I'm Alton Dillard, sitting in for Kyle Dyer these next couple of weeks.

During my 30 year career as a spokesman, I had to consume news.

24 seven.

Do you get overwhelmed by current events or tune out, or do you stay in the information stream regardless of whether the news is good or bad for those who stay in the stream?

There's a lot to cover.

Let's have a frank discussion with our insiders about the issues.

The good and the bad.

The lows and the highs.

On this week's edition of Colorado Inside Out.

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

Patty Calhoun, a founder and editor of Westword, Luigi del Puerto, editor of Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette.

Kris Roark, consultant with Roark Media.

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

Free speech is in the headlines once again.

Lately, we've seen everything from angry constituents being 86, from elected officials, town halls to local elected bodies, changing their public comment guidelines.

The latest example is the Aurora City Council, where community anger over the police shooting of an unarmed black man has led to heated exchanges inside and outside of council chambers.

Add to that the fact that the area camp is home to three local colleges will be monitored by the federal government because of the pro-Palestinian protests from last school year sparked allegations of anti-Semitism.

Well, to kick us off, fatty.

Well, free speech is so tricky from so many angles because it's not just what you get to say, it's who gets to say it.

It's who gets to say it to whom.

Let's take a referee out.

One of the interesting things about that new investigation by the Civil Rights Commission is David Kopel, who's often at this table, was one of the ones who suggested it be investigated for what happened last year, Just yesterday, Zoe Williams, who was arrested for just simply watching the action, too.

And so that's another free speech issue.

So a area is going to be a hot button place for a long time, and I'm not entirely sure they deserve it.

The police over responded that the DPD, but there were already a police department in that case.

But it's a mess.

Then let's go to the Colorado legislature, which wants to cut back on open access, gets into who's a journalist who isn't a journalist.

Good for Polis to veto it.

Now it has to be rewritten and people would be defining what journalism is.

That's going to be a tricky task.

Well, speaking of journalism, which.

Right, and not to mention the fact that they changed the upended, I mean, they the legislature upended open meetings law.

That's a 50 year old law that I think served journalists pretty well, upended the whole thing, and now allowed legislators to effectively talk among themselves without letting the public know what they're deciding.

I think that's a very bad scenario.

The what's happening at the Aurora City Council, I think, is less of a commentary on the First Amendment or civil discourse.

I think what's happening is a city council that struggled and lost control over the chambers order.

We have a group of very determined activists and they have disrupted a council time and time again.

Is there some sort of an overreaction on the part of the council?

Maybe, yes.

Is there some new ones there?

I think so.

I think that at the moment or you can't do the council's business anymore because you are disruptive, disrupted every single time.

You're no longer a functioning democracy and that's a real problem.

They have to find some sort of semblance of balance between allowing some form of protest, which is healthy for democracy, but also being able to get to the other problems that, you know, this city of, what, 400,000 people?

It's not a small city.

Right?

They've got lots of problems to get to.

Chris Yeah, I mean, as far as Aurora goes, these problems have been going on for a little while.

It's not just the activist group.

They've had situations where people have gotten on video to make comments and their what they had to say was viewed as hate speech.

What we don't understand about the First Amendment is you have a right to say what you are going to say.

As long as it's not perjury, you're not lying, you're not threatening, you're not inciting violence.

And so we get into a situation where the council has been accused of maybe censoring because they're only allowing one person at the podium.

I don't see a problem with that as long as that free speech piece isn't impeded, that people do have the right to to speak.

Another criticism of the council was them going behind sort of closed doors and doing their business via a video.

As long as it's not violating open meetings laws, they have the right to do that and to feel safe.

So it's interesting to watch the coverage of this.

I read quite a few articles and depending on who you read, you're going to get a different take on really what Aurora is doing.

So I highly recommend reading multiple sources on this situation to really understand.

Ian Well, it feels to me that the pendulum is swinging and certainly there's this era that we appear to be entering a federal government really pushing into local control, trying to squeeze nonprofits, trying to squeeze universities, trying to control them.

That's in the context of what's happened to Aurora and the pendulum swinging, I think, in particular as it relates to public comment and input sessions having worked for local government.

There was a time when even Denver City Council didn't even have an average public comment, and it was rather challenging to even be able to use your voice.

They've added it in Lakewood and some of these other places.

And then with COVID, they moved into this opportunity of Zoom or remote testimony.

I am fearful that some of those things are going to be taken away.

And to me, those are the things that are the most leveling the playing field for people to participate.

If you're a mom and you can sit at home and wait for your few minutes to be able to voice your concerns to council, I think it's really important at the legislature and everywhere else.

And so, you know, shrinking from 3 minutes to 2 minutes, making it harder for people to sign up only in person.

This really restricts our democracy.

I don't really in favor of that.

And lastly, I guess I would say as far as free speech, if you're a free speech advocate, which I think we all should be, you have to get used to hearing things you don't like to hear and you got to move on with your life because everybody has that, right?

Yeah, because you get a lot of that when people say that's one of the things that's wrong with our society right now is the inability to have conversations with people you may not agree with.

So great points all.

I think there's an interesting point too, where we're councils don't have to allow for public comment.

They don't have to allow it.

However, it's good policy if they do, if they're engaged with their community and they know what the concerns of their community is.

In Denver, the City Council will be soon discussing whether or not to approve raises for a dozen mayoral appointees.

Is the timing right, given the current budget situation, or does the market dictate that it costs to retain top talent plus some of the top management DIA or catching a little heat for traveling first class to Madrid, Spain, which in the private sector wouldn't even rate a mention.

But again, we're talking taxpayer dollars.

And speaking of taxpayer dollars.

Denver also has some big ticket projects on deck.

Luigi, what are your thoughts on this one.

You're talking about?

Talk about a privileged class.

here we have is a privileged class and really it's the class of people.

I'm not I'm using Marxist terminology which whatever, it's a group of people that are in government that get 44% pay raise.

Now, $80,000.

Perry's for the finance director, $60,000 pay raise for for Washington over there at DIA.

city council has no problems whatsoever passing this, you know, a tax increase proposal which the voters in Denver, you know, rejected last year.

They just approved a soccer stadium project But to spend $70 million on top of everything else that they're passing in their spending, I think that this is why journalism is so critical.

We need to be there asking the question, why?

What's it worth to taxpayers?

Is it actually really helping taxpayers?

and again, you know, this is a group of people that have no problem spending taxpayers dollars.

And it's really incumbent on us to go watch what they do and ask them the really hard questions.

Well, one project that already has money designated for is the improvements at the National Western Center.

However, the ballot initiative in 2015 that set aside those funds and approved it also wanted the community as a whole surrounding it considered.

So City Council has put that project on hold.

It's a little concerning for me because the National Western Stock Show is an economic driver, $170 million in economic impact.

National Western does scholarships and and quite frankly, those buildings were built in the early 1900s.

They need improvement.

But however, you know, the community is concerned about the pressures of Denver gentrification, land values going up, people being priced out of their homes because they can no longer afford the taxes.

So a plan has to come forward where where the community does take part in the economic benefit, especially according to the ballot language in 2015, the community does not feel like the current plan has met that level.

I'm hoping that a really good plan where everyone can benefit comes forward because quite frankly, we need to keep the National Western Stock Show here.

In my former fellow city employee.

Your thoughts?

I feel like there are a lot of jobs that are sitting empty that need to be filled.

And I don't know how many of those that we can actually fill with these pay increases, but this is a problem we need to solve.

I would agree that we seem to be spending a lot of money on these big visionary projects.

And I think this came up when I was running for mayor.

Are we going to have a city that operates for the people who need it today, or is it always about the next person that's moving here, the next future development, the airport city or the massive hotel or a new stadium, which, by the way, voters voted no to one of those at the actual National Western Stock Show.

I think there are ways to talk about the impact for our communities and what the community activists are asking for at the GSA coalition, I think is reasonable.

I think they're going to get to compromise was delayed one week.

I would agree with you about the $70 million on new stadium.

We just voted one down.

We have billions in backlogged projects.

And for those aren't paying attention right now, they're talking about the next general obligation bond where literally you can look at a spreadsheet of all of the projects that aren't fix the water fountains that were working the the bathrooms and so much else.

And so are we in the speculative future for sports teams?

And what does this mean for the Broncos?

This is like all in the back of my head politically in this exact moment, I will say that I'm a huge proponent of public banking.

I think these are the opportunities around infrastructure to talk about how do we keep more of that money here and some less to Wall Street bankers.

And just a quick point, that general obligation bond thinking about its $800 million and I think there's $6 billion already projects sort of they're thinking about.

One of the problems we see in Denver is that they'll have they'll say, okay, let's spend money.

We need the money.

Let's spend the money.

What are you spending it for?

But we'll figure it out.

Will you destroy 16th Street Mall?

Well, maybe that'll finally be done this year, and then we can destroy other things.

National Western.

We passed that bill back in 2015, so we wouldn't lose that.

Remember when Aurora was going to steal it?

So, Chris, we don't need to worry about losing it at this point.

It's funded through logic.

I will say the neighborhood has not gotten what they were promised.

We know that the old historic arena, which is not going down but has never really been developed the way they said it would be for the neighborhood that they're still waiting on that.

So I think city council will pass a slightly amended version that will be more fair to the neighborhood next week.

If you look along the South Platte, what we have from the proposed stadium down in the old Gates area, all the way up to the national Western, you've got along the way the River Mile, you've got the ball arena.

You've got maybe what's going to happen at the Broncos stadium.

We have huge problem projects underway that are going to cause problems and we don't know who is literally following all those along to make sure they work together.

I would like to see that position in Denver.

I would like to pay that person position more if we needed to.

Right now is not the time to give cabinet raise, because I will say most people look and say, what have they done in the city besides not fix the ball and slowly fix the migrant issue?

Wow.

So a project czar or maybe is something which you're looking for there.

Good one.

All righty.

Colorado has long had the reputation of being an oil and gas friendly state, but there may be a bit of a shift happening.

The southern ute nation has been very vocal that the state has not done enough to remedy a five year old sorry, five month old fuel spill that is moving towards the Animas River.

In addition, the Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that a landmark lawsuit against Suncor and Exxon can proceed.

And to top it off, the Denver City Council rejected a $25 million asphalt contract with Suncor, citing their history of violations.

Chris, are the times the change in?

I don't know if they're changing or not, but I am concerned about the situation with the Animas River.

Five months is a long time, you know, to let something go and the states answer to, you know, why they weren't there sooner as they usually handle these situations remotely.

I don't know how you can do that with with a spill.

They've detected toxins within a third of a mile of the Animas River.

This is the same river that in 2015 the Gold King mine spilled into and there was arsenic and heavy metals released into that river.

It caused a lot of damage.

In fact, there are still traces of that still detectable in that river.

So I think that time was of the essence.

When you have a spill like that, I don't understand why the action was so slow.

We have all these government agencies in the state of Colorado that are designed to protect the environment.

And I just don't understand where it failed here.

Yeah.

Well, you know, this is the work I do for a living on a regular basis.

I will say that people will say we have the strongest regulations on the books.

Our enforcement is lacking, but at the heart of it, our businesses who choose to continually violate the laws.

You know, these are high profile scenarios, right?

This happening for the Utah most recently, there was a massive blow out of a well near Greeley.

I pulled the numbers last year.

In 2024, there were 1720 reported spills through the actual agencies for oil and gas across Colorado here today, 833 This is common.

This is happening a lot.

These regulations aren't necessarily protecting the community.

And certainly there's a legacy pollution that's as a result.

And I want people to know, especially here in Denver, that it is encroaching on us rather quickly.

Weld County is no longer the number one oil and gas producer, Adams County is.

And this growth of our society in residential and this implications with oil and gas is about our air quality.

It's costing us and Medicaid.

It's impacting our budgets.

This is an underlying piece that I think we need to be thinking more holistically about as far as longer goes.

Good for a Denver City council in rejecting their asphalt.

But guess what?

It's going to have to come from somewhere.

So is that trucked in or piped in?

These are the larger conversations we have to have.

And I've said this here on the show before, but until we get serious about the connection between Suncor and wanting to have the largest airport in the world there, the residents of gas are paying the cost of Commerce City.

For us to continue to grow our airport and we need to have a more comprehensive conversation about transition.

Patty In fact, the contract that isn't going to Suncor is going to somewhere in Canada, so we will have to transport that.

I'm concerned about what goes on in Colorado, but look at what is going on federally with the cutbacks with the EPA.

The EPA labs are gone.

You know, Denver is the regional hub.

Those are gone.

So what controls we have, we are rapidly losing the people who can monitor this.

We have David Bernhardt, Coloradan, who was head of the Department of Interior for a while.

He is now launching this big campaign.

He's co launching to sell public lands to advertise how we should open all public lands for drilling.

We have drilling about to start near the Aurora reservoir.

We have to pay attention to not just what isn't being monitored right now that should be, but what laws are going to be lifted so that there will be no control.

And if you live in Colorado, you'd better pay close attention because we could lose what we love about this state.

Well.

we have a state legislature that I think has passed our regulations or handed regulations over to the Department of Energy that really put more in terms of this grand goal of Colorado to transition away from fossil fuel as quickly as possible.

There was a bill in the state legislature last year that would effectively end all and gas drilling in Colorado.

And just a couple of years now, I didn't think that bill was going to get going to go anywhere.

It did go somewhere and eventually died.

Really quickly, on the transition, there are communities that are going to be greatly affected by this transition.

The state has promised them money in terms of helping them transition from coal jobs, for example.

That hasn't really happened.

This is all happening against the backdrop of the federal government that's going to be aggressively pushing for oil and gas exploration and drilling.

The energy secretary secretary is from Denver.

Mr. CHRIS Right.

So it will be quite fascinating what actually happens with a federal government that says now we're going to go unleash American energy, I think is the phrase versus a state that's very cautious, very heavily regulated.

Well, the Colorado Rockies made a move this past weekend, Firing manager Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond after one of the worst starts in Major League Baseball history.

Despite that start, the Rockies still draw a crowd.

However, a lot of those fans are fans of the teams that the Rockies are playing, but are sports and economic implications.

Since the Rockies are a huge part of the economic engine on that side of downtown, a downtown that is on the cusp of revitalization.

Even if you read the headlines.

Ian, are these beautiful Colorado sunsets enough to keep fans coming through the turnstiles?

Really want to start seeing a slightly better on field product?

I mean, I don't think anybody wants to be the worst team ever, ever, ever, which they're on track to be.

And so, you know, with these firings, I mean, how can you not fire people who are headed on the way out to tour towards a record that nobody wants to have, I mean, downtown on the verge of revitalization?

I'm not sure.

Look at that vacancy rate downtown.

How fast are we going to convert these into housing?

Even within blocks of this facility, there are bars that are not doing the business that they used to do, and every single one of them is an open.

I do think that a winning team brings out more people.

Bandwagon ism is the real thing.

I don't know people yelling sell the team.

I think that's about the ownership and ownership that has been okay with having a mediocre team forever.

You know, they're probably the least successful team of any team in any sport here in Colorado.

And it wouldn't surprise me if the new women's soccer team won a championship before they did.

All the more reason to build that stadium.

People have been complaining about the band for its forever, unless they do open the purse strings a little bit and make the team put out some money for the team will probably still stink.

Fortunately, we've got a beautiful ballpark and I think people will keep going to that ballpark even if the team stinks because it's great to sit out there and enjoy Colorado.

It's a good location for the ballpark.

You know, there were many competitors to move it to different places.

And in fact, the Monfort weren't the first owners.

They had to come in because McManus out of Ohio was so corrupt.

So the Monfort stepped in.

We thank them now, but after 30 years, maybe it's time for a change.

Well, let me preface this by saying I am a D-backs fan, and I say I'm a D-backs fan because since, you know, at the dawn of history, we human beings figured out that our tribe, the tribe is a place for safety, security, shelter and food.

Our tribal instincts are very hardwired.

And those tribal instincts manifest today in the form of our political affiliation and our affinity for sports teams.

My point is, we're not rational beings.

We don't go decide based on logic.

We decide based on our loyalties, our values, our emotions.

And so to our point, Patty, we're going to see Rockies fans out there going out to the baseball stadium, getting their heart broken time and again and again and again, paying for $15 hot dogs and 15 bucks.

Easy, easy, $15 hotdogs and stupidly priced beer.

They're going to do it time and again and again.

It's not going to change.

Is that rational?

I don't think so.

Chris.

It stinks to lose.

I'm sorry.

But from what I've read and there's quite a lot of commentary out there, sports commentary, they're laying blame on the front office.

Right.

So I think Bud Black should take this as a gift.

Nobody likes to lose.

And anytime you work for an organization where you don't feel fully supported or a manager that you don't feel is fully supporting you, getting fired is a gift.

One of the things that's been interesting is that this whole thing is back to the purse strings thing because, you know, Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap.

And every once in a while you see some poor mouthing, well, the Yankees can just go pay, you know, this person, 175 million.

The Dodgers can do this.

I went to Unci up in Greeley.

I've seen the feed lots up there.

I don't think the Monarchs are struggling, so hopefully they will get something on track with that.

And Luigi, to your point, I also got a chance to see the beautiful ballpark down in Phenix and with the opening and closing roof, I was there in the middle of the summer and it's about 150 degrees and felt like so beautiful ballparks and they continue to be a draw.

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

We'll start with Patty and the low note.

I'm not going to talk about the Phenix Ballpark, although nothing around it is like a lower downtown We have in Denver.

Yesterday, we all a lot of us heard the arguments before the Supreme Court and the whole birthright issue.

Let's come up let's talk about the person who came up with the arguments the federal government is using.

John Eastman.

This we paid him to be a c you conservative professor.

He went and helped Trump come up with the way he could get back in.

He helped inspire the January six insurrectionists and now we see the end result at the Supreme Court.

I really feel for you and the Rockies fan.

That's my low of the week.

I'm heartbroken.

I might add a little more serious.

Another person in a position of trust within the educational system.

This one in Douglas County has been charged with hurting children and we've seen it in other school districts.

It's something that is very serious and needs to stop.

I'm disappointed to see the mayor's reversal of wanting to spend money on cameras that read our license plates.

I feel like the surveillance state is continues to just grow and get out of control.

And I am not in favor of spending millions upon millions just to catch every single license plate that's driving by.

We have police officers to do jobs that are about actually encountering people and not just hunting them down through digital databanks.

And as always, we like to end the week on a high note to set the mojo going into the weekend, Patty.

Well, Jeannette Pesquera, who's still cooling our heels in Go Group's ice facility in Aurora, was just named a civil rights Award winner for the Robert F Kennedy Foundation.

So good for her.

I hope she gets out of limbo soon.

The legislative sessions finally over.

I can't be happier for Mary and everybody who's working at the state capitol day in, day out, first time in several months that we didn't have committee hearings, thank God.

Well, I've had a busy few weeks.

My daughter turned 21, went home for that.

My son graduated from Western Colorado University, walked the stage this past weekend.

They had a beautiful ceremony up there.

And if all goes well, by the time the show airs, I will be a resident of Douglas County.

So this big move, big move.

Happy birthday to my mom and many of my relatives of four relatives born on the same day, which is the Sunday.

But I would say that the finally this land swap on on Park Hill golf course.

My God, let's move forward.

I think the voters said enough times and we're finally there.

I think we have a chance to create just a wonderful place.

Perhaps a tree nursery, urban farming, education and recreation.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

Great discussion.

And my high is a shout out to all librarians and especially Lee, two now retired Denver city librarian Michelle Yassky.

Libraries were created to be a space for everybody, and Michelle truly embodied that principle when she started her career.

I don't think she envisioned serving more than 4 million visitors a year, a pandemic, or making sure that her staff was trained to administer Narcan.

Best of luck in your retirement, Michelle, and viewers, when you visit your local library, take time to get to know the staff.

They are truly doing the people's work.

Thank you all for joining us this week and make sure to listen to our podcast, also available on Spotify and Apple.

I'm Alton Dillard and I'll see you next week here on PBS 12.

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