This week, the Colorado legislature voted to increase taxes for Colorado businesses to help generate revenue amid a massive shortfall in the state's budget.

And that was followed by the governor announcing how spending cuts were going to be made.

There was a lot going on during the six day legislative session.

33 measures were considered.

So we're coming together to sort through what you need to know on this week's Colorado Inside Out.

Hi, everyone, I'm Kyle Dyer.

Let's get started by introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start off with Eric Sondermann, columnist with Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette.

Ed Sealover, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and the editor of the Sum and Substance, Alayna Alvarez, reporter with Axios Denver.

And Alton Dillard, principal consultant at The Dillard Group, senior advisor to Rock for gray, and political analyst at Denver seven.

Let's start this week's show by assessing where Colorado stands financially following a special legislative session to crunch the numbers.

There is a three pronged approach.

Now to rectify our budget as best we can.

There will be, tax breaks taken away from businesses.

There's going to be some spending cuts and also a dip into our reserves.

Eric, I will start with you.

Well, there's certainly more black and less red in the budget than there was a week ago before the special session.

I'm fascinated, Kyle, with the extent to which there were to were and remain after the session, two narratives about what this was about.

The democratic narrative was this is all a consequence of the big beautiful bill.

And let's not make any mistake.

I'm no fan of the big beautiful Bill.

When you have to put that kind of branding on it, you know, it's anything but.

However, the Republican narrative is, no, this is much more about overspending at the state Capitol that the powers that be, both in the governor's office and the legislature, have been aware for many years that there's a structural deficit in Colorado and that Colorado keep spending in spite of all those warning signs.

But I think we make a mistake not to also acknowledge some of the overspending and some of the fact that there are going to have to be some hard decisions made, not just in the past tense this last week, but going forward, particularly to the extent that they're draining the rainy day fund, not draining it, but at least taking money out of it.

There's a lot of kicking the can down the road going on.

Would you agree with that?

For someone who sits in those committee hearings.

I would actually, I want to focus on one of the three parts you talked about there is they got about $153.2 million from rolling back tax breaks, plus another 100 million from selling tax credits.

And I don't know that there was enough discussion about the dynamic effects of the rolling back tax breaks that we're going to do.

And I want to give you one example.

They, eliminated what's called the regional Home Office, credit.

And that goes to insurers have at least 2.5% of their workforce here in the state.

A lot of the reasoning they put into eliminating this was, look, the office the state auditor looked into it, and it found that from 2022 to 2024, 15 of the 18 recipients actually cut their workforce in this state.

So guess what?

This is not working to to create jobs.

I don't think there was enough discussion about.

Yes, but Colorado is a really tough place for an insurer to be.

For one, it's much more expensive than states like Arizona, Nebraska where the flooding to right now.

Secondly, it's one of the harshest states in the country for an insurer in terms of the money losses.

They have third, third most in the country because of our hailstorms and our wildfires.

So when you eliminate a tax break like this, it really is the last thing that's keeping some companies here.

And I think we're going to see over the next year or two, companies are going to be pulling people out of this state.

They're going to be moving them more to Arizona.

We've already seen from, from the companies and to Nebraska.

And that's going to have an effect on the state's income tax revenue, as well as the compounded economic effect of people leaving the state.

So I think they not just kick the can down the road, but didn't think fully about some of the actions that were taken this week.

Okay.

Elena, it's been really interesting to compare the cost cutting strategies between the state and the city of Denver, especially considering these are playing out in back to back weeks.

Unlike Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Governor Polis made it a point not to implement any layoffs or furloughs.

And as we've seen, those have proven very unpopular for mayor Mike Johnston among city council members, of course, municipal employees and even members of the public.

Something else that I think is sort of important or interesting to note, at the state level is the sort of political play that's happening between the lines.

So state lawmakers deferred to Polis to find the 300 or so million dollars in cuts, essentially meaning that any political fallout from, whatever is slashed will now fall on the governor, who, of course, is a lame duck, and set of state lawmakers ahead of the 2026 primary.

So just a sort of savvy move there.

And there is going to be a hiring freeze, right, come Labor Day.

Is that correct for the state?

That's true.

But no furloughs, no layoffs.

Right?

Right.

Well, I love a good football analogy.

So I like to say that the legislature moved the issue out from the shadow of the goalpost, out to about the 35 or 40 yard line and then said, governor, you take it the rest of the way to the end zone.

And that is a savvy political move.

Now, I will admit that I kind of miscalculated just slightly in that when I heard Special session, I thought it was going to be a true sprint because, you know, you can turn a bill from introduction to the governor's desk in 72 hours.

So I thought it was just going to be three days and out the cuts from what we're able to tell are sort of at that, you know, razor skin, but off the top kind of level.

But as they take deeper dives into what kind of agencies, what kind of services, there are going to be cut backs.

And then I've also seen a lot of coverage this week with people expressing concerns about the hiring freeze in the context of everything that's going on statewide.

So Colorado is going to be interesting to watch in 2026.

Okay.

You know, as I mentioned, this session wasn't just about the budget.

Early this week, the governor privately signed two social welfare bills.

The first paves the way for more potential funding for states, school meals programs and then the other guarantees coverage for Medicaid patients who go to Planned Parenthood.

And also the much talked about I bill that we talked about had to be changed before it's enacted in February.

That also was pushed to a different yard line.

I will start with you, Ed.

I'm going to take what may be an unpopular opinion and say, I think it's actually a good thing that the EI bill was pushed out.

They went into the session saying, we've got to fix the 2024 law, which is the most comprehensive artificial intelligence regulations in the country.

And it contains some provisions that I think everybody admits are too much.

For example, there's a consumer appeals process.

If you don't like an AI decision that was made on you, you can appeal it to the company.

And companies may spend all their time dealing with those, especially smaller companies.

What was happening this session was two ideas came forward on how to fix this.

And neither of them could get across the finish line.

One in particular, from Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, kind of got stuck on the idea of liability.

And I'm not going to go into what joint civil liability means to AI developers, but suffice it to say, it could have pushed a lot of them out of the state because no other state has those kind of rules.

So in the end, they end up pushing this out, too.

They have a whole of this Off-Season and next session to negotiate some sort of compromise.

And a lot of people said they got closer than they ever did before in the two years of negotiations during the special session, I'm optimistic to see that we could have an AI rule that actually balances consumer protections with not being so onerous that companies are going to take their jobs and their system development and move them to other states that have less onerous rules.

Okay.

All right.

Elena.

As you noted, Kyle wasn't just about the budget.

There was also plenty of drama.

The session started with Republican state lawmaker Ryan Ghost abruptly resigning after he was going to be censured for taking a photo of one of his female colleagues that drew disparaging comments from other coworkers about what she was wearing.

And it ended with House lawmakers throwing, you know, Partizan personal attacks that led to Republican minority Leader Rose Puglisi storming out of the chamber nearly in tears.

I also want to double tap on the, the AI bill, because that was certainly the most contentious of any of them.

And something that I found really interesting came from an analysis my colleague John Frank did, where he dug through state records and found that more than 100 companies and organizations had hired more than 150 lobbyists to work on neutering this one bill.

Those companies included Amazon.

It included a coalition of tech bigwigs from meta, Apple, Google, OpenAI.

And I think the big picture here is that other states that are looking to rein in AI can learn so much from Colorado's first in the nation bill and what's happening here.

It it really sets them up for the sort of David and Goliath fight that they're going to face when they take on, you know, the powerful force that is big tech.

Oh, Elena makes a really good point because a lot of people still don't understand that our legislatures run from the lobby.

People want to treat it as some kind of like mini Congress.

We have a true citizen legislature.

These people have day jobs.

And so watching how that factors into everything.

And then to Eric's point, the Democrats run everything.

So is Democratic infighting that sunk that bill, the AI bill.

And so it'll be interesting to see, once we get over the hump into the full session, how much progress has been made, to Ed's point, because it has been sort of, you know, a couple of years there and then this beautiful purple state of ours doing what it can to continue to shore up reproductive health choices, shore up, snap.

Those are all very good things, too.

And so wanting to see again as we discussed, what if there's any downstream effects now that these bills have been signed, what these are going to continue to shake out like so again has like to say devil's in the details.

Truth's in the middle.

Okay, I'll just play off all three of the comments that went before me.

My only differ difference would be with Alton when he refers to Colorado as a purple state, despite his tie.

And, cow and Kyle's blouse here, our purple state status, I think, disappeared rather long ago.

We're pretty boldly, boldly cobalt blue these days.

And Democrats indeed, do run everything I will agree with Ed.

Often sessions are measured by what they do.

I think more often in public policy, we ought to measure things not just by what they do, but sometimes the best thing is to do nothing.

And in this case, Lisa, by the way, is the friend of responsible regulation.

And then Elena obviously hit the whole controversy with Representative Ahmed Gorst.

And that resolution, and all I can add is that I think somehow, some way, the state will be able to soldier on without his contributions to the Colorado legislature.

Because he is moving now.

He is moving to Arizona.

He's resigned and somehow I think we will make it through.

Okay.

All right.

Another vacancy committee hearing then for him, Okay.

With Labor Day weekend upon us, Denver International Airport is expecting an extra busy weekend, triple A recently.

So the Denver is the eighth most popular destination for travelers this Labor Day weekend.

those at the airport are now trying to figure out how best to keep operations going as the airport continues to grow in the future in terms of powering it, electricity, all of that.

Elena, you have written about the idea that's been floating around up about bringing small nuclear reactors to give the the airport the energy it needs as it continues to grow in the future.

That's right.

And, CEO Phil Washington has had a good amount of resistance, particularly from Council member Stacy Gilmore, who represents the district where Denver International Airport is located.

What they're grappling with is the sort of knee jerk reaction that I think a lot of people tend to have when it comes to the idea of nuclear energy.

They hear the word nuclear, and it tends to evoke fears of, you know, nuclear accidents dating back to Chernobyl and Fukushima.

But proponents, including, obviously, Phil Washington, say that modern nuclear power plants are safe, they're clean, they're reliable, and they're what's needed to power future energy needs, which Denver International Airport has a lot of.

India's nuclear push also reflects a growing trend.

So just this month, a law in Colorado went into effect that reclassified nuclear energy as clean energy.

I checked in with Dia officials this week, and they've confirmed they're not going to move forward with an RFP for a feasibility study, of installing nuclear power until they've met with the community to hear their input.

They anticipate that those meetings to start in the coming weeks.

So something to definitely be tuning in, for.

But, you know, the big picture here is Dia tends to always get their way.

So I, I don't see this plan, you know, dying Out.

And Phil Washington sees things that others don't.

And so sometimes when you're that visionary.

Yes, sometimes that consensus building falls off a little bit.

But to Elena's point, yeah, there probably should have been a little bit more communication, especially with the constituents who would have been affected by this.

with Gilmore being in her last term, as you see, and she's coming out swinging on a variety of issues.

But I think Phil's heading the right direction just because Denver International Airport is that it is an international airport.

It was Phil Washington who said, when you're doing airport construction, you can't close the airport to make things happen.

So, yeah, you're going to go around cones and construction zones and all that.

And now with the East and west security being in place, that downstairs part looks like a ghost town.

It is the weirdest thing, but I just think this will be with the community stakeholders that's been discussed.

This is going to be a big part of making sure that Denver International Airports growth trajectory stays on point.

Okay.

Well, I've been critical, more than once that Phil Washington and at Dia.

I'm sure that will happen again in this case, I believe he is right.

If you believe in an all of the above energy policy as opposed to rushing to your corner, that you're all about oil and gas or the opposite corner, whether it's renewables only if you believe in an all of the above policy, nuclear has to be on the table.

It has to be a part of this.

We're talking about much smaller, stackable, reactors here, components here.

It needs to be researched.

It has to be a part of our future.

With these giant data centers popping up everywhere.

We have to develop other sources of electrical energy.

Good for Phil Washington for surfacing the issue.

Maybe he should have done a little more outreach.

Maybe that will happen now, but it needs to be on the table.

And let's see where this goes.

Okay.

All right.

So I want to finish off by talking about nuclear.

And just full disclosure, this is bill the Colorado Chamber supported when it went through the legislature this year, a bipartisan bill that declared this to be clean energy.

One of the points that was made is that nuclear is not supplanting, solar or wind, but it's supplementing.

And the reason it needs to supplement is because solar wind are only going to occur at certain time, say, when the sun is out or when the wind is blowing.

Nuclear power plants can generate electricity 24 seven and put it on to the grid.

That means there's not going to be stops and starts going on to the grid.

And especially as Eric mentioned here, we're going to be investing in some more of these data centers and some of these places that need a lot of energy.

We need consistent power on the grid.

Nuclear energy is able to do that.

I think when the concept of nuclear energy came up, a lot of people said, and we're looking at it in Pueblo.

Pueblo's got the Comanche plant shutting down in 2031.

Its coal plant, and they need some other kind of economic boost down there as well as is consistent power.

But I think the idea of doing it at Dia is really fascinating because it puts it out where everyone is going to be able to see this, and it puts it in a place that needs 24 seven power dia as well.

So I am very curious to see this go forward.

But I think a lot of people want to come back to this discussion about 4 or 5 years and see if people are changing their tunes on nuclear as to what they are now.

Be it the airport going nuclear, as some people call it, the Broncos looking to move maybe to Lone Tree or Bucky's setting up shop across from protected open space, Our local leaders are very vocal these days about what we're in, and and I know every week we weigh in on different topics, but it seems like, all of a sudden our different leaders are commenting about some things that you wouldn't expect them to.

I let's start with you, Alton.

Yeah.

I'm still trying to picture Senator Bennett with some beaver nuggets and a barbecue sandwich.

The visuals just not coming together for me here.

But to the Bronco thing, I'm going to do a little bit of a compare and contrast.

Former Mayor Webb is like one of the last of the old school like machine politicians.

So when he chimes in on something, I think it has a different level of cachet.

And as a frequent traveler, which I've become these days, being in cities where the football stadium is in or adjacent to a downtown is such an economic driver as far as driving the foot traffic and everything.

When Wellington Webb chimes in, people listen.

So I'll really be keeping an eye on this these next couple of years.

So they can influence.

Yes.

Okay.

a lot of it traces to our president, who is never silent for long about anything.

Now he expresses himself on his social media account and all capital letters, and I think Polis or Bennett or Johnston or others obviously handled themselves differently.

But I think Trump in some ways sets the tone and whether it's conscious or subconscious, other politicians have now picked up on that pattern with regard to Bennett and Bucky's, the column that I wrote this week at a run this weekend, next Tuesday is really a look at this heavyweight contest of a governor's race that we have going on right now, which is really unprecedented to statewide elected officials like wiser and better to take each other on.

One thing that Bennett is facing is he has to get more comfortable with sort of the lingo and the parlance of Colorado politics, not federal stuff, but Colorado stuff.

And I actually think his plane and the Bucky's controversy is part of his attempt to get local.

Okay.

All right.

Ed.

I guess I would ask this is public officials try to decide which private sector controversies they want to jump into, that they might think twice about that and they might think twice about it in the bigger picture of, look, we are already dealing with a state that is the sixth most regular rated state in the country.

And I realized that Michael Bennett isn't jumping in and giving his opinion.

Bucky's because he's talking about regulations, but it does bleed down that way.

The more the public officials feel they should have a say in what goes on in the private sector, it's going to lead to the state government, the local government, any kind of jumping government, jumping in and saying, here's how you're going to run this, too.

We could talk all we want about where the Bronco Stadium should be, but I'm just waiting for somebody to put out a bill saying it's got to be in Denver or we're going to take away its tax funding.

These are decisions that are rough on the business community.

They need government to stay out of these things.

Okay.

Elaina, I'll say on this, as you know, unlike President Trump who just this week has weighed in on everything from Cracker Barrel's rebrand to the private employment contract of late night host Seth Meyers, at least our public officials are weighing in on things that have, you know, real local impacts.

That's all I got to do.

You think Taylor and Travis will have their wedding here?

Since Governor Polis invited them to have their wedding and he'd officiate?

Polis can dream.

All right, let's go down the line and talk about some of the highs and lows of this week.

We'll start on a low points.

We can end on a good note.

And I will start with you, Eric.

We just talked about our president in the last go around, so I'll talk about him again.

He is running perhaps the most intrusive administration that this country can ever recall.

And this is a supposed conservative, a the party of small government.

I read an article recently comparing him to Manami in many ways, the mayoral candidate in New York.

In many ways, they are the same figure.

Even no one comes from the quote unquote socialist left.

And one comes, quote unquote, from the conservative free market.

Right.

But they both believe in big government.

And this president is involving himself and every decision, every aspect of our society, large and small.

And if that's what conservatism has come to these days, color me amazed.

Report came out this week showing that 28.4% of Colorado students were chronically absent from school.

That's at least 10% of the school year last year.

This should set off fire alarms for everyone.

And I realize this is actually a slight decrease, but the fact that we're not seeing this fall off the hill from pandemic era is the real problem here, especially when you look at it.

You see that those numbers go up as students go on in school.

We have a real problem keeping our high school students in particular, interested in what they're doing.

I think this should set off another call that people say, let's reimagine the curriculum.

How do we get them into workforce training, where they think about their schooling not as something they have to do, but it's a precursor to what they want to do for the rest of their life.

And I think conversations going on in the state right now about that are very important.

Okay.

Yeah.

Back to school season, unfortunately, in this country means we have to worry about school shootings again.

And we've already seen a fatal school shooting in Minneapolis.

CU Boulder was also fell victim, to being, you know, part of a dozen colleges this week that received, a wave of hoax calls about active shooters on campus.

And I just can't imagine what it's like to be a student these days, what it's like to be a parent.

It's really, really sad.

It's awful.

My low is lack of, civics education as I try not to do often, I do hop occasionally on to the elected official social media account and look at the comment section.

That's where I mess up.

And so after watching people going after Mayor Johnson over the proposed bridge across to Veterans Park, I'm just like, okay, people just don't get it.

And ignorance is what has put the country on its current trajectory path.

Because it was Governor Polis, his idea.

Right.

Exactly.

Okay.

All right.

Something good.

It was 20 years ago this weekend that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Carr Public Radio did a nice series on New Orleans folks who relocated to Colorado, as a consequence of that hurricane.

I recall it.

Right.

Our daughter's name is Katrina.

She was 15 at the time.

She's now 35, obviously.

And, you know, we paid attention to this little tropical depression out in the middle of the Atlantic that shared her name.

And little did we know what was in store.

I want to give kudos to Denver for something they did this week, which is opening two soccer.

Fields in downtown Denver.

And what was Skyline Park.

Any business organization understands how much you need to activate a downtown to get a community hub there, and that is what's needed right now.

You need to bring people back to downtown.

And if you're seriously looking at converting some of these office buildings into residential buildings downtown, you need to give parents amenities to raise their kids a downtown, too.

This was a great idea from both the activation and, residential standpoint.

Good on you, Denver, for the thinking.

Okay, Lena.

Sticking with sports.

See you.

Boulder this week announced that they're retiring.

Ralphie the sixth.

After she showed, quote, indifference to running, which was her main job.

Even though that means, you know, the buffs are going to start their season this weekend without their mascot, it means that Ralphie gets to go live her best luxurious, you know, leisurely life with no cardio.

So good for her for no cardio.

All right.

And mine is a shout out to both the National Association of Black Journalists and the Colorado Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, and which one?

My mom is one of the surviving founders just recently rang in their 50th anniversary after founding in 1975, but also the Colorado Association of Black Journalists.

Even though they did not win, they were finalist for chapter of the year.

And the reason that's so key is because they've only reformed over the past couple of years after years of dormancy.

So shout out to both the NAB and the CIA.

And to your mother as well.

And to my mothers.

Yes.

And you for going with her to be recognized.

That was great.

My high is what transpired inside Denver City Council Chambers on Monday night.

Our city is having a tough go with the layoffs.

With the vacant positions not being filled.

And you know, we have leaders disagreeing with each others so publicly about how the city should be run.

But on Monday, there was a possum.

All that for some inspiration, some recognition and some gratitude.

City Council member Darryl Watson made a formal proclamation in honor of Federico Pena, Denver's 41st mayor.

Watson spoke of how Mayor Pena led the city through tough economic economic times back in the 80s and early 90s, much as Denver has today.

But Watson praised Pena for being persistent and never giving up on ideas to invest and grow the city, be it Dia, the convention Center, Coors Field, the list goes on.

I was in the chambers went, which was packed when, the city council and people in the audience gave Federico Pena a standing ovation for his work.

40 years ago for the city of Denver, Pena was gracious, but also used the opportunity to encourage the city council, saying, great feats are accomplished in difficult times.

Never an easy times, and to never give up, reassuring them that if what we did 40 years ago was inspiring, you all can do greater things today.

Here, here.

Right?

It was pretty special.

Thank you, insiders, for coming this weekend for unpacking so much of the special session as well.

Thank you for watching at home or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

Have a good Labor Day weekend.

Tb12 believes in the power of original local programing.

Help us bring more shows like the one you just watched by donating at PBS's World Dawgs Program support today.