The beginning of a new mont brought the end to an emotional and draining battle in Colorado over land and water, open space and commerce.

And a beaver named Bucky.

With the withdrawal of plans to build a massive travel center in Palmer Lake.

Now head up north on I-25 and there are still plenty of debate happening at the state Capitol, and our insiders are ready to weigh in on some of what is transpired under the Gold Dome, as wel as other happenings of the week.

So let's get started wit this week's Colorado Inside Out.

Hi everyone, I'm Kyle Dyer.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start with Patty Callan founder and editor of Westword.

Chris Walk, consultant with Roark Media, Alvina Vasquez, a community leader and political strategist and member of the PBS 12 Community Advisory Board.

And Karli West, the executive director of the Colorado Office of the American Petroleum Institute.

It has been another wee of constitutional flashpoints.

Article one, section four of the Constitution, which gives states primary control ove elections, is in focus at the.

After the president called on Republicans to nationalize elections, then the Second Amendment is also in the spotlight.

Following the fata shooting of a legally armed man by an Ice agent in Minneapolis, with some questioning whether there are certain places where people should not be able to carry firearms.

And then the US Supreme Court is set to review whether federal law can bar habitual drug users from owning firearms.

And here in Colorado, lawmakers are considering expanding the state's red flag law.

Patty, where would you like to begin this week?

Well, I'd like to begin with the fact that, speaking of elections, we did not have a breakout of Tina Peters from prison, armed or not.

So that's good.

So I'm going to go straight to the gun issue.

It is so tricky because it's not necessarily the guns, it's the people who have the guns.

So you look at the evergreen shooting, for example, where it was perfectly legal for those parents to have this gun, which was an heirloom gun, which their troubled son, a person who shouldn't have had a gun had access to and went and used.

You look at Alexander Preti, who had a he had a permit to carry that gun in Minneapolis.

He was a responsible gun owner, by all accounts.

And in the one of the stranger lineups, we have people who are very Pro-second amendment joining with the protesters to say this was really a bad a bad situation, a bad shoot.

So you had such tricky situations.

And here in Colorado, I think the red flag law has been very useful to some extent because it's talking about the people who should not be armed, who should be a point of concern.

We also know it's been overused in a few cases, but I do think expanding it is a good way to make sure that people who really shouldn't have guns, we know.

So the last expansion was to allow teachers, therapists to tell if they were concerned about somebody.

Now it's the schools, medical practices, hospitals also being included in this proposal.

Right.

And Patty, I agree with the first part of what you said, but not the second part.

The problem is these laws really don't work.

And when you talk about the expansion of OPO to these additional groups, Non-law enforcement people making these calls, you know, a study came out from Si School of Medicine that looked at these these, RPO orders and whether or not they work.

And what they found was when law enforcement issues one of these orders, 94%, a little more than 94% get approved.

But only about 80% hold up in court.

So the net value is 75% of the purpose issued by law enforcement are actually upheld.

However, that drops dow to, you know, an abysmal number when we're talking about, non-law enforcement.

This study covered 2020 to 2022 and it also looked at romantic partners and family members who brought about an RPO.

What they found was only 11% stood up in court.

And so you have 89% of people who are having their guns removed befor they've ever had a day in court.

That goes against due process.

Okay.

Albina, I think it was interesting.

And we're kicking off Black History Month, right.

And so our gun rights are going int situational analysis of context.

And who deserves to have a gun.

Think about the difference between the Martin Luther King and the Black Panther Party and who was allowed to have a gun when the Black Panther Party decided to use their second exercise their Second Amendment rights.

How did the media, how did society has American society read that?

And now the hypocrisy.

Call it sticky.

I think it's hypocrisy.

When Kyle Rittenhouse is walking around with an AR 1 and he survives and everybody's defending him and defending him, and this unarmed or this legally armed man was protesting, protecting a civilian from these armed, you know, security, whatever they call him.

And yet he is not being given the same process like process or rights or even context that white gun owners are given and that are like mega white gun owners and Cali, you know, I feel lik this really brings into context just how complicated and complex issues around firearms and public safety are, even when I think about it for myself.

You know, I went to summer camp when I was nine and learned, firearm safety there and learned how to shoot a rifle.

But then I also, the parent who, when I get the text messages from school about, about lockdown drills for my kids, it's terrifying and horrifying.

So, you know, even whe I think about it, it's complex.

So when our legislature looks at how they wade it into this and make decisions, there's just a lot of components there.

And I feel like this one, as much as any other, really highlights how critical it is that our legislature think about how these issues intersect with public policy, real life community concerns, and real, individual rights.

As we take it back to the constitutional amendments that we're looking at here.

And you talked about the beginning.

This was the fourth bill introduced in the Senate, the legislature.

So right at the right off the bat, yes.

And still, more than 100 days t go in the legislative session.

So a long road ahead of us.

Okay.

So we talk a lot about the financial realities facing our lawmakers.

But let's go outside the Capitol and look at the realities of the Colorado workforc and the financial implications.

A report is out that shows Colorado's labor force is shrinking.

The numbers for the year.

Show over 20,000 people are no longer working.

And there are a lot of reasons.

And Chris, it's so interesting because these numbers are concerning because we haven't seen something like this since most recently.

Covid.

Yeah, that's the big thing.

The report came out and the Denver Post really did some really concerning items in it.

It highlighted the fact that the labor force has contract 0.67% since September.

That doesn't happen.

That kind of contraction doesn't happen unless there's a recession or the pandemic or something major to really caus the workforce to be disruptive.

Oddly enough, unemployment is only at 3.8%.

That sounds good, but really what this contraction indicates is that the unemployment numbers aren't really fully reported.

You have less people reporting that they are unemployed, so it looks like the rate is lower.

What that indicates is the job market is really weaker than what we imagined.

And there are a lot of reasons people are aging and leaving the workforce, retiring.

People are leaving the state.

Net migration is decline in a big way.

And why?

Because people can't afford to live here anymore.

Really, the state economy is only as strong as what our workforce is.

And right now it's not looking so good.

Okay.

Know what's interesting about this issue this week is the Labor Peace Act is at the legislature.

And so that is supposed to ease the negotiations between workforc and, companies and businesses.

I think we need to remind folks that unions built the middle class.

When we talk about what America used to be like, we had a huge union base of workers that felt safe and secure where they were working, and they stayed for long periods of time.

They weren't job hopping because they knew, and they were clear on what their benefits were and how to get their work done and safe and healthy ways.

So I think the erosion of tha is also eroding in the workforce and feeling safe and secure in where they're working.

I would also add that chilling, the chilling effect of Ice agents showing up at workforces keeps people at home not working, whether they're citizens or not.

We've seen it doesn't matter anymore if you have papers or not, or if you're doing it the legal way or not, that' going to have a chilling effect on the workforce, because if you don't have anybody to build a house, then you don't have engineers that can help engineer houses being built.

And so we have to think about those trickle down or trickle up effects of a chilling, immigratio process through the Ice and DHS.

Okay.

All right.

Carley.

So a shrinking labor force is really indicative of deeper economic challenges on the horizon.

Businesses across sectors are facing higher costs in the same type of affordability challenges that your residential folks are facing as well.

Not long ago, the Colorado Chamber of Commerce decided to take a dive into Colorado's regulatory environment.

And what that means and what they found were that for every 10% increase in regulations, that's associated with an estimated loss of around 36,000 jobs and 9000 firms statewide.

That's really worth keeping i mind as you think about Colorado being the sixth most heavil regulated state in the nation.

We have nearly 200,000 state level regulatory restrictions.

And combine with federal rules, businesses face around 1.3 million regulations across the board.

So as we look at this shift in the labor force, we need to think about the role that the business community and the impact of those regulations is having on the overall economic pictur and how that is playing a part.

All right, Patty, your thoughts when you look at all the different numbers that have come out recently with the census with other agencies, you see the Colorado's growth is the slowest it's been since 1990 8.04%.

In some ways, what we're getting is the paus that we've needed to really say, where do we want to go from here?

What do we want this state to look like?

What do we want our cities to look like?

Because I have the feeling right now people don't agree on what they want to see in Colorado, because certainly no one's liked how crowded it's become.

No one likes the traffic.

What you do like is the booming business that improves wages, that gets you better jobs, that gets yo better things to go out and do.

But we're really at a turning point, I think, thinking about what we want.

It's certainly not good news that the labor force is shrinking.

Slowing down growth isn't bad right now.

If we can really cope with what we need to do to our infrastructure to make it survive for the next 25 years, it's a time for us really to think about what we want Colorado to be, and it's also really concerning to see how the weather is affecting the workforce up in the high country.

You know, if there's not snow, there aren't as many people going to the resorts.

Maybe not everyone needs to be called in for a shift.

They've cut back hours at steamboat.

I mean, they're just not open as much.

Yeah.

In 20 years I have not seen the mountain as bare as they are right now.

Right there.

Snow, white snow.

Wise to people wise, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, last week on the show, we were talking about Denver Mayor Mike Johnson.

City wide priorities for 2026.

One thing he can add to his To-Do list is get ready to defend his job.

Lisa Calderon announce this week that she wants to run again against Mike Johnson and unseat him in 2027.

Alvina I will start with you on this.

So Lisa's ran twice already.

And I think Denver's not as when it comes to practicalities.

Denver's not as progressive as some would assume.

I think when it comes the practicality is how you run a city and how you get things done is more complicated, than some might think.

I think that Mike Johnson has had some accomplishments.

Crime is down.

There's some revitalization going stuff that wasn't happening in the previous administratio that finally is getting, done.

And it's challenging with a budget crisis that, you know, the state is facing and cities are facing.

And so I, I do like primarie because I think it's important for candidates to be challenged on the recor and to push as much as they can.

But I also think we have to be realistic about the practicalities of running a huge city that's grown so much.

I mean, the whole state is 6 million people now.

There's some states that are only the same populatio as Denver, you know what I mean?

So it's just a lot.

It's a lot that needs to get done.

And she's throwing her name in way in advance.

We have elections this year But this is not for this year.

Is this for 2027.

Yeah.

So I'll be okay.

You know one of the issues that she's race is the elimination of jobs at the city of Denver.

And certainly the loss o those jobs was very difficult.

And it's unfortunate.

But at the root cause of it is Denver does not have enough revenue to sustain the services, program and jobs that it currently has.

And so you have to take a look at what is driving that.

For me, it always is worthwhile to come back to that downtown office vacancy rate, which is still around 38%.

We've seen some improvement there, but there is a lot of empty space there.

And you're not just losing the tax revenu from those spaces being leased, you're also losing the impact to other restaurants and local businesses and all of tha cascading effect that you have when those spaces are ful and people are in those offices downtown, when we talk about a potential primary here, I've heard it raised, the idea of increasing the corporate tax rate.

And I think that would have the opposite of the intended effect.

Instead of drawing more revenue.

I think that drives more businesses out of downtown who may be hanging on.

But just by a thread.

Okay, Patty, the election is in 15 months, so it's not that early t kind of go out, stake a claim.

Maybe it'll scare some other people who might think about getting in.

You'll bring up a lot of issues.

What's ironic is, although she didn't agree with Mayor Michael Hancock when she ran against him for his third term, she and Mike Johnston in the last election had some fairly similar positions on dealing with the homeless.

Obviously, he has not had the, lovely time as mayor that most people would like between having to still do well, deal with the migrant issue, having to deal with the homelessness issue, having to deal with the empty downtown.

So I think when I talked about it's a time for us to think about what we want, we really need some aspirational discussion of what we want Denver to be in the next 25 years, assuming we come out of the doldrums, where do we want to go from here?

And I think that's going to be a big part of this mayoral election.

Well, I think Alvin is right.

Calderon has run multiple times in 2019.

She finished third 2023.

She also finished third.

And then she's, had the two candidates that were running Kelly Broth and Mike Johnsto submit, a survey or a checklist.

You know, are you progressive enough to be Denver's mayor kind of thing?

And she ended up supporting Mike Johnston?

I will say agree with her in one category.

I think Mike Johnston is overspending, but Mike Johnston is an incumbent and incumbents are really, really tough to beat.

Maybe she challenges him if it is a head to head, but if a bunch of people jump in this race, good luck with that.

I don't see it happening.

Denver does face so many issue homelessness and public safety and economy and everything we've talked about that is 100% right.

Denver has to decid which direction it wants to go.

If if Mike Johnston has not done a good job and let's say Calderon were to win, clearl the city is going to trend way farther left.

Yeah.

Okay.

Days after state utility regulators, heard a lot from frustrated caller residents and business owners about Xcel Energy's a public safety power shutoffs and Xcel transformer failure left 195,000 customers without power, disrupted operations at Dia, and even knocked out 911 service in Aurora.

And Xcel recently asked stat regulators for more than half $1 billion in electric and natural gas rate increases.

And then there ar the public back and forth as to whether certain coal plants should be closed as they were planned to be.

All o this doesn't really bode well, I think, for customers either bill wise or reliability wise.

And I will sa people are absolutely grappling with in the state of Colorado is grappling with affordability and reliability.

Those are the two biggest issues right now.

And a lot of it comes back to policy in the state.

You mentioned the XL increases.

A lot of that is driven by state legislative policy that directs requirements for those utilities.

Some good news.

About six weeks ago, the Environmental Defense Fund released a report that highlighted satellite based, satellite based data that showed that Colorado's methane emissions decline nearly 70% between 2010 to 2017.

And that was while oil and gas production was actually increasing.

So we're seeing that we're having an effect from policies that we have already passed and adopted, and the industry has worked hard to adapt to.

But now we're coming up to a place where reliability and affordability are truly teetering.

And give that we've seen real progress, it's really time for us to take a moment to Patty's point.

Think about where we're going to go as a state, because we are at a poin where these issues can cascade from being a challenge to being devastating.

You created a theme for today.

It's it's not just today.

I think we can say that coal is really cold days are over.

Despite the fact that we had Chris Wright come in and announce that Craig now has to keep the coal plant going longer than it was going to be, we now have lawsuits up because it's going to cost consumers their more money.

The natural gas issue is trickier because it i really going to increase costs.

Most of the people get are using natural gas.

They're not ready to go to all electric.

So we have that big dilemma coming up.

It's just a really tough time and it's really tough for the PUC, which is about to go under a sunset review by the legislature.

No one I don't think, loves the PUC right now.

I could be wrong, but no one thinks they're doing a great job of watching utilities.

Whether you are pro oil and gas, whether you're pro all electric, everyone thinks the PUC needs to really be more transparent, listen to more people, and when you get back to accept the fact that they couldn't keep the trains running, a delay also gets us to the fac that Dia doesn't have a backup for their trains.

So we have a lot of infrastructure issues.

I had just landed and gotten home.

When I heard about that, I just escaped that.

That would have been a mess to live through.

Yeah, it's a little concerning when the lights go out, in the afternoon.

I mean, it was a short period of time, but it's foreboding.

You know, I think bigger than all of this is the huge swings we see in policy.

You know, you can't have one president come in and say, we're not doing oil and gas anymore.

We're only going to focus on renewables and then having another president come in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's correc this and kind of bring it back.

The Craig plan is a perfect example.

It takes 10 to 30 years to build and billions of dollars, I should say, to build energy infrastructure.

So there has to be consistent policy across the board.

Otherwise we risk building the wrong things.

We risk spending money on infrastructure.

That's not going to be neede because another administration comes in, says, no, we're not doing that anymore.

It raises rates unnecessarily.

And we are going to fall behind on reliability.

And and Carly's 100%.

Right.

Affordability and reliabilit are the big factors with energy as we go forward.

Now that you know well, I guess I would add to the reliability is our environment is no longer reliable.

We had a Christmas Day that was 70 degrees.

We had, you know, the windstorm that caused the Marshall fire, which is like catapulting these and our energy solutions to be more nimble, which is difficult when you have a grid state of 6 million people because these are realities that the Marshall Fir devastated an entire community and, you know billions of dollars of damage.

So I think we have to think about the complex connections between the not only the reliability of our energy, but our environment, and how are we building the infrastructur to respond to the environment.

It's a lot.

It's a lot.

And our bills keep going up.

Okay.

Let's go around the table and talk about some of the highs and low that we've witnessed this week.

We'll talk about the lows electric bills not including cars.

Honey I like to keep things local.

But it is impossible to ignore what has happened to the Washington Post.

For all of journalism, I've been the Watergate, all the big scandals they have broken, how important it is to have journalists out there and to see this being cut by a third.

It is a sad story of where America's going.

Well there's been another wolf death.

Only this one was, very transparently communicated from CPW w Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Wolf 2305 for it was one of the wolves that came from Oregon, the King Mountain pac.

And they were capturing these wolve to do some color work on them.

And when the wolf was transported, it was unresponsive.

At the next poin where, you know, it was taken in really sad.

You know just because I'm against injured wolf introduction does not mean I am not sad.

Every time a wolf dies, it's the 14th death.

12 of them were introduced wolves, and I believe two were pups.

So to be clear on that.

Okay.

Like, you know, I'm going to bring this up again.

I brought it up before, but immunization rates continue to decline.

And we're going to really when we think about the direction of our country, that's, you know, our public health system is one of the infrastructures that keep us safe and keep our health care working.

And so it's really disappointing to see such distrust in in that servic free service for, for Coloradans and their immunizations and sorry.

And seeing people getting so sick I know.

Yeah.

That's.

Yeah.

Continuing on the public health one, there's been legislatio introduced that would prohibit any lethal means of rodent control.

So as we look at our in our downtown restaurant and we want to see them succeed, taking away a tool that helps them make sure that everything stays safe and clean and they're able to manage any rodent situations.

I think is really critical.

So it was kind of a shocking development to see this one right across the desk.

I had not heard that if.

Yeah, okay.

Something good I want to talk about endangered Places and not newsrooms.

Colorado has a wonderful program, Colorado Preservation Inc.

It's putting on it's saving places workshops over the next several days.

Next week.

I'm a part, a boar member of an endangered place, the World's Wonder review tower out in Lyman.

There are so many great historic areas in Colorado that we have to keep alive.

We have to save them.

Good.

Yes.

Last week, I went to the Sportsmen's Caucus legislative reception.

It was at the Buckhorn Exchange, which is an amazing place.

And I met Laura Cleland, the interim director for CP W, and I have to say, I was really impressed.

She's made some really good sound decisions.

She was transparent about the wolf death.

It's interesting because she announced there that she is indeed going to apply for the job, and she got applause from all the sportsme and attendees that were there.

Based on the decisions she's made so far, we've learned from, DNR Dan Gibbs, the Department of Natural Resources that Governor Polis is going to be involved in the appointment process.

And, what I have heard is most of the applicants lack wildlife experience.

I think Laura Cleland, that's a win.

Governor.

You might want to go with that one.

Okay.

All right.

Something good?

Yeah.

Speaking of appointments, I had the honor and the privilege to be on the Supreme Court appointment board this week.

It was an amazing experience.

And at this time of our country, it was just an important role and honorable role to be in, to help, to protect democracy in Colorado.

All right.

Well, thank you.

All right.

I have to go personal this week.

My son is a Cub scout.

He and his dad, built their pinewood derby car, and he came in first place for his den in the pinewood derby last weekend.

That's cool.

Pretty excited.

Excellent.

Well done.

My highs are the 3 caliber athletes over in Italy for the start of the Winter Olympics.

We have the best representation of any state these games.

And we have seasoned athletes, and they also have first timers as well.

One of them is 16 year old Lily, the War now from Frisco, who will compete in snowboarding slopestyle, 16 years old.

She's the youngest.

Colorado.

And then on the flip side, we have 41 year old, ski racer Lindsey Vonn, who is not fazed by our torn ACL and is determined to go as fast as she can.

And then we also have Mikaela Shiffrin from Vail who are rooting for the greatest alpine skier of all time, who left last, games with not a single medal.

So we have so many great storylines, so many strong and determine athletes that we can root for.

And again, you know, when everything's going on sports is it brings us together.

So here's to the next two weeks of some good sports.

All right.

Thanks to our gold medal, insiders this week.

We appreciate all of you.

Thanks to you watching at home or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you here next week on PBS 12.

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