While Colorado's forecast has been easy to predict these days, unfortunately, with all the warm days and little to no snow governing, Colorado is far from predictable, with many variables at play.

As a legislative session gets underway and there's an $850 million budget shortfall looming over the Capitol, it's going to be tough.

And on day one, the House speaker referred to Colorado as being under siege from Washington.

You know, this year marks Colorado's 150th birthday as a 38 state, and the next four months at the Capitol will be pivotal.

So let's get some context and some perspective from those at the table in 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 and editor of Westword, Eric Schneiderman, columnist with Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette.

Chris Work, consultant with Work Media, and Alton Dillard, a former election spokesperson for the City and County of Denver and current consultant with The Diller Group, Rockford Gray, and political analyst at Denver seven.

What awaits lawmakers this legislative session?

The budget is top priority.

Yes, and Democrats and Republicans have different views on how to reach a balanced budget.

And there is no room to fund any new programs.

Patty, tensions are already running high under the Gold Dome.

Well, I had the opportunity to moderate the panel with the Senate and House minority and majority leaders in front of the Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, and it was great because everyone was so erudite and they were all so congenial, even if they disagreed.

And then Wednesday comes and you're already having fights in the House, in the House, in the Senate, over ice, obviously over the budget.

It's going to be a very, very rough session.

They do agree on some things, but there's so much disagreement on where the money is going to come from.

What is funded.

Even as we started recording this, Governor Polis is still talking about the things he's looking for in the next year.

You can see RTD is in for a spanking.

It also sounds not from his speech, but the PUC is going to be in for a lot of scrutiny.

And Tabor, you know, it took 40 minutes for Tabor to come up with this media panel.

But Tabor is definitely under the gun with our outgoing House speaker, Julie McCluskey.

Eric, your thoughts on what awaits us?

The budget is going to be front and center.

Democrats tend to.

They're the party of expansion.

They love spending money.

They're not a party of cutting.

They're not the party of contraction.

I'm often reminded of a quote from my old mentor, now deceased former Governor Lam, to the effect of you know, we have one party in this country addicted to tax cuts and one party addicted to government.

And in this state, the party addicted to government is the one in charge.

But they're going to have to be in a mode of a pulling back.

And that's not something that comes naturally, to them.

I think the other thing to pay attention to two quick things.

One is the culture of the place.

both parties, particularly with all the safe seats we have, they both move toward their extremes.

there's just more distance between the players.

Secondly, it's going to be an interesting November.

And all this is precursor to November.

I expect, you know, the pinnacle issue we haven't talked about yet could be on the ballot.

And I think a lot of the sources on the left are queuing up a ballot issue, or more than one ballot issue on tax increases, a graduated income tax, maybe some kind of wealth tax, etc.. So all of this is just precursor precursor to November, just that.

Okay.

Yes.

Well, and Eric, you speak about both sides of the aisle going to their extremes.

I think that will show up in November as well as we move through primary season, because a lot of these races are drawing primary opponents.

So we'll see.

Does do the parties become more extreme or do they kind of get balanced out again?

But I want to pivot back to the governor's speech.

I listened to it, quite at length.

And of course, he was touting all of his accomplishments in the last eight years that he has been in office.

This is his final year, I should say.

You know, he blamed a unaffordability in Colorado on Trump.

And I don't know that you can say that because there are other states in the Union that are prospering quite a bit.

He talked about lowering costs, and I don't believe he has.

When you have, you know, appointed commissions that are saying that people have to change out their home heating systems to comply with new regulations, things like that.

I thought I'd add to his list of accomplishments that he he listed.

He we are top ten in unaffordable states in the nation.

We are top ten in homelessness in the nation.

We are ranked as one of the least safe states.

And that comes down to public safety and auto theft.

He touted the transit system that we have here.

I've had personal experience with the bus.

Dang, leaving a family member stranded.

And this governor has further made a division between urban and rural areas that urban, rural divide has really deepened, and we're going to see that play out in the legislature this year.

Okay.

All right.

All in your thoughts.

And everyone seems to be staying pretty much to what I call on message.

You have the Democrats to Eric's point, talking about, well, let's increase revenue for everything and increase revenue for safety nets.

But then also you have the Republicans saying, well, if you let people keep more of their hard earned money, it kind of help solve that.

And Chris, you make a really good point on the urban rural divide because I was just doing a little bit of research and I saw that, you know, remember back when the polls was running in 2018 and he blew off the club 20 debate, and it's like you cannot in the state in the Mountain West not participate in club 20 and make sure the farmers and ranchers and quit being so Denver centric all the time.

Lawyers for our former Mesa County clerk, Tina Peters, went before the Colorado Court of Appeals this week in an attempt to overturn her conviction for illegally accessing voting machines regarding the 2020 presidential election.

Her team and says she did nothing wrong.

She shouldn't still be in jail.

This all comes as her release from prison continues to be a hot topic for her supporters and from the president.

And really, the only person that can make any decisions on this is Governor Polis Eric.

He says he is considering commuting her sentence.

Oh, she's the gift that keeps on giving around this table.

So thank you to Tina Peters, for that.

There's one other factor beyond the polis possibility of a commutation, which is the Court of Appeals that took up, her case earlier this week.

There is some discussion among the Court of Appeals.

None of us are lawyers on this panel today that perhaps one of the felony convictions, she had multiple felony convictions.

One of them, perhaps could have been a misdemeanor, should have been a misdemeanor, and that could carve 15 months off her sentence.

Everyone is focused on the nine year sentence, and nine years is real time, but no one is under the expectation that she's going to do nine years.

You get time off for good behavior, etc., etc.. I cannot understand for the life of me policies, calculation or why he has waited so deep into this possible commutation.

What the upside is for, for, for is particularly if he wants any political future, whether it's in Colorado or on a national level as a Democrat, there is no upside in it.

And, you know, yes, he was recently branded the weirdest governor in America.

He wears that as a badge of honor.

And in many cases, it is a badge of honor.

But on this one, I don't get it.

quite frankly, I don't really get it either.

And if anybody on this panel should get it, maybe it's me, I don't know.

But, she was convicted of seven counts.

Four of them were felonies.

Whether that felony is in question or not.

There's still three other felonies.

Two of them are class four felonies, which is 4 to 12 years.

And the third is or the other one is a class six felony, which is up to 18 months plus three misdemeanors on top of that.

As far as Governor Polis wading into this, we can guess all day long.

I'd like to remind everyone he is the governor that reduced the sentence of a truck driver, that was convicted in a 2019 accident that killed four people.

He had been originally sentenced to 110 years, and Polis reduced that to ten.

It was following public outcry and apparently Kim Kardashian taking a stand on it.

So will we see some movement with her sentence because of her age?

Perhaps you know some mercy, shown there, but I don't know.

Nine years is kind of with right within that realm of sentencing.

And we don't know when the Court of Appeals is going to issue their opinion.

They said they don't know.

So, Allen, you used to work in this field.

What is your take?

Because again, this week, election officials in the state wrote to Polis and said, do not do anything here.

Yeah.

And this has been the second time that they have contacted him that the Colorado County clerks.

And so I'll put my comms guy hat on here.

comms 101 is if you do not control your narrative, someone else is going to control it for you.

And so like it is also agreeing with Eric here because of the fact that Colorado does have good time provisions built into its statutes.

There never was an expectation that she was going to participate, you know, be in there for the entire, nine years.

But the lack of contrition has been a big issue.

But the other issue that was brought up with this Court of Appeals is whether the judge from, Mesa County was trying to make an example of her.

If anyone remember watching that, trial and watching that sentence and her being, you know, referred to as a charlatan, etc., people are like, yeah, but the other part of the narrative that's being lost is that there's a cadre of people that believe that she was prosecuted simply for being an election denier, not for breaching the election system, trying to prove this discredited narrative about election fraud and.

Rigging And so, Patty, you were mentioning how Governor Polis mentioned all the things that he has done.

I'm so curious where this will weigh in terms of when he ends his time in Colorado.

This Tina Peters may still be part of his legacy.

Well, he, as he did say in that CBS interview that followed the, let's say, ill advised statement he made, he made to Sean Boyd last week where he didn't clarify what he was really considering.

He did on the national CBS News Monday night, where he said, look, I'm the governor.

I have to think about these things all the time.

I consider sentences all the time, like the truck driver, dozens of people a year have asked for clemency or pardons or sentence commutation, and he considers them with the staff all the time.

So it would be right for him to look at Tina Peters, too.

I don't think that means he's going to let her out tomorrow.

As it is, she can get out as early as December 2028 under the current sentence.

When the appeals court took this up, they didn't consider Trump's, part his full pardon of her.

You know, he still technically can't pardon her because she was convicted on the state.

Frankly, I think she needs to stay in jail a little longer just so she doesn't jump on a plane again with Mike Lindell, who is certainly just for judgment, alone in consorting with him.

She deserves to be convicted.

Okay, I think we'll leave it there, shall we?

Okay.

Well, let's move on to the next topic.

In Denver, city Council members are floating a proposal that would ban immigration, customs and enforcement agents from wearing face masks.

While still in the discussion phase.

The idea if passed, would allow Denver police officers to arrest agents who are covering their faces.

And in Aurora this week, the newly seated city council, announced that it is, in clear opposition of the overreach.

They said of Ice agents.

All of this follows the shooting death last week of a Colorado Springs woman, by an Ice agent in Minneapolis, which has sparked protests and a lot of criticism and scrutiny and questions across this country about the tactics of these officers.

So, yeah, if Denver City Council, passes this, I'd like them to explain how they're going to enforce it.

That is an issue right there.

At best, it's difficult to enforce.

At worst it's unenforceable.

The other thing about whether this passes or not is it pits law enforcement against law enforcement.

Wow, what a place to be.

So article six, clause two of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.

It says that federal law takes priority priority over the state, local police cannot impede federal officers as they are performing their duties, given that they are within the parameters of those duties.

So the question is, if federal agents are within those duties and local police try to enforce them, are they violating the Constitution?

I think that needs to be explained.

It needs to be explored.

And I think this is just being done as a symbolic gesture overall.

Yeah.

And what you were saying at the top, Homeland security has already said if Denver does this, we're not paying.

Attention to you.

I saw yeah, yeah.

It's good to see the localities being proactive on this issue, but yeah, I really don't see this as being enforceable.

Now I'm going to pivot a little bit back to the sort of threshold discussion on this whole ice thing.

Remember when the immigration policy was being described as going after the worst of the worst?

And I know every once in a while around the table, we flinch when I say that our immigration policy is, if you're brown, get out of town.

So I've got a list of some of the groups that are now having their temporary protected status ended.

Somalia, Ethiopia, Haiti.

Cameroon.

Burma.

Nepal.

Honduras.

Nicaragua.

Sudan.

Anyone seeing a bit of a through line there?

So essentially we have an administration that has a three year window in which to turn the country back to 1776, when only the white male 1% had any power in this country.

So for those of you who think in terms of America First, that is 1% America First.

And find out if your uncle, the coal miner in the West Virginia holler, is getting the same consideration.

Okay, okay.

Well, if you want to see law enforcement pitted against law enforcement, go to Minnesota where Minnesota is not going to be allowed to investigate this or it's the feds are going to investigate the shooting of Rene.

Good.

But Minnesota police can't.

And they're talking about it.

They are definitely siding with the governor and the mayor there and against homeland security.

So I say good for Denver City Council for bringing this up.

It may not be enforceable, but look at all the strides that have been made over the last five years since the George Floyd protests, with communities and policing working together to at least have more trust in each other.

More trust in transparency.

And obviously, that is going to hell in a handbasket in Minnesota right now.

So that's a huge issue.

During this speech, Polis did talk about this, of course, talked about the billion dollars Colorado was losing because of the feds.

He also talked about the fact that 75% of the immigrants being held in detention have no criminal charge.

There is nothing like that.

So the overreach that is coming from Washington is horrifying, and it's not going to end anytime soon.

I mean I really echo whatever been said around this table.

And Alton just just nailed it.

With with his analysis.

There's an ugliness to this whole issue.

Yeah.

What Denver's doing, it's largely symbolic, but sometimes symbolism is important.

So if we have a little symbolism, so be it.

I'm more concerned about the ugliness, whether it's in Colorado or in Minnesota or in all kinds of parts of our country around this issue.

Yes, we have to enforce our borders.

There's no argument about that.

Or I guess there is some argument among some very far left fringes of the Democratic Party.

But in the political mainstream, there's no argument about that.

But you can do it in a humane way.

the notion that the cop on the beat in Denver or the cop on the beat in New York City can show their face, but Ice agents have to be covered.

That is nonsense.

That is stormtrooper tactics.

It's meant to intimidate and nothing and to try to spread fear.

And that's that's the only reason behind it.

We've lost our moral bearings in more ways than one, and this is just one symptom of it.

I want to push back on that a little bit.

The face coverings were born out of the fact that these agents are being doxed and attacked.

And I think that the the escalation that we're seeing now is from both sides.

We saw both sides in that Minnesota shooting.

And I'm not going to weigh in on that shooting.

But there was a video that came out that showed very aggressive protesters there.

And and these are human beings.

These are people that have been put on edge trying to carry out their jobs.

And I can see where the escalation has come on both sides.

We need to de-escalate.

I appreciate the pushback, Chris, but I'm going to push back on this the other direction.

If there's problems with doxing.

And I don't doubt what you say, the Da problem for doxing.

But if there are problems with doxing, let's deal with those problems.

But, there are cops everywhere in this country who are putting their neck on the line, walking down dark alleys on a regular basis, and they can do it with their face uncovered.

I'm not sure that there is a special carve out for ice on this one.

Okay, okay.

All right.

About a dozen schools across Colorado received bomb threats on the same day this week.

Fortunately, all of them were hoaxes.

Still, the threats created some tense moments at schools all along the Front Range and across to the Western Slope.

But there was far more promising news for Colorado schools earlier this week.

Graduation rates in states public schools are on the rise.

The dropout rate is at a record low.

One trend, though, continues, and that is hard to ignore.

That overall enrollment in Colorado public schools continues to decline.

Moulton.

Yeah, and as someone who coaches high school basketball, I really get a chance to sort of see this on a, you know, fairly frequent basis.

And there's a whole bunch of factors.

One of them, fewer Coloradans are having babies.

You know, I'm seeing many more people with golden doodles and lattes than I'm seeing with strollers these days.

But one of the things that was fascinating in looking at this topic is the fact that you are allowed seven years to graduate from high school.

So that explains a couple of the students that I went to high school with back at East, who had some pretty full beards for their age.

And now we understand what was going on there.

But also on a serious note, another one of the factors this being discussed are the culture wars and how many people have pulled their kids out of public schools trying to keep them away from the quote unquote woke agenda and homeschooling.

Homeschooling.

Yes.

Patty.

Another thing that came up during the speech yesterday is we we've kind of forgot because it was early in his term, but when he got to full day kindergarten for all kids, and he was talking about how he'd gone to in Colorado Springs earlier this week, he'd gone to a third grade class.

And that was the first group that had been through full day kindergarten.

And the difference that his made in how they feel about school attendance scores was really fascinating.

When you think about that kind of equality in this state has made a difference, that little kids can go to school earlier, longer and get it, and it helps their parents, certainly helps the kids.

That was great.

He also talked about classroom sizes down 1% on average, but also the teacher salaries are up.

So some good news.

But as we look at this tough budget and Tabor education needs funding.

And where is it going to come from?

Right.

Yeah.

Eric, I guess I'm going to take a little more of a macro perspective on the micro level.

Yes.

You can look at the numbers.

Population is off in terms of people having babies.

Also people are being deported or they're voluntarily deporting themselves.

That's a cause of the, lower enrollment.

In some districts.

Graduation rates have ticked up.

You know, 1% ra ra.

That's good.

Not knocking it on a macro level.

We have more or less the same education system.

We have more school choice, but we have more or less the same education system that we had 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago.

Even our calendars based on an agrarian calendar, the school calendar is based on an agrarian calendar.

Our education system, writ large, is desperately crying out for innovation.

It's desperately crying out for reform.

It's desperately crying out for new approaches, letting a thousand flowers bloom and trying different things.

And yet it is so hidebound.

And that is the issue.

And I don't see any politician, really, of either party seriously tackling it.

you know, I've reported quite a bit on school funding.

And I also have two kids who have gone through the Colorado schools, have graduated old research showed that outcomes weren't necessarily tied to funding, but now we're seeing newer studies that show that they are the caveat is, how is that money being spent?

Are we spending money on I'm getting better instruction in math and English and language arts, or are we focus on health education that engender more questions than it does provide answers?

The Common Sense Institute had a report in October that showed that funding for education in Colorado is actually up 21% since 2020.

However, spending is exceeding that funding by 3%.

Spending is actually up 24%.

And a lot of that spending is going towards administration.

Per pupil spending is up 48%.

So you know, as we see a decrease in school attendance, of course there's going to be more money readily available.

So per pupil spending is actually going up quite a bit.

And yet about our math scores are Colorado measurements of academic success show that one and two students cannot read at grade level, and two out of three cannot do math equations at grade level.

So even though scores are coming up, graduation rates are better.

Are we getting our kids better educated for the money that we're spending?

All right.

Good questions.

All right.

Now let's talk amongst the table about the highs and the lows that we've all witnessed this week.

We'll start in the low notes.

We can end on a good note.

Pat, I'll start with you.

We're looking at another dry weekend with high winds.

And we're also over at the blowhards in the Senate.

We are seeing no action on any car being dismantled and car, which is so intrinsic to scientific research and warnings about these high winds.

So both Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper were talking on Thursday about trying to restore the funding and trying not to dismantle that really important federal agency.

All right.

I'm going to focus on the media world here.

Two pieces of concerning news this week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ceasing, basically closing up shop, a few months down the road.

And also the raid on a Washington Post reporter's home earlier this week, very dangerous precedent.

Very.

We're playing with fire here.

Chris.

Well, I listen to, the CCW, commission meeting and, the new acting director said that in regards to the euthanizing of two mountain lions, two mountain lions were euthanized because of an, mountain lion attack.

That they've received threats because of that action.

And I want to point out that demonstrates the extremism that we see in in wildlife advocates, activists.

And so that's really concerning when you think that people who are carrying out their job to protect humans are being threatened because of that action.

Wow.

Okay.

My low is people who do not observe the move over laws that are on the books in this state.

I actually saw a law enforcement officer get buzzed on Quebec just the other day by people who didn't know to either slow down or if it's safe to, you can cross the line and also, as a cyclist by law, were given three feet.

I don't think that's enough of a buffer, but people, please pay attention to what's going on on the shoulder and keep an eye out for cyclists.

Yeah, okay.

And something good.

Patty.

I heard this when I was moderating that panel that Senate President James Coleman and Minority Leader Cleve Simpson spent a week together on Cleve Simpson's farm just so they could learn how the other half really is living or urban rural.

It was a great Kumbaya justice story is fabulous.

Thanks for sharing.

Two quick kids.

One welcome to, two students who are observing this taping today, Kyra and Charlotte from the Logan School.

Pleased to have you here.

Secondly, we've been rough on Governor Polis in some regards.

This is a month old, but he did the right thing and deserves credit in enlisting the state, against a whole lot of opposition within his own party in the federal tax scholarship program.

That was part of the big beautiful bill.

I'm not a fan of the big beautiful Bill, but as long as this provision exists, Colorado ought to partake of it.

And he made that happen.

Okay.

All right.

Chris.

Mortgage rates are at a three year low, and it's spurred a whole bunch of refinance and refinance surge.

About 40% comes on the heels of Trump calling for the purchase of, 200 billion, in mortgage bonds.

And, we're starting to see some movement with home sales as well.

Okay.

And my shout out is to my team, the mighty Panthers of Martin Luther King Early College.

We got our first win of the season after an oh seven start.

So way to go guys.

And coach to actually.

And with all that's going on in the world I like Alton.

It turn to sports to get my highs every week.

Our Broncos are two wins away from going to the Super Bowl.

And I was at the stadium store the other day and people are so excited.

Broncos country is ready.

Here's hoping for a big win tomorrow.

Also, there might not be a stadium ready for the new Denver Summit FC inaugural season, but really, does it matter when the team has signed on?

Golden's very own Lindsey Horan keeps the U.S.

women's national team captain, was a big supporter of the move to even get a club in Colorado.

And so it's perfect that once her season in Europe wraps up, she will be coming home.

And I love how the clocktower on 16th Street celebrated the news and very bright lights.

Lindsay joins Allie Ward of Colorado Springs and Janine Sonus of Highlands Ranch as the other locals will be on the roster.

First match is in March.

Lindsay doesn't come until June, but still, it's a pretty exciting time for sports fans, and I think we all need something to cheer for right now, right.

So thank you, insiders, for joining us this week.

A lot to talk about.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for being engaged with us by watching or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

In the meantime, go Broncos!

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