This week.

A lot of focus is what's happening outside of Colorado with Israel and Hamas talking cease fire, the continuation of the destructive and deadly wildfires in southern California and the transition of power in Washington.

With that said, there still remains a lot to discuss this week from inside Colorado.

So let's get this conversation started.

Welcome to this week's insider panel.

We have Patti Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword.

David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute.

Elena Alvarez, reporter with Axios, Denver.

And and Thomas Tafoya, Community leader and former candidate for mayor of Denver.

Denver's mayor is on the go in front of a lot of cameras this week, posting on social media, trying to deal with some pressing issues facing Colorado's largest city.

Mike Johnston stood up to the city council with a veto, announced a deal regarding the former Park Hill Golf course.

And it's not going to be deserted for that much longer.

But then also, Johnson has realized that more needs to be done to make sure downtown Denver is safe and that people perceive it to be safe.

Patti, I'll start with you.

We were talking about him just last week because he just had been bashed by Mike Coffman.

But this week was not about Aurora for him at least.

He had a very good week in the sense of the Park Hill golf course.

That was a big campaign issue for many people in Denver.

He had he did think he was going to do something with it.

He got the will of the people who wanted to keep it as open space The 16th Street Mall stabbings.

You can't control crazy any more than you can control a truck driving into Las Vegas by a guy from Colorado Springs.

But there's no question there needs to be more security on the mall.

The street, the city needs to be more forthcoming about what's going on on the mall.

And we can quit thinking about the little cute pop ups and instead really deal with this as grown ups.

So we've got a lot of work to do on the Mall.

And the way to do it is not to talk about how vibrant it is when you are mourning two people who are killed.

I think the mall situation did have a lot to do with the veto of the harm.

The injection centers.

David, I'm curious what you think.

On the Park Hill Golf course thing being turned into a public park.

Great.

But trust but verify.

Because even while he was making the announcement, he was bemoaning that, if you have a park that leads to gentrification.

Good for him for his veto on on the the the drug use centers.

In 1979, Denver had one police officer for 350 every 353 residents.

That has now fallen by 20% to one officer for every 472.

So of course, we have under policing all over and definitely including on the mall.

You know, in his 2025 city budget, the mayor wants to spend $6 million on his global warming office and two and a half million dollars on his DCI office.

Imagine if you took that eight and a half million dollars and put it into hiring more police to keep downtown safe, You get you have the security first with appropriate law enforcement, and then people will start coming back.

All right, Elena, you've had a busy week.

It has been busy on the veto issue.

Something that stood out to me this week is that Mayor Johnson has already issued as many vetoes in a year and a half as his predecessor, Mayor Hancock, issued in all 12 years.

And I think that kind of signals his aggressive, bold approach.

But it also signals how leftward the city council has shifted.

And I think he's at this moment where he's really trying to reign in that progressive block that's on the dais on the 16th Street mall stabbings.

You know, public perception is so tough to change.

We've seen data that showing violent crime has decreased statewide and around the mall.

But the narrative that crime is rampant still persists.

And this is going to really throw a big a big wrench into Johnson's bigger plans.

Reviving downtown is one of his top goals.

He's been pretty good about accomplishing his goal so far, so it'll be interesting what he does next.

But I think right now he's got a real moment to turn the corner because we're at the start of a new year.

It's a fresh start.

We're ushering in a brand new day in office.

John Walsh, who told me curbing crime is a top priority for him.

So I think there's real potential for progress.

But with the mall's renovation set to finish up this fall, the clock is definitely ticking.

And isn't he going to come out with his 2025 goals for the city in a couple of weeks?

I wonder if just what's been happening in the last week will alter those on January 29th?

29th?

Okay.

And.

Well, I would agree that it seems there'll be a massive rift between city council and the mayor's office.

It's playing out in the housing and response for the homelessness program that the mayor has been pushing forward.

I don't think there's a lot of coordination between the second and third floor in the in the city and county building.

As far as the stabbings downtown, terribly sad.

Who wants to see that happen to anybody who grew up on the 63 mall?

I'm sure they hope it gets finished and we can support local businesses coming back.

And also support the businesses that have survived because they feel like they're always left out.

It's always about what's new and what the new program is.

as far as a park to a golf course.

I'm hopefully this is closing a chapter.

I've been involved in every single piece of it.

And I heard a lot of people talk about maybe taking 20 of those acres, perhaps talking about food resiliency and teaching people to farm.

Also, we could be talking about tree like a tree nursery in particular.

This is the least tree canopy area in the city.

And so like, are there solutions to be had there?

It was taken aback by why he brought gentrification.

It's also interesting that Mayor Webb kind of poked poked at the mayor a little bit about how he was on the wrong side of the issue.

But he's there now.

Still really don't get this land swap.

I got to look at that property.

The valuation seems low.

It's industrial property.

What does this mean for the airport?

And West Side always seems to have a card up their sleeve.

So I'm going to wait and see and read the documents.

Okay.

All right.

It is hard to say that we are striving for Colorado to become one of the ten safest states in the country.

When we're looking at delays of 517 days to process a rape kit.

That is a direct quote from State Senator Julie Gonzales, who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The state's goal is 90 days to have those results back.

Sadly, one of our lawmakers in the legislature personally knows about that.

Wait.

And there is talk about what can lawmakers do?

Can there be new laws to move this along faster?

517 days is crazy.

David.

Well, yes, it is crazy.

In 2016, Colorado had zero backlog in rape kit testing.

As of November 2023, the backlog was up to 275 days.

So there is a tremendous failure on the part of the governor Then in November 2023, they discover that one of their top scientists had been engaged in misconduct and faking results.

And so they had a huge number of things.

They had to go back and test to make properly to make sure the convictions were still still valid.

Now, the Colorado investigation says it's they'll be done with the new thing, the things they had to retest by the spring.

They've got new hires coming on, new trainees.

They're also looking at being able to contract with outside labs, which you have to be sure to maintain the confidentiality of victims, but that that's all doable and so good for that going forward.

But we have from the governor's office, he's responsible for this.

He's the head of executive branch, a catastrophic failure because the governor obviously has had other priorities than properly funding the basics of what government should do It was really disturbing to learn about what Representative Wolford has gone through, not only the sexual assault case itself, but the fact that she's been waiting over a year to get to get real answers from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

I think what's even more disturbing is that her allegations are part of thousands of other sexual assaults that passengers using these ridesharing apps have claimed nationwide.

If there's one silver lining to this, it's that she brought even more attention to this massive backlog.

I mean, 517 days is astonishing and clearly affecting so many Coloradans.

I don't know how many, but I can only imagine, as David said, you know, the CBI is adding more investigators, which they say should help.

But Wilford is now calling on the ledge to act to do more.

And it certainly seems like a bipartisan issue that lawmakers should and can address.

I would agree with you.

Heartbreaking.

I know, Representative Wolford, I had no idea for the last year that she was going through this.

This is a big environmental champion there at the Capitol.

So when I read about that in the paper, I was just like, my goodness, I was aware that she was talking about a piece of legislation to rein in what this issue was, but I didn't know that it was coming from her personal story.

So I you know, I would want to encourage people to get involved in supporting legislation that would curb people who are secretly driving under somebody else's profile and anonymously harming people.

Totally wrong.

You know, this part about STEM science in particular, why we as a society been trying to push for more some scientists because of backlogs just like this.

This isn't just an agency that's been disgraced with cheating of results either.

We saw it recently with the water division.

We've seen the air pollution control permitting division entire a group of people come forward as whistleblowers, third parties from the Energy Commission who have been caught falsifying data in Weld County related to wells.

And so, you know, it's really important that we start exalting, I think, scientists and investing into those resources.

I would agree with you that bipartisanship here and getting the resources needed to get through this backlog is incredibly important.

The trauma for victims needs to be addressed.

Patti, I'm glad Ian brought up the environmental issues because those were two at least cases and they weren't just singular cases.

They involve dozens or more of investigations on oil and gas leaks, things like that.

We're counting on our state government to make sure these are done fairly and clearly.

They weren't.

But still, it doesn't hold a candle to what happened with CBI and what Missy Woods did with over a thousand cases that are in question now that need to be retested.

David's right.

It doesn't explain why we got so far behind on rape kits in the first place.

What other crimes are we waiting for?

The investigations.

I've got to think it's not just rape kits.

If it's just rape kits, that's horrible discrimination to boot on something that mostly affects women.

So it's definitely a the state needs to deal with it.

And I think it's great that she went she came public to talk about the issue and then you do have the ride share safety.

And that's another big issue that we've got to deal with this year.

All right.

Affordability is, though, the big topic this session.

It's important for the governor.

And we saw this week that some state Senate Republicans released a bill of packages that they say will save the average Coloradan 40 $500 a year.

Now, there are many cuts proposed and repeals of fees that we currently have, Alina.

We'll see how much this gets passed.

That was quite the display when the lawmaker was showing, what, 40 $500 actually looks like on the Senate floor.

I mean, who doesn't want to save money?

Right.

As you said, affordability has been a major issue in Colorado for years.

The catch here, though, is that there are some real tradeoffs that come with some of these bills that Senate Republicans are proposing.

So repealing the retail delivery fee, for example, that fee is tacked on to things like Uber eats GrubHub orders.

That would mean less funding for transportation infrastructure.

Another bill that would repeal the ten cent plastic bag fees.

That would mean less money for local governments to cover things like composting and recycling programs.

Republicans, it's no secret, have a minority in both chambers.

And as it stands right now, last time I looked, no Dems have signed on to these bills yet.

So again, everyone wants to save money.

But that doesn't mean that, you know, pushing these measures through isn't going to be a pretty steep uphill battle because of these trade offs.

But just last week at the state of the state, the governor was talking about we need to compromise, we need to work together.

Ian Yeah, anything.

Compromise is an important piece.

You see a lot of bipartisan legislation that makes it through every year and it's a smaller segment that doesn't.

I will say that there are Republican showmanship here and how they put on their show.

Good for them.

I think that's a big part of politics.

Why is the mayor been having so many press conferences?

You've got to get your message out there.

I think that this is about laying groundwork for the governor's race, knowing full well that not a single one of their bills is going to move forward or pass, but they're trying to get into the narrative at the same time that billions were spent by the Republicans talking about issues that are impacting you.

It all starts to snowball.

It's in the back of your head.

And then as we're turning the corner into the next year, when we see people preparing for the governors in particular race, this is all a part of that plan.

I would agree these are hard issues we have to take with cuts.

There are going to be a lot of cuts this year.

The entire electric school bus program completely gone.

Just as an example, air pollution control division staff.

I mean, these are issues that I focus on, but it doesn't matter.

Everyone has to take it, Erica.

I think everybody recognizes that the devil is in the details, but the showmanship that we're going to repeal everything and we're going to drive deeper cuts.

Nothing makes their base salivate more than saying putting a closing sign on a program.

Okay.

All right, Patty.

Lots of props.

This year we had pollies taking the chainsaw to all the past regulations, the nonsense regulations.

Now we have a big that of money that the Republicans wanted to show.

I guess we should be glad they didn't show all the rape kits that were so far behind in the testing.

I don't think we need as many stunts.

We do need compromise.

We need serious discussion of what's going on.

For a long time, Pelosi's office was talking about every single measure was how much money it would save you and I think we see through that a lot.

What we want is to really balance which costs are worth it and which costs are not.

And we want to be sure that our government is working as efficiently as possible.

All right.

You've talked a lot about getting rid of some fees.

What precisely has Patty said?

And that's that's what our democratic system of government is, is those tradeoffs of, you could pay more taxes, but you'll get some more services and you trust the government to deliver those services that you're paying for our taxpayers.

Bill of Rights has that mechanism where taxes can be approved by the people, as they often are in local governments exactly that way.

But the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights has a loophole, and if you call something a fee, then you don't have to ask for the consent of the voters.

And when we approve the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, we all understand what a fee was.

You ran a town with the rec center and they want to raise the price from $0.25 to $0.35.

You don't need an election for that.

But the Colorado Supreme Court says a fee is anything the legislature calls a fee.

So we've had billions of dollars of tax increases, supposedly as fees, are nominal.

State income tax rate is 4.4%.

But when you figure in all the people, the fees that people pay, including at hospitals, phone bills, all kinds of things, often hidden fees are real.

State income tax rate is 7.15%, vastly higher.

What the Republicans have proposed is just a tiny start at fixing that problem.

But at least it's a start.

And remember, most of what they're repealing is things that were never done with the consent of the people.

Aside from the affordability, a big goal for Governor Polis is to have all the power on Colorado's electrical grid come from renewable energy by 20, let's see, 20, 48, 15 years away.

We've have new laws and programs in place that are moving us in that direction.

Coal plants have closed and Colorado is now number one.

And when it comes to sales for new electric vehicles, But then, as we've discussed at this table, there's also growing need for more data centers which suck up energy and water.

This week, the Denver Post had an article and reporter Judith Koehler asked a question in this article that I'd like to ask each of you Will Colorado have enough juice to guarantee a clean energy future?

And I will start with you.

Well, I don't know if it all come from Colorado.

I think transmission plays a critical role in the interconnectedness of the Mountain West, so that when wind or the sun is blowing in other places, coupled with storage, will hopefully help get us there.

I do believe through the work I do for a day job, that many of the largest utilities are already on the way to 80% by 2030.

And yes, as we get closer to the last percentages, it may end up costing more.

And we're not sure where that's at.

But I think we're pointed in the right direction right now.

With the coal plants closing, there's equal benefits for air pollution reductions.

But I will say that nobody wants austerity, I think, any more than environmental justice leaders I work with.

We understand that when you cut these budgets, it also means firefighters and teachers and many other things.

And so we have to find a way for these publicly traded companies to take a take a piece of that action instead of sending it back to their profit holders when they decide to build a coal plant in the early 2000.

And it turns out to be a lemon, right.

There's geothermal rulemaking that are happening.

We're fortunate here in Colorado to have the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and that laboratory is advancing sciences in ways that I have seen.

They're going through a program there that is quite phenomenal.

So I am very hopeful that all coupled together we can get there.

think collectively we're moving in the right direction here in Colorado And the Biden administration's influx of resources into rural Colorado for Tri-State Energy for for reals is going to make a big difference for everybody to get there.

Okay.

All right, Patti.

We will all be taking some personal responsibility this weekend when we are under 50 quilts and have our socks pulled up because even if you have an efficient furnace, might not be efficient enough to deal with negative degrees.

So we understand the issues in getting the power and that we're going to make some sacrifices.

You're still turning your furnace down from what it was.

We look at California and we see what we have to do to really deal with climate change and that there are certainly ramifications.

We saw it here three years ago with the Marshall Fire.

But what's going on in California is beyond belief.

So what concerns me is can we get there with the grid We have we've talked about that with the power lines.

I think it will be the last 20% that is going to be very tough.

How many sacrifices are people willing to make?

And the next ten, 15 years are really going to be challenging.

The sacrifices will be the ones that the people in California and Texas have been making with rolling blackouts and brownouts, grids going down because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

And if you have a system that's dependent on them, then you will have electrical blackouts, which means people who depend on that, for example, somebody who needs an oxygen machine who can't live without it, are going to die.

We can have a clean, low cost, zero pollution, electrical system.

Geothermal is great.

Now I agree with you on that and so is nuclear.

But to many of the regressive left, I oppose nuclear in part because it is successful and they want to use global warming as their pretext for destroying capitalism.

De-growth and all those things that I to your credit, and I'm not saying you're one of those, but what people should do is buy, first of all, buy a home generator because we are facing because of this collaboration between the governor, the Public Utilities Commission and Xcel, this little trifecta of corporate welfare decreased reliability.

You're going to need a home generator because your future of you had a past of reliable of electricity.

If you lived in Colorado 20 years ago, that is not the future of Colorado.

Okay.

Elena.

Something we're watching closely is Xcel Energy's $5 billion Billion with a B proposal that it submitted last month to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

And that's really to make sure the grid does have enough juice.

To your point, it says these investments are driven largely by crazy demand.

As we just talked about, there was a great quote in the Colorado Sun by an Xcel Energy official who said they haven't seen these kind of demand levels since air conditioning came online.

And then the second driver for this plan is meeting policies, clean energy goals.

And I think you mentioned this, but they are about they're confident they can get to the 80% by 2030.

But it's that that last little 20% that they need to make some major changes to get there.

So the plan is now in the hands of the Utility Utilities Commission.

That approval process could take a year.

But something that I found interesting was that if it is approved, it's going to mean Xcel customers will pay a lot more.

We're talking an average residential bill increase of about 100 bucks or more a month.

So certainly something to pay attention to.

Let's talk about some of the highs, but also the lows from this week.

I'm going to start with the lows and with Patti.

Have to return to Aurora once a week.

So and Anderson, fight a little tiff with Mayor Mike Coffman about, well, that was crazy.

And when you have city Councilwoman Danielle Krinsky being the voice of reason who kind of separated them, you know, you have a low point.

We've talked about priorities for government, the in the state legislature.

They won't even spend the half million dollars to compensate ranchers for livestock predation for the introduction of non-native wolf species into Colorado.

And yet at the same time, they've got a bill supported by the governor to give $34 million in corporate welfare to the Sundance Film Festival to move from Utah to Boulder, which, by the way, already has an excellent film festival, the Boulder International Film Festival, which doesn't cost the taxpayers $34 million.

The Sundance Film Festival has annual revenues of $78 million and makes an annual profit as assets of 70 million and makes an annual profit of $13 million.

And that tells you all you need to know about this legislature where, yeah, give shovel corporate welfare at Robert Redford and folks like that.

But the ranchers who are trying to make a living, they count for zero in this legislature.

Okay, Elena.

This is kind of a cop out, but my low is that it's going to be obscenely cold this weekend.

We're supposed to get snow, which is good.

The state needs it, but it's going to be our first subzero temperatures.

And I think over a year and all I'm really not looking forward to that.

It's beyond stock show weather, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

My little goes to the Senate confirmation hearings that I've been turning into since my work interfaces with the federal government.

And there's a couple of things that I think are both about it.

There certainly are some candidates that have been put forward by Trump that are woefully underqualified for the jobs they have.

And equally more disappointing is seeing that the senators who are attacking people on things that are totally irrelevant when you could easily pick apart these people and whether they're competent or not.

And so to attack a person instead of based on their merit, it just is all again, for showmanship.

Yeah.

Patty, something good.

I want to say something good about the Webb's.

First of all, Wellington Webb fought for the Park Hill Golf course and one long, long term fight.

An even longer fight.

Guillermo Webb, who pushed for the MLK holiday in Colorado long and hard and on Monday will celebrate with yet another parade, the March parade from City Park down to City Hall.

And it's all because of the Webb's.

And I believe it's delayed a little bit because it's going to be so cold that morning.

Yeah, good for them.

But it should happen.

And there will be a ceremony.

yeah.

the women's profession, the professional Women's Hockey League, set a all time attendance record with a game in Denver of two teams from other cities, over 14,000 people at Ball Arena and the fans chanting, We want a team, and I hope they get one.

Elena.

This week we had two major agreements.

One was global, one was local.

The global one was the cease fire deal in Gaza.

I was very relieved to see that.

I think that kicks in on Sunday.

And then the other, of course, was the Parkville golf course.

I am very excited to not have to write about that, but saga of release for the foreseeable future until, you know, development plans happen.

And it's really exciting to see a 155 acres of land not be deserted and actually put to use.

I'm excited about the Air Pollution Control Division, a law that I helped pass and have been in rulemaking yesterday and today.

It's called Regulation 30.

It's about prioritizing legitimate chemicals that cause people cancer.

It's the first law ever helped, right?

We worked on it.

It took us five years to pass.

It's finally going to implementation.

And these are ones I think that everybody on both sides of the aisle can agree are dangerous.

And I'm hopeful that we're going to find a way to restrict them and remove them as best as possible for localized communities.

My high was seeing the announcement this week that former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow and his wife are having a baby now.

My kids were little back in Tebow time.

Remember the 20, 2011 and 12 season when the fourth quarters were so exciting, the Broncos games because of Tim Tebow?

Well, he was all that and he exemplified sportsmanship and kindness.

And children in this area just loved him.

We had the jerseys, the Tebow towels, and for some reason, I still have one of these bracelets that were all that.

What would Tim Tebow do?

Right.

So he made such a great impact on so many kids that I'm happy that now in his wife can have and raise one of their own kids.

That's good.

Our thanks to our insiders this week.

It was a busy week.

Thanks for helping us sort through everything.

Thank you for watching or listening to our podcast.

And as we've mentioned, Monday is Martin Luther King Jr Day and it's also Inauguration Day.

So I wish everyone a day of peace and hope and warmth because it is going to be awfully cold for a while.

Colorado, I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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