We have made it through another week of intense heat and some intense news stories, as well the projections and realities of the new federal budget, and how our spending plan in Colorado will now have to be reworked.

And then the tragedy in Texas is sad.

And to all of us, and has Coloradans thinking of past floods and the ones that will hit someday.

Are we ready?

We've got you covered, Colorado.

And that goes for all of you getting the news.

Seven, four, eight area codes.

The demand for new phone numbers shows that we like to stay connected and know what's going on.

So let's get started with this week's Colorado inside Out.

Hi, everyone, I'm Kyle Dyer.

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

We have Patti Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword, Eric Sanderson, columnist with Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette.

Tyrone Glover, civil rights and criminal defense attorney here in Denver.

And Chris work, consultant with Work Media.

It is a given that Colorado lawmakers will reconvene sometime this summer for a special session following the passage of the federal budget and will now legislators are being tasked with rebalancing our state budget because the projected cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other federally supported benefits.

The governor's office has estimated that the new federal budget will cost Colorado hundreds of millions of dollars.

So and statewide spending cuts are coming.

Let's start with Patty here.

This happened right as we were taping last week.

The big beautiful bill passed.

And now we are going to be doing cleanup not just for the next few months through a special session, but God knows for how long.

We're talking about at least a half billion dollars in cuts is what it's looking like right now.

For Colorado.

And this is deja vu all over again.

We just had cuts and they weren't easy to make.

Last legislative session.

And now on top of those cuts, we have more cuts.

So God bless the JBC, the Joint Budget Committee which is already getting prepared with their ideas.

You've got hard working, Barb Kirk Meyer, Republican, you've got Jeff Bridges, the Democrat.

They are working hard, but they don't agree now.

And I don't know how they're going to come to an agreement by the time there's a special session.

Whenever Polis decides to call it.

And I hope he calls it soon so everyone can decide when to get the hell out of the state.

And who knows how long this session will take, because it took the whole legislative session months to come.

And this is so much worse.

And then you also have the eye bill, and I do hope they deal with the EI bill passed in 2024, which is definitely could a hamstring a lot of businesses and businesses in the state.

It was badly planned and they need to deal with that too.

And that's going to be easy compared to the budget.

Eric.

Well, if I had been utilized more in Washington, maybe we wouldn't have the big beautiful bill.

Consider that.

So maybe the two are linked in that way.

As Patty said, this is already a cash strapped state.

I don't know if there was a lot of low hanging fruit that the legislature already dealt with, and cutting.

I don't know what the number was.

About a billion to point to, from the budget during the last session.

Now they're looking at cutting maybe half that much again, some estimates as much as a billion, but that includes some implementation costs.

I think 5 or 600 million is probably the more apt number.

Again, as Patty indicated, good luck to those on the JBC as well as in OSB and the governor's office who have to wrap their arms around this and come up with some way of doing it, without hurting people more than they're already going to be hurt by the provisions of the, quote, big beautiful bill, which, you know, was half correct.

It was big.

Tyrone.

Yeah.

And from a civil rights perspective, I'm watching what they're going to do on the the AI bill and law passed a few years ago.

Absolutely agreed that, you know, something needs to be done at the end of the day, but we don't want to just continue to just delay and delay, the implementation of something, the federal lawmakers have, you know, lifted this preemption.

They're expecting, I think, the states to lead on this and this technology is so rapidly evolving that if we're not doing something to put up some sort of guardrails or give some guidance, I fear we're going to see this sort of as like we saw with social media, which is, you know, as we're sort of fumbling, things are just getting worse and worse.

And then now we're trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

So hopefully they can get creative.

But I agree with Patty.

It's probably the lowest of their problems.

Another thing that could be handled in the special session is, whether or not tips are going to be taxed.

The legislature this past session, passed a, measure that would tax overtime pay.

Now, they may add to it tips, which is a response to a federal exemption.

Michael Fields of advanced Colorado, in his, in his way, Westword called him the Republican governor of Colorado because he does know how to leverage the power of the ballot initiative.

He's brought forth two ballot initiatives that would, allow, overtime pay and tips to be exempted from being taxed.

You know, this is a time where Michael Fields has really flexed in the past.

We recall the property tax exemptions and things that came up.

He wanted to cut property taxes and he wanted to cap them.

He brought forth two ballot initiatives to do that.

You put it before the voter that's leveraging some some power.

What it ended up doing was forcing a special session where lawmakers brought about some relief.

All right.

Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement here in Colorado have arrested, we're told, nine illegal immigrants every day, which is about a 300% increase compared to the same period in 2024.

We're talking more than 1300 arrests in Colorado, compared to 342 arrests in 2024.

And these numbers are going to climb.

And because of that, let's see, Burlington and Walsenburg are said to be, possible new homes for Ice detention center.

But then Le Hunt, as been mentioned, Hudson, Colorado Springs, they're all being talked about as having new detention centers.

Let's start with you, Eric.

Well, isn't that great?

We can have detention Ice detention centers as a new mode of economic development.

And all these towns and cities around, Colorado competing for them.

I say that Tom tongue firmly in cheek.

It's a complex issue, immigration.

I think what worries me so much is the amount of money that this big, beautiful bill is throwing at ice and what that means, and particularly and Tyrone can certainly talk to this as a civil rights attorney.

But, you know, police in the general realm of operation, they have limits.

They have constraints.

They were body cameras.

Their face can be identified, they were name tags, etc.. And now we're basically building, a police force in the immigration realm that is outside all of those usual rules.

And that scares me.

That scares me greatly.

Lastly, you know, just a stock tip here.

If you have $100, lying around, in your couch cushions, you might want to invest it in private prisons because they are going to be a growing commodity in this state and across the country, and I'm not sure that's for the better.

Yeah.

Tyrone, I want to hear from you.

Yeah.

I mean, it's it's so disheartening after I think decades of reform and getting away from these for profit prisons, it seems like they're coming back and they're coming back and force and I think there's been efforts just really across all spectrums to have more transparency with, with law enforcement.

I remember sitting on, sort of broad coalition of, of working groups around things like, police body worn cameras and more trans parents and law enforcement is mostly sort of at the state level.

And so you have all of this done, and then now you have these federal law enforcement folks coming in where there's no transparency, where we now have in our Denver immigration courts, keeping lawyers out, keeping legal observers out.

It's just I fear that we're in store for some really dark times.

And now we have the federal government diverting, really, you know, the majority of their law enforcement efforts to tackle immigration.

And, you know, we're starting to see reductions and enforcement of things like drug trafficking, fentanyl guns, violent criminal enterprises to enforce what are mostly law abiding folks who are here because they're here illegally.

Even looking at the 19 people that were moved from El Paso, many of those folks were looking at, you know, DUIs, drug positions, nonviolent people.

Right.

And that's where the resources federally are going, I think to the detriment of enforcing much more serious crimes.

Yeah.

El Paso County came out this week with another list of people they're handing over to Ice and encouraging the other municipalities in Colorado to do the same, Chris.

Well, there is certainly a lot of outrage surrounding immigration and what's going on, especially with Ice agents.

And calls for transparency.

However, I don't see the outrage over an increase of 700% of Ice agents being attacked 700% since last year.

You know, we just over the 4th of July, we saw agents attacked in Texas at an at an Ice facility.

And here we're planning to have more Ice facilities here.

Pew research I looked up Pew Research, did a study in March 2025, and 32% of Americans believe that those who are here illegally need to go home.

51% said some need to go home.

And that was usually tied to whether or not they have committed violent crimes.

Only 16% of those surveyed said that those who are here illegally should stay.

So, you know, we can be outraged.

And I certainly want humane treatment of people.

I don't believe that everyone should be deported if they've been good citizens.

But at the same time, we have to think about these Ice agents are doing their jobs.

Where is the outrage there?

Okay.

And, Patty, well, it wasn't an illegal immigrant who killed firefighters in Idaho.

We just have to remember that everyone when is it's the civil discourse is not good right now.

There's unrest everywhere.

Many people are doing bad things.

And a lot of those bad things have been done at the GOP facility.

Our only Ice detention center right now, which has been in Aurora, it's been in the news for decades.

We've talked about it off and on.

The different issues on care with people who might be there, the who did nothing other than not have the right papers to be in this country and died because they didn't get the care they needed or the attention they needed.

There's no question there's some bad characters there too.

And I would argue, of course, they should be deported if they're in this country illegally and they're criminals.

Yes, but what are the issues?

And we're looking at private prison companies that we wrote a story about, one this week that's looking at two facilities in Colorado, which has been chaining pregnant immigrant women up and not giving them any care.

And babies have been dying.

And we documented that.

And this is one of the companies we want to encourage to come into Colorado and take over empty prisons.

Is that core civic?

Core civic?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's on our website.

Okay.

All right.

Colorado college campuses are pretty quiet these days with it being summer break, but there is a lot going on when it comes to leadership.

The Air Force Academy is having to lay off 140 civilian employees because of budget cuts.

A C region was censured for only the second time in the school's history.

Overdue.

Almost 37% of faculty members voted no confidence for the Chancellor there.

And then a hearing is set to begin next week investigating claims of anti-Semitism at Community College of Denver, Metro State and CU Denver, specifically around the pro-Palestinian protests on your Erie campus last year.

Tyrone, where would you like to start with this?

I'll start with the sea region.

Wanda James, this is a syringe that's only been used one other time in the history of the University of Colorado.

I mean, it is an extreme measure, and it is certainly retaliatory for her viewpoint and her outspokenness.

And it doesn't sit well with me.

She's elected by her constituents.

She wasn't sort of hiding who she was during that election.

You knew who wanted James was you knew that she was passionate about cannabis advocacy.

You knew that she was going to go in there and be outspoken and outspoken about marginalized students.

And she goes in there and she does this, and they use this internal administrative mechanism, I think, to try to really silencer.

My understanding, however, though, is that she is going to be able to continue to participate fully, to be able to vote on things.

It just sort of seems like she's kind of kept out of the cool kids table for a little bit.

But I just think it's really unfortunate.

It seems petty.

And it really, I think, takes away from the voice of the voters that put her there in the first place, because they know what they were getting.

Yeah.

Explain the campaign that she was critical about.

Yeah.

So it was this campaign, that sort of was talking about, I think, higher concentrate cannabis and in sort of the lead up, you know, in the materials and mind you, you know, this is like the University of Colorado is like 63% white folks, like 3% black people.

And it's like all black people, you know, and especially darker skinned black folks like using cannabis and words like sort of lazy and all this stuff are flashing on the screen.

And she, I think, called them out for, for doing that.

And they promptly, I think, retooled it.

I actually looked at it today.

It's, you know, it's it's looking a little bit better.

But this is the exact thing that her voters sent her there to do.

They wanted her to be a disruptor.

They knew what they were getting.

And so for kind of, you know, the inside crowd at the Regents to silence hurts her.

It just doesn't seem appropriate, you know, whether you agree or disagree with her or her tactics.

Okay, Chris.

Well, I'm going to pivot to Du and Chancellor.

Jeremy Hefner.

Is the Chancellor there?

There was a vote of no confidence by the faculty.

I've worked in higher education before, and there's often a rub between faculty and administration that exists.

The complaints were that he has not managed the school well financially.

Of course, there have been cuts there, but the school is facing the same kind of cuts that every university and college is facing right now.

You know, he did make a comment that he was criticized for.

He he issued a statement after there was a pro-Palestinian, protest, an encampment on campus, and he said, we value free speech.

However, I'd like this encampment to disband for safety reasons.

And he was highly criticized for that and often it's social issues that really will rile up a faculty.

I was the communications officer at a, state school here in Colorado, university and, the faculty took a vote of no confidence against the president there.

He was gone within six months.

And statistically, it's about 50% of universities.

When the faculty takes a vote of no confidence, the administrator in the target is gone within 6 to 12 months.

It's unfortunate, because once that vote takes place, it is detrimental to everything on that campus.

In fact, instead of rectifying the financial situation, it ends up hurting the university more because there's no focus on recruitment or retaining retention or, even student success.

So overall it's detrimental.

It's not good news for do and do you says he's not going anywhere.

There's just kind of a reason for us all to talk about some of these issues.

In this case, he does have the support of the board of trustees, which which is pretty significant.

So he may end up saying, okay, well, they're also looking at the fact that they're not going to be having as many foreign students.

So you're looking at the budget cuts that are also going to come to these universities.

But I want to go back to Wanda James.

We broke that story when she was upset about the campaign put out by C.U.

Health Sciences, called the T and THC, and it did have very stereotypical image imagery of black people.

Now, some of the stats were true that black people were affected by the use of.

But so so are other people.

And it was just it wasn't a great campaign.

She complained about it.

We wrote about it.

It was changed immediately.

So if it was a great campaign, why was it changed?

You know, she does have a lot of friends in high places, but she's in a high place too.

And she was elected to that spot.

She's a really interesting voice in the C regions, which doesn't always have a lot of interesting voices, but has certainly had people act out before who did not get the punishment, she did, which is very much like you can't say you're a regent if you go to a regent party or something.

It's silly.

And so they should have dealt with this in a different way.

Okay.

And Eric, I will start by agreeing with Tyrone in the sense of Wanda.

James is who Wanda James is, and there should be no secret about that.

It bothers me the extent throughout her career and in this circumstance as well, in which she makes every issue about race, it is race 24 seven and 365.

But to accept her version of events is basically to say that the president of C.U., who's a former Democratic state legislature, that the board chair of the Board of Regents at C.U., who is also a Democrat, that the majority of that board of Regents who are Democrats, on down the line, that they are all a stacked deck, that this is all sort of a hatchet job to silence her.

And that is, that's more than I am really willing to believe about a number of these people who I think are fundamentally well intentioned and thought in this case and, and others, that she takes it too far.

This week, when so many of us are without words following the deadly flooding in Texas, we also hold memories of the destruction that has taken place here in Colorado because of floods.

12 years ago this September, the Big Thompson Canyon flood killed nine people and destroyed nearly 2000 structures in Boulder County.

But before that, 49 years ago, 1976, the Big Thompson, Canyon flooded, killing 144 people.

So the devastation was made, it one of the most destructive and awful floods in our state, in our country.

Chris, I'm going to talk with you because we've been talking about the low snowpack.

The rivers are running low.

We're very dry in Colorado, but monsoon isn't, so monsoon season is right around the corner.

Yeah, and we need monsoon season because that is what replenishes those rivers and helps with the hay crop and everything.

Water wise in this state, I'm often complaining about how we don't have enough snowpack and giving the snowpack report.

The problem is when that land that ground dries out, it gets hard.

And when you have a rapid, rainfall, like what happened in Texas, it moves fast and it moves furious.

And Colorado, we've seen in a lot of reports, is ripe for that to happen here.

You know, the face of this tragedy in Texas is those children, the faces of those children.

And as a parent, I can't even imagine, the depth of the loss there that those parents are feeling.

Something that really bothers me, though, is how quickly it was politicized and the blame game started.

There were claims that, cuts by the administration were to blame for this.

You can't know that in the middle of a crisis.

Trump has talked about eliminating FEMA.

Other reports that I read said, really?

He means to eliminate it, put it back on the states and replace it with a more efficient system, a more efficient agency.

We'll see if that comes about.

I do believe the role of government is safety and protection, and that it should function in that way.

And weather is unpredictable.

So we do need something, a warning system and then the follow up, the clean up, from a federal agency.

Okay.

It also shows you cannot rely on some technologies.

I know people are saying, well, there were warnings on self cell phones, which of course we didn't have during the Big Thompson, but we just had a story about Aurora, which has realized that its warning system, its siren warning system is horribly out of date.

And the fact is, as we saw in Texas, having cell phones is not going to be the solution.

They're silenced.

They're not near you.

When a huge 20ft flash flood unlikely in Aurora, but you could have tornadoes.

You can have some of these other destructive incidents come that you haven't predicted much in advance.

And you need those siren warnings.

So it'll be interesting to see in the wake of this, if Aurora does go through and up upgrades its warning system, if other cities here look at it because there are all kinds of crises that could come.

Yeah, Eric, I mean, the videos of that river rising in Texas and rising so suddenly and then just wiping out everything in its way, I mean, those are astounding videos.

I was a very young, brand new aide in governor Dick Lam's office when the Big Thompson flood hit back in July 31st.

I believe it was of 1976.

The other interesting thing about that date is Colorado Day is the next day, August 1st, which was the state's centennial.

That was the state's centennial celebration.

Suffice to say that there was nothing celebratory about it in that circumstance.

Your hearts go out here when you get these big numbers of of of casualties, of deaths, you sometimes lose the individual stories.

But each one of those numbers is an individual story.

It's a life snuffed out.

It's a family.

And the family wasn't all wiped out.

In the case of these campers, these young campers, you know, the campers now gone and the family is absolutely decimated.

And you don't know how they recover from that.

And I guess that lastly, I would just say in terms of all the preparation, I'm for all the preparation in the world.

But when Mother Nature exerts her wrath, there's only so much preparation can do.

And whether it's in the case of the Big Thompson or the Guadalupe, the devastation is massive.

Karen?

Yeah.

My heart goes out to the families.

And, you know, as a as a parent whose three kids are at camp and at the time that this is filming, I can I can't imagine the gravity of that loss.

I think we debate a lot, you know, not only on this show, but I think in our national discourse, the cause of these extreme weather events that are becoming more and more frequent, you know, going from drought to sudden, you know, monsoons, you know, that I think is one of those recipes for for things like this to happen.

And at the end of the day, I think we just need to put the politics aside.

This isn't a Partizan issue, and we just need to figure out how to be ready, capable, trained.

I agree with Eric.

There's going to be stuff that's just going to catch us on our heels, but I think we just need to innovate into, you know, current times on best practices to make sure that folks have as much of a heads up as they can so they can get out of the way of just some of this impending extreme weather we're going to be having for the foreseeable future and work together.

Work together.

Right.

All right.

Now let's go down the line, talk about some of the highs and the lows.

We know one of the Globes this week, was our patty on a low note.

So we can on a good note.

It's been a bad summer for alternative news weekly, some of which have been around for decades.

Colorado Springs Independent is gone, and just this week, the Boulder Weekly laid off its entire staff and we hear someone might be purchasing it, but that it would be a shame to lose that, as well as the Colorado Springs Independent important voices in their towns.

I hadn't heard that, Eric.

I'm going to media too, but on a national level, I think it was mentioned on the show last week, but it bears mentioning again and that's CBS and Paramount for their quote unquote settlement with Donald Trump and Trump interests.

It's less a settlement in my mind than a shakedown.

And shame on CBS and Paramount for engaging in that.

And mine is, as I alluded to, the ACLU lawsuit, related to the Denver immigration courts for transparent.

See, you know, we have a First Amendment guaranteed to open access to our courts, whether that be criminal courts, civil courts and immigration courts.

And, you know, the new rules that have been promulgated are keeping out legal observers.

They're limiting their access.

They're keeping out attorneys.

And so I commend the ACLU for doing this.

But this shouldn't be a problem that we're dealing with.

Okay, great.

My low I don't know if it's a low of the week or it's an ongoing situation I'm concerned about.

And it's not Wolves this week, although there was a meeting held earlier this week, no action was taken, even though a special meeting was called.

You can look that up online.

But my low is regarding, Colorado Parks and Wildlife updating the fur bear management plan.

It's a management plan that, manages, 17 different species, such as beavers, fur bearing animals.

These animals are very well managed.

There is no indication that there's any problem with the plan.

However, a working group has been appointed and they are likely to consider restrictions or prohibiting the management methods for these, 17 species.

And, you know, hunting is really under attack in this state.

We'll see what comes out of this, this new further management plan.

But if it continues along the trend of what we've been seeing, I'm not real hopeful.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Something good.

Well, I hope they don't ban black bears from red rocks.

That was a great thing I thought this week.

Yeah.

I'm going to stick in the hills my way.

But family palooza wedding this weekend, and we will be up.

Even as this airs, finalizing a ceremony and celebrating all weekend.

So to my family, all the best.

And you are officiating.

Yes, that's pretty big.

All right, that's fun.

Enjoy it.

Patty, we're often critical around this table of mayor Mike Johnston, but, I'll make him.

Might say something nice here.

There is no easy way to do layoffs, which are coming in Denver, but good for Mayor Johnston and his administration for sticking up for the notion that merit has to have some place in this and the role of the employee and the contribution of the employee.

And this cannot solely be about seniority and length of service.

That's an important principle.

He's on the right side of it.

Well done.

Okay.

Yeah.

So my positive is Nederland buying Eldora or I'm not sure if it's gone through yet or we're in the process of it.

I just have a lot of fond memories from law school taking the 20 minute trek up there and just love the town Nederland.

And I think to have that resort owned by sort of a local, more of a community vibe, just really stoked on that.

Yeah.

All right.

My end of the week was I went out to Sedalia, at former senator, state Senator Tom Wiens has a ranch out there, and he has cutting horses.

What cutting horses do is they'll pull a cow out of a herd, and then they'll work that cow and direct it to where it needs to go, and watch these horses track with a cow.

It's it's it's sublime.

These are top winning, horses in the National Cutting Horse Association.

Tom made it free to the public.

Went out there with my daughter.

Who's to show horses.

We had a wonderful time.

And Sedalia is absolutely beautiful.

What fun.

That's awesome.

Well, my high is that I tried something new this week, and I can't remember the last time I tried something new.

And I did it with friends and we were very victorious.

Okay, so me and my three neighbors took our first mahjong lesson this week.

And we're figuring it out thanks to our fabulous teacher, Franci.

It definitely was a highlight for me because it's really fun to learn a new hobby and to test my brain along with my friends, and we laugh a lot.

So, that's my high.

I did it the first game two.

I won the first game.

Thank you everybody for coming in this week.

We appreciate each of you.

And thank you for watching.

We appreciate you at home and listening to our podcast as well.

I'm Kyle Dyer, I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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