.

Then the new owners raised everybody's rent.

So he went over to Market Street, then the city put up bollards and a bus lane on half of Market Street, so there's no place for people to park.

And he's just gotten to the point where it's just not sustainable anymore.

So our policy combined with Covid has driven another small business person under mayor.

And I'm fascinated this week on the fighting between the Trump administration and our first American born pope.

First by some of the, things that the president posted showing himself laying hands on John Stuart or whoever it was that he was laying hands on.

But but the one that really got me was J.D.

Vance, who is a Catholic convert.

He was an atheist until 2019, decided to become Catholic for whatever reason, and is now telling the Pope that he should stay out of matters of theology.

What?

Very strange.

Chris.

Well, Milo of the week is, Ron Hanks in the Congressional district three, Assembly over the past weekend.

He threw his hat in the ring and he has made the ballot.

So, Congressman Jeff Hurd does have a primary opponent.

This comes following Hope chapel men wanting to challenge, Congressman Hurd and then Trump offering her a job and throwing his full throated support behind Jeff Hurd after having repealed his endorsement, having having endorsed him to begin with.

So CD3 is kind of a mess.

If Ron Hanks is the nominee, you will see that district go blue.

Maybe Ron Hanks simply wants, you know, Trump to offer him a job.

I don't know, job security.

And we always like to end the week on a high note to sort of set the mojo going into the weekend.

Patty.

Two winning teams one obviously do hockey 11th championship.

Amazing.

But Colorado Christian University softball team is on a 38 game winning streak.

Wow pin same thing do you hockey winning yet another championship.

The Avs are in the playoffs.

The nuggets are in the playoffs.

And the Walton Penner Group.

But 40% of the Rockies and Rockies fans can actually start to feel some sense of hope that things may turn around down on Blake Street.

Mary.

Yeah, I, I want to congratulate the folks who have demonstrated that there is hope for our democracy when people actually talk to each other first at the state Capitol, in the state Senate, when you saw Republicans and Democrats in a bad situation trying to cover $1 billion or billion five, depending on who you ask, a hole in the state budget, but managed to work together pretty darn well and and avoid the ugliness that came out of the house the week before.

That's number one.

Number two.

There was a story by Sean Boyd on Wednesday about collaboration between Congressman Hurd and Congressman Jonah.

Good.

seeing the two of them work together to solve some of these really, really huge problems and really striking problems here in Colorado that I will tell you, that gave me hope.

And I and I know other folks have seen it and had the same feeling.

Two weeks ago I had Mo's surgery, which, I had gone in for a skin screening based on a tweet I saw Kathy Sabin's.

She has been very public about her journey with skin cancer, and I hadn't been in a couple of years, and I went to get something on my cheek checked out, which was nothing, but they found something on my forehead and I had this surgery.

Turns out it went really well.

I actually reached out to Kathy.

I, become acquainted with her when I did some work at at her station, but, she has a fundraiser.

She's actually on the National Skin Cancer Foundation.

And she is raising money for the champions of change.

And I just want to give a shout out to her fundraiser.

kudos to her for, being from Colorado and standing up and and furthering the message about get your skin checked.

All right.

And thank you for sharing your story too.

And my high is that I was honored to attend the memorial for former U.S.

Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Ignacio this past weekend.

When I met him, I was driving a rent a car shuttle, making five bucks an hour, and he launched my career as a deputy press secretary and then press secretary.

I saw so many former colleagues who went on to do great things.

It was a full house, and it was also very moving to see the sendoff from the Southern Ute, whose land on which he lived.

And now he rest, and from his home nation, the Northern Cheyenne, where he was on the Council of Chiefs.

Even though he retired from the Senate more than 20 years ago, he leaves a lasting legacy.

Ride tall into the next world, Nighthorse, Godspeed and Aho.

Thank you all watching along with this or listening to our podcast available on Spotify and Apple.

Kyle Dyer is back next week and so see you here next week on PBS 12.

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