This week, leaders at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the agency that steered federal funding to PBS, 12 and hundreds of other public television and radio stations across this country, voted to dissolve the organization.

This follows last summer's congressional decision to stop sending federal money to the organization, which was created back in 1967.

You know, you've heard the expression many times before.

Thanks to viewers like you, we are here tonight.

Well, it continues to be true.

The Colorado Inside Out team has a lot to talk through with you as we start this New year.

So let's get started as we close out the very first full week of 2026.

Hi everyone.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

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

We start with Patty Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword.

Krista Kafer, columnist with The Denver Post.

Ed silver, VP of strategic initiatives at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and the editor of the Sum and Substance.

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

A lot has happened since we last checked in with one another.

Rene Goode, who grew up in Colorado Springs, was killed Wednesday in Minneapolis after being shot by an Ice officer during a demonstration.

Adding to the already tense mood in our nation.

Here in Colorado, there's another sense of uneasiness the Trump administration is freezing funding for childcare, job training and basic assistance for thousands of Colorado families.

And that follows his veto of a pipeline project which would safeguard drinking water for Coloradans who live on the Eastern Plains.

Additional cuts, calls for investigations and even talks of federal intervention in Colorado.

Programs are keeping state leaders on high alert.

Patty, where would you like to begin?

In Minnesota.

I think we're lucky we aren't Minnesota, which clearly is getting more attention paid to it than Colorado right now with 2000 people in there.

At the end of the year.

Before Trump vetoed the Arkansas Valley conduit, we were talking about, I said he was had the biggest impact on Colorado in the last year.

He had pulled SpaceX command.

He pulled his portrait from the Capitol.

He had done numerous pull backs of funding.

He had just, I think, decided he was going to dismantle Encana and had announced that.

And then we got the Arkansas Valley Conduit, which he blamed to Politico on Tina Peters.

Never has so much been done for one woman who clearly violated state law.

So he is not done with us.

The child care is the latest.

It's not just Colorado.

I think five states are involved in that, but the hits just keep on coming for Colorado.

He doesn't like us.

Krista.

Yeah.

Vindictive.

Mean.

I think not surprising given who we're talking about here.

But the thing is this is not unprecedented.

Obviously not unprecedented for Trump, but not in Precedented in general.

Biden, our last president, withheld funding from states that, didn't refer for abortion, for example, or threatened to withhold funding education funding for states that refused to let boys participate on girls sports teams.

So presidents do this and they would argue, hey, who?

You know, whoever pays the piper should call the tune.

I would say, this should give us some pause and say that maybe we should return to more of a federalism, a system where states are in charge of certain things.

Federal the federal government is in charge of some things, and the federal government isn't using carrots and sticks to control the states.

In the end, generally speaking, the court does rule for the states.

We will get that funding back for sure, but we wouldn't have to go through all of this if we would return to it.

I would say that the Constitution says, and what the founders intended, which is more of a split function between the states and the federal government.

So the federal government cannot manipulate the states in the way it's doing now.

Okay.

And your thoughts on this.

With everybody kind of talk about Trump right now.

I want to actually just focus on what the childcare cuts mean, depending on the study that you look at.

We are either 75 or 90,000 childcare slots short of what we need right now.

A 2023 study from a group called Ready Nation found that Colorado was losing $2.2 billion in economic impact each year because of the number of people who cannot go back to work because there isn't childcare.

So anything coming in and taking funding away from childcare is going to hurt not just, you know, Jared Polis as he doesn't release Tina Peters, but he's going to hurt everyone and people who voted for people who didn't vote for Trump.

And it's going to hurt this economy in general.

I want to go back to, the the talent development summits that came about last year.

The Grand Junction area looked at childcare and said, we need to do a lot more.

We need to do things like get more of a pipeline of workers into the industry.

And maybe we need to talk about how the government can help subsidize childcare, because it means so much the economy just beyond what it means to the employers there.

This is a huge deal and we need to keep on top of it.

Okay.

Ian.

I think that with this signaling to me and I've heard it on both sides, that both the left and the right, the feds aren't coming to save us.

And I think that here in the West, people have thought that that's come to our libertarian streak.

And I would say that we are in under the same lane of figuring it out with our own budget.

You know, I've been a proponent of public banking for a very long time.

I think we're going to have to find ways to finance our own projects, whether it's a large conduit project or not.

The last thing I'll say about the conduit project is, I find it fascinating that we want to continue these bringing water from the Western slope, to the eastern Plains.

This is causing issues that cascade across the western United States.

And so why don't we have a conversation about how the Arkansas River itself is dirty water, that it's coming from pollution from Colorado Springs and the military, as well as industrial polluters in Pueblo.

And perhaps if we can clean up some of that mess, it would be cheaper to clean the water for these communities without piping it all the way across the mountains.

That seems like a lot, though, when we're already strapped with our budget, our state.

Well, when you when you actually find a company, they pay for the fines.

Okay.

Okay.

And I want.

To go back to one thing.

When you talk about it's great that states can be in charge of some of their own destiny.

But when you look at something like Encana, it's not like every state can set up an amazing cutting edge scientific facility that can look at the weather and say, predict who might be getting a wildfire coming, whether it's in Colorado or elsewhere.

And to dismantle what had been built over six decades is inexcusable.

I mean, it's setting us back centuries.

Maybe, you know, the eight on the.

Flip side, in that Moffat County power plant that was set to close.

We're being told it has.

To stay the critical.

Yeah.

I you know if, if, if these concerns came from the community saying we are really worried we will not have reliable affordable power.

I can understand the intervention if these, if the community is not voicing those concerns.

And this is merely a pro coal.

Let's hurt Colorado.

Move from the Trump administration then.

Yes I think we can be very critical of it.

And just one last thing on childcare.

Trump pointed to instances of abuse in other states, not a single one in Colorado.

How we got lumped in there is kind of amazing.

Okay.

All right.

Our state legislators, are returning to work at the state Capitol on Wednesday of next week for this year's session and giving Colorado's financial realities.

This is not going to be an easy 120 day session.

Governor Polis has already announced that because the state is expected to bring in $87 million less than projected, Coloradans will not be receiving Tabor refunds this year.

Krista, as this session gets underway, what are you looking at the most?

I'm going to miss that 25 bucks.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm bummed.

You know, I appreciate that there is a bipartisan effort to strengthen penalties against child traffickers.

That is one area which I think both parties can come together and say, no, this is not something that if you're if you've done this, you really should not be eligible for parole.

So I think that's one thing I would like to see them do.

The other thing is I think they need to tackle affordable, reliable energy.

I'm very concerned about that.

That 2040 mandate that we're going to be all renewable all the time at that point.

We just don't have that.

The infrastructure in place to make that happen unless we are able to exploit nuclear or even enhanced geothermal projects, if we're able to do those things, we can then eliminate natural gas.

But right now, 70% of Coloradans are relying on it to heat their homes.

It already provides about 40% of our electricity.

We cannot continue to let the PUC crack down on on natural gas when we rely on it.

I honestly cannot pay more than I'm paying for my power bill and I'm not alone.

And when you're talking about the child trafficking, that was a bipartisan group this week that said we need a crack on this.

We need some legislation.

And how long you got.

No.

I mean I think you're watching a lot of things from the business perspective over there.

But two of them stand out in particular.

One of them is the issue of regulation.

Senate President James Coleman has said he's going to bring a regulatory reform bill this year.

I think everyone's eager to see what that is.

After a study that we had done last year showed that we're the most regulated state in the country.

That's not just a business issue.

That is a cost of living issue is the more you regulate business, the more those costs get passed along everything from energy to the products they sell.

I think it's going to be key this year to balance regulatory reform versus some of the regulatory bills that we're seeing, things like, the return of a bill that would regulate how your workers can work if it's below 30 degrees or above 80 degrees.

The second thing just happened this week as well, and that is the unions announced that they're going back again this year, to try to reform the labor Peace Act.

This is the Colorado unique law that requires two elections to unionize a workplace and to, get negotiating fees taken directly out of workers paychecks.

There's no real sign that Polis wouldn't veto it again.

So I'm curious what the end game is here, but that's going to take up a lot of time and interest.

Wow.

Okay.

And I would agree about not sure what's going to happen on the Labor Peace Act.

And I think it interfaces with this affordability and energy and utilities and how that all plays out between the labor unions, businesses, environmental groups, data centers is also a huge piece of this conversation.

Huge consumers of water and energy.

And what those impacts are for ratepayers is incredibly important.

I'm also aware that, we've talked about this on the show historically of the lab issues that we've had in the state of Colorado, and the environmental laboratory is actually in the budget to be upgraded, to meet current standards, some of which the equipment was from the 1990s.

And so I think that's going to lead to better outcomes, hopefully for water quality, among other things.

And then lastly, I attended a town hall with Senator Mollica recently in Thorton, and he's interested in bringing a bill around homeowners insurance.

And I had a conversation with him about HOA fees as well.

I think the wildfire risk, hailstorms, climate impacts from the environment are driving up rates.

And I can tell you from a person who served in leadership on my HOA historically, I mean, in some years, you might see a doubling over the last few years.

And so this is unaffordable.

You're talking about people on fixed incomes.

How does this get passed on as, you know, assessments through your HOA.

These are all big concerns.

And so I'm really happy they're talking about tackling them at the Capitol this year.

Okay.

And Patty.

It's going to be such a wild session because you have policy.

It's this last year.

So yeah you can he can veto whatever he wants like the Labor Peace Act.

And you would think he would.

But you also have to see can you put an override.

So that's going to be interesting where Polis fits himself, how he sees his legacy, how he pushes this last year.

We've got scarce money, scarce resources.

So I think we'll definitely be looking at the power the PUC has.

And how does how do its rules and regulations contradict each other?

In some cases, we're going to see power bills going up.

So much and people so concerned about that while Excel continues to ask for more.

So the PUC should be under the microscope.

RTD we're going to see under the microscope again, although allegedly the free ride is a big success and 16th and problems are down on the busses themselves.

People are still very concerned that our public transit doesn't work the way it should.

And if it doesn't, you've got more cars on the highway and then we still are going to be expanding highways, maybe.

And those are all huge issues for the legislature this year.

And you mentioned Polis is term limited.

This is his last go around.

Do any of you have any people you think have a best chances of making it to Election Day in November for either side of the party?

I'll say this, the news this week, the senator, Mark Baisley, was leading the gubernatorial primary for a Senate run and that Greg Lopez was leaving GOP gubernatorial primary to run independently.

I think really clears a lane for Barb Kirk Meyer in that primary.

She is they were all sort of pragmatic candidates versus a large swath of conservatives.

I think she is the open, pragmatic lane now.

Okay.

And she is, as far as I'm concerned, the only one that's really eligible for that position.

She's got decades of experience in government.

She's a moderate.

And then you have all these sort of I'm going to call them also rans.

People with no experience, no name recognition and many cases, no money.

I don't know why they're in the race.

I assume it's because they want their 15 minutes.

Or in the case of one guy we just wrote about a nice murder conviction, which really means he can't be a Republican candidate, but he's going anyway.

Okay.

And then I would just say on the visor, it seems to me like there's a lane opening up.

If wiser takes the lane to the left, that it may make it a more competitive primary.

We already have seen that wiser is doing a lot of work around the state.

He seems to be everywhere.

He's raising more money than people thought.

And you have this larger national pack situation that's backing Bennett and then you have wiser who's trying to take this lane in Colorado.

And so I think if he can differentiate himself, I think this would be a much, more complicated race over the next couple of months than what seems like might be a sure deal for Bennett at this moment.

Okay, primaries in June.

All right.

We'll be reminding you, when talking about affordability, minimum wage in Colorado has increased with the start of this new year.

And this new month, the Colorado minimum wage is now $15.26.

In Denver, the minimum wage is now at $19.29 as the second highest among American cities.

Now, those increases don't still do enough to help workers afford the cost of living in Colorado.

And the higher labor costs, and has even more pressure to already tight margins from for some business owners.

Ed.

Yeah, and I think it really hits the service based industries the most.

Those ones that work on lower margins.

Well, we saw a bill last year in the legislature that would have allowed, tip wages to not go up as much.

Tip wages have to go up at the same rate right now.

That non tipped wage is due in places like restaurants.

And, and those workers are often making some of the most money at those restaurants because you're throwing in the tips as well.

And that leads to a huge disparity with back, the house workers, the cooks, it leads to, restaurants having to cut hours and to cut staff in order to, to meet these tipped wage, boosts here.

Governor Polis has said he signed a bill that allows local governments, to to kind of roll back some of the tipped wage increases so they don't have to go up at the same rate, as, as is regular wages.

The only city we've seen done that do that so far is the city of Edgewater.

And Polis specifically said last year, look, if more cities don't take this up, I think we're going to have to be a little stronger in our messaging here.

So I'll be curious to see this year if that issue, when we're talking about minimum wage comes back for the legislature.

Okay.

And.

Well, the minimum wage going up has been a hard battle for workers for a very long time.

We're hearing this isn't the only issue right around extreme temperatures and protecting workers outdoors, or the Labor Peace Act and the ability to negotiate for what you want.

Yeah, the affordability issues that are driving populism on both sides across this country is more than just about wages.

It's about rent.

It's about artificial intelligence and how you're being taken advantage of through their algorithms.

It's about childcare.

It's about transportation.

It's about insurance, and it's about health insurance.

And so you have to attack all these pieces from different sides.

But if we're not going to check rent control or we're not going to check rents and we're not going to allow people to raise their, always their outrageous what choice do we have?

People are ending up homeless.

We have a huge problem with that costs on the other side, if we don't get people health care, which often these lower wage workers don't have health care and universal health care, something people have been championing for across this country, then we end up having people using emergency services, and that's passed on to all of us.

And so taking care of those, that need the resources the most, through these kind of programs for income qualified as well as raising wages is a good thing.

It's good for our society.

And I think it's what Coloradans continue to vote for Denver is the city where we need to watch the tip minimum wage issue.

The legislature did kind of punted by saying, okay, you municipalities can decide what to do with these restaurants.

They were heavily lobbied by restaurants.

Restaurants are now heavily lobbying in some towns.

Edge right.

Edgewater did change so that they changed the tip minimum wage level.

Boulder County has talked about doing it, but Boulder itself hasn't.

And Denver, we've heard rumors that there might be a pro, bill going forward, which would allow a change in the tip minimum wage.

You would still pay top minimum wage to the back of the house workers and others, but those who collect the big tips, it would be leveled out.

So we'll see if people will be brave enough to vote for that.

City council when there's a lot of pushback on both sides.

that's going to be a big fight in Denver this year if it makes it to city council.

Well, and let's keep in mind so minimum wage and minimum wage hikes are very well intentioned.

We want people to make more money.

We want people to have a living wage.

But there are some unintended consequences here.

And Denver now has the second highest minimum wage in the nation.

So imagine let's say you're Starbucks, right?

Starbucks says, you know, I know that if we offer this cup of coffee for six bucks, people will buy it.

We boosted up to seven to account for higher labor costs.

Maybe people won't buy it, but we're Starbucks, so we're going to figure out a way to shift some things around on the corporate level.

And we'll keep it at six bucks.

Let's say you're at a small coffee shop, just a little crew of five people and, and one owner.

You ask yourself, can I take this cup of coffee up to $7?

The customers say, no, I'm not going to pay $7.

I'm going to stop coming.

Now, as an owner, I have to live with the fact that I'm going to have to reduce hours for my employees, or I'm going to have to reduce, something, because I can't raise that money up.

I can't absorb it because I'm a giant corporation.

I'm going to have to make some decisions here.

And sometimes those decisions mean shutting my doors for good.

One thing lawmakers cannot control is the weather and Colorado's long stretch of warm, dry and windy conditions is taking its toll.

Some snow is closing out this week.

But snowpack across much of our state is at or near record lows, including several key ski country river basins.

Steamboat Springs just recorded its warmest December ever on record.

Evidence that this winter has been nothing like we've seen before.

The level of drought affects all of us, threatening water supplies and as we've seen this past week in Denver and Boulder County, erratic and fire and wind driven fires.

So in this is your expertise in all things water.

Where would you like to begin?

I think that it's beyond drought.

I think we're reaching a point of desertification.

It's a technical term right from ecology, but we're in a position where we are going to have to realize we're going to have to do more with less water, But Colorado is a headwater state just by such an important role, more than a third of all Latinos in the United States get their water from our mountains.

And just because we have a low snowpack here, the climate change problems that are facing us also means it's melting faster.

It's not staying around as long as changing flows.

All of it throws our ecosystem out of balance.

And so what I think is it's also impacting our economy, whether it's forest fires and insurance costs and all these other things I talked about, but also just straight up tourism and how it's impacting people.

I think I really do think that these kinds of issues are going to shift the dialog, and maybe split up labor on the way that they're behaving around climate action and around fossil fuel extraction in particular.

And we can't lie that we're one of the top producers in the United States of oil and gas.

And it is driving this problem, and it's in front of our faces.

And so I predict that as we continue to have worsening conditions, this is going to continue to be in the zygotes for everybody to have conversations about.

Okay.

All right.

Connie, wouldn't it be nice if we had a federal agency like in car that was able to really study climate change and what's happening?

it is going to be a long, tough winter and a dry summer maybe for so many parts of Colorado.

And it's just going to be tougher and the discussion is going to be harder, especially as we look into the Colorado River, just the 100 year compact.

We're supposed to be updating the Arkansas compact that's been underway, and we're being sued by Nebraska.

Resources are scarce and they are getting scarcer this year.

So less water.

We need to think in terms of more storage and more conservation.

And I, I miss I was I was around during the blizzard of 82 and 83.

I miss snow, I love snow, I love a big snowy winter.

So I, I hopefully that those days will come again in the future, but I think we have to plan as though they were not coming any time in the future by increasing storage.

And then for each one of us to say, what can I do differently?

I think there's, a way for all of us to contribute to the solution of what is going to be a problem that affects all of us.

You can go back to what you started with in terms of when you said we can't control the weather and if we can't control the weather, we've got to figure out how to help, the multibillion dollar ski industry, not because it's multibillion dollar, but because it employs a lot of people here in this state.

And in fact, I'm going to go back once again to the regional town summit.

And that's only because we played a big role in helping to organize and get businesses to them, and some really good ideas that came out of there for how do you help the tourism industry without necessarily pumping a lot of money into it, doing things like creating exchanges so that workers who work here in the summer can go or excuse me, in the in the winter can go somewhere else during the summertime where they might be needed, and we can have an exchange and make it easier to bring in employees, to create more job, development for those employees and even make it easier for ski areas to build workforce housing, which, Vail Resorts has found can be a lot harder than it sounds.

When you want to help your, your workers get a cheaper place to stay.

So I think there are barriers we can remove, to help the ski industry while we're watching.

See what the weather does.

Okay.

All right, now let's go across the table and talk about some of the highs and the lows that are insiders have watched and felt this week.

I'll start with Patty.

What's a low note for you?

Well, I'm going to return to Rene.

Good in Minnesota.

And the tragedy and the outcome of what's been happening, we still don't really know exactly what happened, but we have heard she was dropped.

She had dropped her kid off at school.

That's not what you do before.

You go on to be take activist protests against Ice.

I'm speaking of someone who accidentally drove into the stock show parade once.

I can tell you, when you are confronted with a crowd and you're driving your kid from school, you might get confused.

And no matter what happened, she did not deserve to die.

We'll get the truth soon, I hope, but we're going to hear a lot of malarkey before then.

Yeah.

President Trump gets my shame of the week.

And it's because of the January 6th.

The framing around that on on the white House website, instead of saying, yeah, we, violently attacked the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election or perhaps say nothing at all, which would be preferable to a lie.

Instead, it tried to reframe that incident in a way that was so completely false.

Only Pravda would have approved of it.

Loss.

And all the news this week was the fact that the United States Postal Service is cutting a contract.

It's actually it's only private contract issues in America, for a, distribution hub out in Aurora.

And that's going to cost 729 jobs.

Now, if you read the stories about it, there was an audit saying this may not have been run perfectly and there was a reason you cut the contract.

I think the federal government should look hard at this and say, if we're going to bring this work interior now, we should bring some of these people who just lost their jobs into work as well.

Okay.

Yeah.

I also want to go after the Trump administration, who pulled out of more than 30 United Nations, efforts that were funding and sending staff to, as well as another 30 or so international organizations.

I don't think it behooves America to step back from the global stage.

And having attended the United Nations Climate conference in our absence, China is leading.

Something positive.

Everybody had a. Stock shows galloping back into town.

Clearly one of my favorite times of year.

So everyone if they can get it get a chance to go out there.

But I also want to say something about Ben Nighthorse Campbell, our late senator.

He switched from Democrat to Republican, a maverick every step of the way.

And I think whether you agreed with him politically or not, we agree that we like what he represented about Colorado, which is you come here, you're independent minded and you do your thing.

And a beautiful artist as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he save Strom Thurmond, using judo moves like he was just like a cool guy all the way around, and, I he will be missed.

I want to give kudos to our governor, Governor Polis, for standing up to the Trump administration and not featuring Tina Peters.

Under pressure, under great pressure.

He is standing firm and saying, you know what?

Someone's committed crimes.

They got to stay in jail.

Okay, something good add.

Oh, there's there's so many good things that are going on that I think we can still recognize out there.

I actually want to call it Rose police.

Rose was the House minority leader, and she resigned, last year.

And too often you see public officials do this.

They kind of step away and say, I'm not up for helping the public.

I'm not for the fight anymore, Rose.

Just announced she's going to run for treasurer in Mesa County, where she moved back to, to make sure her kids were growing up where they needed to be.

I love the fact that someone may step out of the spotlight in one way, but look for another way to help.

Okay?

All right.

I want to circle back to the launch of the legislature.

It's an exciting time to use your voice.

Make sure you are following along with organizations and really challenge yourself.

You know, this is the year you're going to send a letter.

Is this the year you might go down there and testify?

It's due that experience that our government is stronger, and we need people to be more involved.

And people can go.

I think a lot of times people think, oh, I can't go down there.

Exactly.

And let me also remind people, Stack Show is free on the on the 13th, Tuesday the 13th is the free admission day okay.

That's good.

All right.

Well my positive was on the stock show.

But since you took that I'm going to lean towards our Denver Nuggets which when we're down with like so many of our guys hurt, we've been winning some pretty close games.

And Christian Brown is back as well after 23 games or so.

So I'm glad about that.

So you go nuggets and I guess the Broncos have a week off.

We do have a lot to cheer about here in Colorado.

Everybody we do thank you each of you for coming this week.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for watching or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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