Welcome to September Colorado.

The month started off with a big blow to our state from Washington.

And then new data that the governor is calling disastrous regarding the impact of tariffs on Colorado.

And there is the confusing back and forth as to who can get Covid vaccines.

The vibe is so tense that there was even a benches clearing brawl in the first inning of Iraqi's game, which ended with the team's 100th loss of the season.

We need to take a timeout, at least for the next half hour, to listen to the perspectives of those behind me.

So let's get started with 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 Calhoun, founder of and editor of Westword.

Marianne Goodland, chief legislative reporter at Colorado Politics and the Colorado Springs and Denver Gazette's Luige del Porto, editor at Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette, and Kristi Burton Brown, executive vice president at Advance Colorado and former chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

Earlier this week, I had to pick up a prescription, and the pharmacist gave me a QR code to sign in for my flu shot.

I asked him if the sign up was also good for Covid shots, and he shrugged and said he's not sure.

Colorado health officials stepped in this week with an order that allows, the, pharmacies to give Covid vaccines to anyone who wants them.

Earlier, we learned that maybe we had to have a prescription.

That was a rule that came down from the federal government.

So Colorado, Patty is stepping in again to say, hold on.

Federal rules.

Let's do it our way again.

Let's let the state actually have some control over the things the state should be able to have control over.

Remember five years ago when we were all on tenterhooks, waiting to see when a vaccine would come, when we thought we would be freed up for the vaccine?

Now we have it.

It's become a regular thing every fall for most people to get the flu shot, get the vaccine, and then all of a sudden you hear this mandate coming down from Washington, that you're not going to be able to get these without a prescription at the major places where people go CVS to get your prescription about to get your vaccine.

And then all of a sudden Colorado steps in, goes, no, wait, that's fine.

But it still leaves it a little up in the air.

Not unlike, for example, marijuana rules where it's legal in Colorado.

Federally, it's still illegal.

So you have people who won't be willing, probably to give those vaccines unless they really feel they're indemnified from any kind of federal prosecution.

So mostly what we know is we don't know anything yet, except Michael Bennet put up a great fight against RFK Jr yesterday in the Senate hearing.

It was ugly, but it was fabulous.

It was a lot.

It was a lot.

Okay, Marianne.

The one thing that I sort of keyed in on, on this, order from the, state's medical director is that this is permissive.

It's not required.

And that seems to me that that's going to give some wiggle room to, companies, pharmacies, whatever, who aren't willing to test the federal government on this.

and the one thing we're not hearing from the insurance companies, because they're the ones who pay for this and we're not hearing, yeah, we're fine with what Colorado is doing or, you know, we'll do whatever the federal government tells us.

I mean, that's that's the end line for for anyone who's insured your pharmacist, your your insurance company is paying for this now.

Used to it used to be the government was paying for it.

Insurance is covering it now will they?

And I think that's a big question.

All right.

Yeah.

I think just to be clear, this has always been under the state's purview.

And what I mean by that is our state law actually says we are going to follow the recommendations of the federal government.

If the recommendation of the federal government says you need to get the vaccine, then we allow our pharmacies in the state operating in the state, licensed here to give the vaccine Covid 19 vaccine without a prescription.

What happened was a sequence of events.

The FDA approved the vaccines recently only for senior citizens.

Older residents and for people who have underlying conditions.

They're about 30 of them.

And otherwise, you need a prescription to do that.

So what we did is we did what's called the standing order issued by the state health department that said no.

As Marianne said, we are going to allow the pharmacies to give out and provide the vaccines without a prescription.

That's what happened.

Now, to Marianne's point, she's exactly correct.

The question is, what do insurance companies do?

Christy.

Well, I think there's sort of an overarching issue here when we look at RFK Jr, some of the changes at CDC, FDA and there's a lot of people in my demographic like young moms with kids who are getting vaccines right now who actually really like that.

He's in charge of HHS because he is bringing a lot of attention to the control that pharmaceutical companies have over our lives, and how much money often they give doctors to push vaccines on people.

That may not be the right vaccine for those people.

There's a lot of moms like across the political aisle who are my age, who say we need a little more accountability when it comes to vaccines and medications.

And so, you know, I think we do see that coming out right now in the Covid vaccine, the federal government stepping back a little bit and saying, let's prioritize the people who need this vaccine, teachers and people with underlying conditions.

And, and I think they're trying to encourage the rest of people to say, go have a real conversation with your doctor about this and kind of step away from the past actions, the federal government pushing this vaccine on everyone.

So I think there's just some overarching issues at play.

And in general, I tend to think you should be able to make your own choice.

If you want a vaccine, you should be able to get it.

If you don't want the Covid vaccine, it shouldn't be forced on you.

And so I just think we see this at play right now.

I think there's just so much confusion, especially what's going on with the agency, that I think people don't know really what's going on.

I think there's a real concern here also about the precedent that this sets today.

It's Covid.

Is the next one going to be measles?

Is are are we going to stop vaccinating for other, highly infectious diseases?

I think we're at we're in real scary times here.

And I read that Colorado has 27 measles cases so far this year.

And usually we have 0 to 2.

So it is something to follow.

Thank you all.

Governor Polis sent out a press release on Thursday morning saying that he had figures to show the disastrous effect the tariffs are having on Colorado.

Marianne, you went right over to that press.

Conference I did.

There were a couple of key points that that, the governor, focused on number one a year ago, the, tariff level on the United States from other countries was about 3%.

It has increased sevenfold under President Trump.

We're now at about 21% tariffs from other countries.

And that's on average, some of them are much higher than that.

The other one was the impact that this has on the state's economy.

GDP before the tariffs was about 2%.

And that that's, that's a decent that's decent growth.

It is dropping and it's dropping fast.

By next year, they predict it will be a half percent.

And that's considered stagnant.

That's stagnant GDP growth.

And if there is any and that's with the tariffs at the current level that they're at, if they escalate, the prediction is that we will be in recession real quick.

the last point I want to make is the impact on one particular sector, and that's the agriculture sector.

Colorado's number one export across all industries is beef.

And our beef industry has now lost 25% of its exports to other countries, with China leading the pack.

Well the fact of the matter is things are very fluid.

Even now negotiations are going at the federal level.

So it's not we're not we don't really know what the tariff situation is going to look like in three months.

You know, six months a year out.

What we do know, of course, is that if there's a high trade barrier that's not good for businesses that are exporting, some win, some lose.

But I think for the most part, people agree that the barriers are pretty high for global trade.

An economy like the United States, which are especially Colorado, which exports a lot, both lose out, Kristie.

So I think would you see pulses press conference, you see the governor kind of stepping in line with Phil Wiser and Janet Griswold and doing his own way of attacking the Trump administration.

And what I think is missing from his talk on the tariffs.

And of course, there's going to be an economic impact to Colorado that's unquestionable.

But what you see missing is his plan.

He's the governor of Colorado.

What is he going to do to take steps to help businesses in Colorado?

We just saw a special session where he signed bills that raised taxes on businesses across Colorado.

Some of these same businesses he's now claiming are affected by tariffs.

So you can't really throw all the blame on the federal government and say, oh my goodness, we have a recession here in Colorado.

Economic downturn why are restaurants leaving Colorado?

That was well before the tariffs.

I think he would be better served instead of holding press conferences like this to form a blue collar commission and have people who work in a lot of these industries come together and come up with real solutions on how to cut the cost of living in Colorado, because clearly the legislature and the governor aren't doing it.

Maybe real people who work at these sectors could figure out a plan and and propose it to the government.

Marianne, did he see kind of a what's next, a game plan?

The one thing that he did focus on is a lawsuit that has been filed by Colorado on this tariffs issue, and that a lot of other states have joined in on this, too.

Supreme court goes back to work first Monday in October.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the tariff situation.

So there is there is a hope, I think, that the Supreme Court will not take a a positive view on this tariff situation.

The other hope is that Congress could develop a spine.

I know, but and they have the authority to rein in the president on this tariff issue.

They haven't shown any inclination to do that just yet, but they could do that through the spending proposals that they're now working on for the next, budget year.

Is he say anything that we as a state could do?

No.

Okay.

It's can't he he says that there is there's going to be pushback.

But he would other than mentioning the lawsuits and the, and actions by Congress and keeping our congressional delegation informed, this is this is going to everybody, that that I think remains to be seen.

The lawsuits, the lawsuits, the lawsuits.

That's all we have these days.

It seems like.

Well, dozens of them, over three dozen of them.

And it's fascinating, as the judges keep coming down with decisions right and left over the Venezuelan gangs and everyone else.

We don't know where the tariff lawsuit will go, I think is really setting the stage after he came out of the special session.

And we know things are grim.

He had warned that it was going to be grimmer, that 50% chance of recession.

I would suspect he does have a plan.

He doesn't normally just do a press conference at this time of year just to do one.

So I'm thinking there might be something more down the line.

But we have to remember, we're not the only state suffering and the restaurants.

It's not just the minimum wage in Colorado.

It's how much food costs, how much food and supplies are going up, not just in Colorado but across the country.

And that is a major, major factor at restaurants.

Now, when you look at how much the price of beef has gone up and restaurants are saying, I can only it's added 50% to my food costs, but I can only add like $2.

That's all that the market will bear.

And it's a really, really tough time for restaurants.

Okay, now let's discuss the Trump administration's announcement this week to move Space Command out of Colorado Springs and to Huntsville, Alabama.

Think about all the jobs that will be leaving the Space Command and think about all the other people who are contractors, who do work with Space Command, who might be following to Alabama as well.

So, according to Denver, Metro Chamber, Space Command has a yes, billion dollar economic impact on our state.

So, Luigi, this was not a surprise that this announcement was going to come.

But I think what was interesting and what we heard that was new, was the reasoning the president gave for his decision, what he called the big factor that was news to hear.

Or what he said.

One of the major factors was our Mail-In voting system.

As you know, Colorado is among several states that allow for Mail-In voting.

the president said that, this is, ripe for fraud.

That's what he said.

But again, just we've been hearing about the announcement on and off for what, the last 5 or 6 months, we kind of knew that this was happening the moment the the president took his oath of office.

We've heard from sources that this was on its way.

We know Alabama had a pretty robust lobbying team pressing the president to move, Space Command Huntsville.

And and so we knew this was coming.

And, you know, you mentioned the jobs, about between 1400 and 1700, depending on who you ask.

You mentioned about the economic impact.

Both of those things are true.

Both of those things will happen.

We already have companies that have, relocated to Colorado and said, hey, you know, we're expanding.

Oh, by the way, we're also expanding now to Huntsville, Alabama.

As a result, that movement is going to start.

It was interesting to see both, Colorado's Republicans and Democrats to write a letter together in support of keeping the the installation here in Colorado.

But I don't think that will go anywhere.

Sure.

It's not going to I mean, I think the Trump administration has made their decision.

It's going to be relocated to Huntsville, Alabama.

But I think, of course, if you're a Colorado and you want to jobs captain Colorado, you want Space Command, Captain Colorado.

I think if you're looking at it from the eyes of the Trump administration, though, despite I think sometimes the president maybe gets hung up on one major factor instead of talking about all the factors at play, it's very clear that Colorado has poked the bear like one too many times.

I mean, I look at how many lawsuits that have been, you know, brought against the Trump administration constantly and over absolutely pointless things that you're not going to win in court and you're using taxpayer money to sue the Trump administration over and over and over.

look at our sanctuary state laws refused to cooperate with Ice, except in very limited circumstances?

Why would the Trump administration say, okay, you get to keep this military installation that both Alabama and Colorado have been competing with for a very long time?

I mean, Alabama is kind of the natural choice for the Trump administration.

So to your point, it's really not a surprise.

This is the result.

Well, maybe if you want an argument for keeping it here, you look at how much money has already been invested in setting up Space Command.

So that is an issue, especially with the cash strapped federal government.

Why it move it?

It's not like Colorado doesn't already have nor it it's got different space components here.

It makes it makes sense to keep it here.

But of course when does Trump decide to do something that makes sense.

So he's going to take it.

Why not?

I would do almost anything not to have it for Tuberville talking in my ear.

And that's what happened.

He got so tired of it.

But the argument about Mail-In voting just showed how this was not based on, really, where's the best place to put it?

It was based on just take it away from Colorado, which has Mail-In voting has since 2013.

Alabama has Mail-In voting, too, not quite as robust or efficient or perhaps, competent as Colorado's does, but to use that argument just showed there was no real reason to move this now, except Trump wanted to.

This comes at an interesting time when the administration has been, sort of going back and forth between focusing on cutting spending and spending money on things like a new ballroom at the white House or, you know, paving over the Rose garden.

One of the things that that, I think is really interesting about this is it's going to cost about $2 billion, I believe that's the number I heard, to move Space Command down to Alabama.

There are things that they're going to have to do to ramp up that that facility.

Congress hasn't appropriated the money for this.

It's not in the federal budget.

Is he planning to to write the check himself?

I don't think he's got $2 billion, frankly.

But but, you know, I think that's, an interesting problem for Congress.

And Congress is going to have to get involved on this one, at a minimum, on the spending side, All right, let's move on.

An idea for the 2026 ballot initiative was announced this week, and it asked voters to raise taxes on Colorado's wealthiest residents.

The money raised an estimated $2 billion plus every year would go toward health care and child care and education and public safety.

Now, Christy, let's start with you.

There is opposition building, and you are against this idea.

Absolutely.

And if this actually makes the ballot advance Colorado, who I work for, will lead the opposition against this measure, as we lead the opposition to any measure that is tax.

Tabor the taxpayer bill of rights.

You look through Colorado's history and what happens when they try to raise income taxes in Colorado, voters strike it down.

You look back to 2016, 2018, there were attempts very similar to this, made to change our flat income tax rate that's required by Tabor to, you know, do this graduated income tax rate.

And as they would say, tax the wealthy more.

It's also taxing businesses that create jobs more.

And they specifically had a ballot measure on in recent years to do this.

And they said it was for education.

Same claim they're making now.

Voters struck it down by 29 points.

And so when you when you attack the taxpayer Bill of rights, when you repeal a part of Tabor, any part of Tabor, voters say no because 70% of Coloradans love their taxpayer bill of rights.

I think the other important piece to this is that while they're going to talk about taxing the wealthy, they're also taxing small businesses.

It's these businesses that would be boxed out of the state, would likely leave this state.

This would drive down revenue in Colorado.

It's a terrible idea.

And voters don't like these kind of proposals.

Okay.

Although some voters might like it this year when they're seeing the billionaires who are getting more access in the white House, more access to federal government, more access to their lives, and you might see that people would be more inclined this year.

This is a really new proposal out there.

You know, tax the wealthy does sound good to some people.

I know it's been floated that in Massachusetts when this was introduced, a lot of billionaires millionaires left or moved on, which isn't really the case.

So we'll see how this all shakes out.

Will it actually make it to the ballot?

If it does, that means there's going to be someone with a lot of money behind it, and we're going to hear a lot of arguments pro and con about this, and it's going to take a deep dive to really figure out what it might do, because we're still figuring out the ramifications of the big beautiful bill on businesses.

Looks like the big corporations are going to do better than they would have before.

And of course, on our, recent special session, what's going to happen to businesses?

So just throw this one in the.

Mix, okay?

Speaking of deep dives, you did the first one.

You broke this story the other day.

Let's just get off the let's say, 125,000 signatures.

We'd have to get this on the ballot.

How would a 100.

And 24, 638, I think is the number very close to that?

Okay.

And that's valid signatures.

Now, in order to get that many valid signatures, the rule of thumb is that you get twice that many so or close to that.

So you know there and and the other thing is that this is a constitutional amendment, which means that they have to get signatures in every state Senate district, all 35 a percentage.

I think it 2%, I think, is the number of registered voters in every Senate district.

the other thing that I, that I found rather interesting about this proposal is I went back and looked at the language of Tabor, and I had some help from some folks here.

And while Tabor didn't say you have to have a flat tax rate, it mandated one rate.

So this would be overturning a language that's in Tabor.

And that was that's been kind of frustrating to the folks that oppose this.

On the flip side of this, everybody under 500,000 and income and that includes small businesses.

And this would be really small businesses, I suspect is going to get a tax break.

Louise, your thoughts on all this?

I, I can surmise that behind the scenes, they're doing a lot of testing, a lot of focus groups, a lot of polling to see if this one would actually pass or what the chances of it passing are.

The kind of the rule of thumb is about 60% support right off the gate if they don't get that 60% or up, I it's going to be very dicey.

Now I will say there's about a dozen brackets here from 4.2, up to 9.2%.

And right now we're at 4.4.

So for the highest income earners, you know, $10 million and up.

They'll be asked to pay half $1 million more than they're already doing right now for those in the lower brackets, they'll see, about a $200 savings tax cut.

Every year, it's a very smartly, done bracket system because I can see them bifurcating, the people who are going to be the people who are going to show up at the polls the most.

So what is is designed to do is really get the support of those people who are going to show up to vote.

And politically, that's very, very savvy.

This is going to be an interesting year.

Plus, trying to figure all this out.

Okay.

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

We will start on a low note.

And with Patty.

Sorry to say this, I love Cleo Parker Robinson and her dance group.

They've done wonderful things over the last 50 years.

But if I were the mayor of a city who was about to lay off 171 people and make other cuts, I would have thought twice about going on the Dancing With the Stars Cleo Parker Robinson benefit in a leopard skin outfit.

You were talking about mayor Mike Johnston.

How is the optics?

Not good at a week when a lot of people took a hard hit?

Is you a good dancer?

I don't I didn't see the whole thing.

Can't can't speak for it.

Okay.

Our Colorado Rockies have now lost 100 games and they're moving up moving up the numbers.

They're very, very discouraging but pretty pretty normal for the Rockies.

Unfortunate.

Yeah.

Third year in a row, I think.

Yeah.

Well not necessarily a bad thing, but my my son is now in his first year in high school.

And it's kind of dawning on me and my wife that we have about four years.

Something like that.

Yeah.

High school flies.

By.

Yeah.

Christy, I think just the constant focus in Colorado of cracking down on businesses is just a really sad thing to see when they need help.

Instead, they continue to be punished and attacked by the government and the far left.

Okay, something good to talk about, Patty.

Let's do something nice for businesses this weekend.

Denver Food and Wine is a three way area campus.

A lot of Colorado's really great restaurants go to this event, support the Colorado Restaurant Foundation, and then go to your local restaurant and eat out.

It is a very fun event too.

It's great and it'll be a good weekend.

This is also the weekend of the Longs Peak Scottish Irish Festival, the largest celebration of Irish culture in the United States.

The weather looks to be really nice, so get up to Estes Park while the weather's still nice.

Fun.

Well, we finally got that reservation that you need to, do time entry at the Rocky Mountain National Park.

I finally got the slot, and we're doing that this this Saturday.

I'm so excited because we're going to go fly fishing.

All right, guys, you guys have fun.

Weekend's planned for last week.

Is that right?

Yes.

It's beautiful.

Good time of year.

Mine will be very personal.

My husband and I are actually expecting our third baby in February, so I will get bigger and bigger on the show, but it'll be for a great reason.

That's great.

Congratulations.

And my high is this Sunday's canonization of Carlo Akunis as the first millennial Catholic saint.

He's had what he's being called.

He was only 15 years old when he died of leukemia in 2006, and like many in his age group, Carlo loved video games, especially PlayStation.

But he was also really into coding and graphic design.

As a kid, he was very thoughtful and he was very fascinated by miracles around the world.

So he actually created this one website cataloged more than 150 miracles.

And in 20 different languages.

His work has been used by churches and educators all over the world, including my nephew, who is a teacher and whose birthday is this Sunday, and who will be in attendance for the canonization ceremony with other members of my family.

So it's pretty exciting for all of us.

But this young, soon to be millennial saint shows us that how despite there is a sour reputation with the internet, with the scams and the viruses and misinformation, you name it, technology can be used to educate and inspire and spread good as well.

Thank you as well panel for spreading good and information.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for being engaged with us and watching every week or listening to our podcast.

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

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