If Bennet wants to show voters that he truly cares about Colorado, he should resign now to run for governor.

Anything less would be unfair to Coloradans during this time of unprecedented turmoil in Washington, D.C. No one from Colorado is better suited to fight President Donald Trump’s out-of-control agenda than Bennet, but if he has his heart set on coming home to be governor, he must step aside for someone else to fill his seat for the next three years.

Bennet is only 2 years and four months into his six-year term in the U.S. Senate. If he were to resign now, Gov. Jared Polis could appoint someone to serve almost four years in the Senate before the November 2028 election. That is a meaningful term for Coloradans.

All politicians must balance their time in office between the duties of their job and the rigors of the campaign trail. A major shortcoming of the U.S. House is that the two-year terms force politicians to constantly be in campaign mode. The six-year terms of the Senate give our nation’s 100 most powerful legislators a reprieve from the trail to get work done and fight for their constituents.

Bennet says he can easily manage representing Colorado and running a campaign; after all, he’s done it three times before in his bids for re-election. But we see a difference. Incumbents finish off their term — no matter the length — with a campaign blitz that often has an uncontested primary to a general election. Bennet will be pock marking the middle of his term with a grueling primary against Attorney General Phil Weiser in June 2026 and then what could prove to be a challenging general election that November.

Bennet poured salt on the wound of losing a tenured U.S. Senator Friday when he announced his plans to time his resignation so that he could fill his own vacancy were he to win.

If Bennet wants to beat Weiser, starting out his campaign with a political power grab is not a good look.

Bennet must send a clear message to Coloradans that he is in it to win it, and that he won’t play political games with his vacant seat. We are certain the power to appoint his successor would sideline some Democrats on a short list for the appointment who otherwise would be tempted to back Weiser. That alone doesn’t feel like a fair fight.

Colorado Democrats and unaffiliated voters deserve a robust primary between Bennet and Weiser.

Gov. Jared Polis is trustworthy in appointing Bennet’s successor to the U.S. Senate.

Ironically, Bennet himself was an appointment. Gov. Bill Ritter appointed Bennet on Jan. 21, 2009, to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Ken Salazar so he could serve as secretary of the Interior. Bennet quickly faced re-election in 2010. That year, due to both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joe Biden leaving for the White House and Sen. Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of State, there were a record number of appointed members serving in the U.S. Senate.

After the corruption involving Obama’s seat – which contributed to the incarceration of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich – many states passed laws either stripping governors of the power of appointment altogether or requiring a special election to be held as quickly as possible following an appointment to give voters a say.

Who can forget the recording of Blagojevich played by prosecutors: “”I mean, I’ve got this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing.”

Today 10 states authorize gubernatorial appointments but require a special election quickly, and 5 states don’t allow governors to make an appointment at all but hold the seat empty until a special election can be conducted. Colorado lawmakers should consider adding our state to the list of states that make sure voters get to pick replacements quickly through ad-hoc elections. A federal effort to eliminate the ability for governors to make appointments was introduced, but leadership never let the measure get a vote.

Not all appointments are bad, however. Bennet has served us well, and his first re-election came quickly because Salazar’s term was up in 2010 anyway. We have endorsed Bennet for Senate in all of his bids for re-election because he is competent, honest, and hard working.

Bennet, however, should resign to run.

Trying to have it all – retain his senate seat if he loses and hand-picking his own replacement if he wins — is unfair to Coloradans.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

We are dismayed that, based on what amounts to a procedural quibble, a federal court judge ordered Denver Water to abandon the expansion project and halt ongoing construction in two weeks, mothballing the proposed deepening of the reservoir.

Legal documents, and interviews with Denver Water’s CEO and the head legal counsel, convinced the Board that the utility needs this additional storage capacity.

But perhaps more importantly, Denver Water should prevail on appeal because the utility has spent decades painstakingly complying with federal environmental law – checking every box – and has spent millions in remediation on both sides of the divide for the environmental impact of expanding the dam.

The Denver Post editorial board has lamented the frustrating delays to this project, which is the smart alternative to the misguided Two Forks dam rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990. Two Forks would have drowned the town of Deckers and 30 miles of pristine fish habitat along the South Platte River.

As an alternative, the Gross Reservoir expansion will have considerably less environmental impact while fulfilling a second need that the Two Rivers project wouldn’t have – providing an alternative, albeit limited, northern water source in case the southern water distribution network is compromised by fire, contamination, or even human error or malicious hacking.

Ironically, the lawsuit seeking to stop the 131-foot raising of the Gross Dam is hanging on the argument that the U.S. Army Crops of Engineers failed to adequately consider all alternatives to storing water in Gross Reservoir.

Suffice it to say that we are convinced all alternatives have been given adequate consideration in the 35 years since Two Rivers was felled by the EPA and President George H.W. Bush.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed that the Gross Reservoir was the only place where both of Denver Waters’ goals could be met — increasing storage generally and specifically doing so north of the city so the water would feed through that purification and supply system. Expanding an existing dam rather than building new actually reduces the environmental impact.

In 2003, the EPA commented on the initial draft proposal and need statement by suggesting a single purpose and need would be easier to address than multiple ones — “It would be more useful if a single, basic project purpose could be developed so that various alternatives would not have to be examined for each separate project purpose.” The EPA suggested a consolidation.

When the Corps issued its final draft proposal, the EPA responded by thanking the Corps for their work on the issue and did not appeal or push back again on the question, according to officials with Denver Water and public documents.

The anti-dam movement has gained traction across the West. Dams are coming down in California, Oregon and Washington. Talk of dismantling Glen Canyon Dam once it reaches dead-pool status has gained surprising traction.

Dams are an imperfect solution to the threat of climate change – water stored is lost to evaporation, and the dams have cushioned overuse for years, hiding the lack of water behind consumptive use until crisis occurs.

But dams also have prevented great suffering across the West during drought. In a system built entirely on a use-it-or-lose-it ethos, there is a perverse incentive to overuse water in times of plenty. In times of drought, draconian limits on showers and flushes while trees die are the flip side of the coin.

Reservoirs norm out years of plenty and years of dirth, reducing the extremity of conservation measures.

It is not the duty of the Army Corps or the EPA to find a flawless solution to Denver’s water needs, only one that satisfies federal law, particularly the Clean Waters Act and the National Environmental Protection Act. Stopping construction now also won’t reverse the damage that has already been done to the wetlands below the dam. The larger foundation for the higher dam has already been poured.

Denver Water has also spent millions on a river restoration project on South Boulder Creek and another along the Williams Fork River. These were required remediations for the impact of the dam project.

Yes, the new normal will be using less and less water across the West. The transition to a drier climate will be painful. But the question that will come before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals is not whether Gross Reservoir will dull that pain enough to be worth the environmental cost, but whether Denver Water and the Army Corps complied with federal law during years of detailed analysis.

No permitting application is perfect, but we find it hard to believe that after 35 years, countless meetings, numerous analyses conducted by state and federal experts and hours of public feedback, this process was so inadequate as to warrant scrapping the project mid-way through completion.

We’d hazard to guess that upon appeal, the 10th Circuit will find the project can move forward.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The airport has grown to one of the busiest in the world.

Fertile fields are now subdivisions full of single-family houses.

While several Denver schools have closed because of declining enrollment, northeast Denver needs a new elementary school building.

Peña Boulevard, the area’s most direct thoroughfare, feels the strain.

Denver’s City Council was right to allocate $15 million to study the widening of Peña Boulevard — which is now a two-lane divided freeway — and begin the early stages of design.

However, the city should look long and hard at the alternatives presented by Peak Consulting at the end of the five-year study. While traffic on the road has ballooned to an average of 135,000 cars per day, there are two other transit corridors that are not at capacity.

First, the enterprise-operated toll road E-470 is a three-lane divided highway that runs parallel to Peña Boulevard until they meet just a few miles from Denver International Airport. The third lane is new and part of a $350 million expansion started in 2022. The eastern section of Peña between the E-470 intersection and the airport has already been widened and improved by the Denver International Airport. The one-way trip from Interstate 70 to the airport on the toll road costs $2.65 with a toll pass and $4.25 without. It’s more if users get on the toll road earlier.

Second, the A-line train run by the Regional Transportation District from downtown’s Union Station to the airport’s terminal is not at full capacity despite offering a consistent service every 15 minutes during most times of the day, and 30 minutes in the very early morning hours. The one-way trip costs $10.

For $15 million, Peak Consulting needs to look at these two alternatives to widening Peña Boulevard. Forcing traffic patterns onto those other two routes could save money and help the environment.

This is not the “war on cars” that Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn fears, nor is it “crazyland” where Councilwoman Sarah Parady fears we’re ignoring the threat of climate change.

Rather, this is looking for the most cost-effective way to get folks to and from the airport while acknowledging the obvious benefits for the environment if that route is an electric public transit system already built.

Adding a toll to Peña Boulevard would be wildly unpopular but would likely push more users in eastern Aurora and eastern Centennial onto the faster E-470 route even when they have time to spare. Increasing the price of parking at the airport or adding free secure parking at light rail and commuter rail stops would push or pull more users to the train.

Another alternative would be paying off the $1.3 billion in bonds and other liabilities owed by the E-470 Public Highway Authority and buying out the enterprise to do away with the tolls far sooner than projected. That might seem far-fetched, but it’s an alternative worthy of study if eliminating E-470 tolls would help alleviate Peña Boulevard traffic.

These alternatives have some obvious hurdles. RTD cannot increase service frequency on the A-line without major investment because the commuter train shares portions of the tracks with commercial trains. The E-470 authority, while managed by local elected officials, could be reluctant to cut a deal that ends the flow of $287 million of revenue every year. And no one wants another toll road to get to the airport.

The expansion of Peña Boulevard will be expensive; could these alternatives save money and the environment?

We won’t know unless Peak Consulting includes them in their study.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The vaccine is 97% effective at preventing infection from the dangerous virus, and an estimated 75% to 91% of Coloradans have been vaccinated.

For parents who have delayed or refused the MMR vaccine for their children, now is the best time to act because the vaccine can take up to two weeks to provide full immunity. The measles outbreak in West Texas rapidly grew from a localized spread among a highly unvaccinated religious community to 422 cases across multiple counties.

We are sympathetic to the vaccine-hesitant. No one wants to put their children in harm’s way, and vaccine injuries, while very rare, are real and well-documented.

But the MMR vaccine has been studied for decades and is among the safest vaccines. This one should be a no-brainer for parents who weigh the vaccine risk against the measles infection risk. The data is clear. The risk of adverse reaction to the vaccine is far lower than the risk of the virus.

From the vaccine, only 2.5 in 100,000 develop transient thrombocytopenia – an easily treatable, temporary autoimmune reaction. From a measles infection, more than 1 in 1,000 children develop brain swelling that can cause an array of dangerous, lifelong complications.

Many studies have shown no increased risk of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a virus- or vaccine-sparked attack on the spinal column) with the commonly used MMR vaccine, and there is no documented link (aside from sad anecdotal stories that seem to be coincidences) between the MMR vaccines and the onset of neurological conditions associated with autism. While an estimated 7 out of every 100,000 people infected with measles during a resurgence in 1989 went on to contract the fatal side-effect of measles years later known as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis.

We are addressing these statistics of vaccine injury, not to stoke fear, but to address the reasons for vaccine hesitancy in the face of those who have historically encouraged Americans to forego vaccines. With devastating cuts being made this week to Health and Human Services, individuals are going to have to play a bigger role in community health than ever before.

Fortunately, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has recently changed his tune about the MMR vaccine, writing early last month in a “call to action” that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”

Indeed, most babies don’t receive their first dose of the MMR until 12 months of age, making newborns, who are at higher risk of severe illness, highly vulnerable to infection. Additionally, pregnant women who are unvaccinated can pass measles on to their newborns or give birth prematurely.

Kennedy has spent much of his life casting doubt on the safety of vaccines, so we are hopeful his words will carry extra weight with the vaccine-hesitant. Simply put, the measles vaccine saves lives and while a very small minority may be injured by the vaccine — including almost 1 in a million who suffer a severe allergic reaction — the benefits far outweigh the risks.

The Denver Post has for years advocated for vaccine requirements in public schools, but we have also supported giving parents who are opposed for any reason the ability to opt out of the vaccination schedule. In other words, the hurdle to not vaccinate children must be at least as high as the hurdle to vaccinate children. Parents who want to opt out should have an equal amount of paperwork to file as those who get their vaccine records from their pediatrician to prove compliance. Laziness is never an excuse not to get a life-saving vaccine.

Colorado has seen gains in areas where previously there were sub-optimal child vaccination rates. For example, Boulder Valley School District has gone from 84% of incoming kindergartners being fully vaccinated in 2017 to 94% in 2023. Unfortunately, Pueblo City School District — with schools near where the single measles case was documented this week — has gone in the opposite direction, with 84% of kindergartners getting vaccinated in 2017 compared to 76% in 2021 and 80% in 2022. Incoming kindergartners in 2023 jumped back up to 84%, but that is still a rate that would allow the virus to circulate in a school.

Kennedy’s bid for president in 2024 was fueled in part by Americans who fear the U.S. government is hiding information from them, whether it’s the Central Intelligence Agency hiding plots against American citizens or the Food and Drug Administration hiding data about harmful chemicals in food.

Kennedy’s approach to these issues has helped fuel harmful conspiracies, but hopefully, now that he is on the inside with a first-hand look at how Health and Human Services operate, he can now play an important role in alleviating those fears.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Forcing an agreement on any changes to the Labor Peace Act is essential for Colorado as we navigate this turbulent political and economic time.

Unions are already active in Colorado, but union leaders say a provision of the 1943 Labor Peace Act that requires a second vote – with a 75% threshold — to collect “union fees” is stifling the hard work of organizing employees so they can join a union and collectively bargain for better pay, working conditions and benefits.

Of course, employers point out that workers can already organize with a single vote of 50% and collect from every employee’s paycheck who joins the union, “union dues” that are used to cover the costs of the union’s work representing workers during collective bargaining. Employees should be the ones to decide if “union fees” are also taken from every employee’s hard-earned paycheck, whether they join the union or not.

Colorado Democrats are proposing that the state’s law be updated to allow unions to collect “fees” without a second vote of the union to approve the non-bargaining activities.

Big unions are less likely to come into Colorado to help workers organize than they are to spend time in states where a single vote also authorizes the union fees, which are seen as essential for funding big-union activities that include things like lobbying for a change to the Labor Peace Act.

Unions have a compelling argument for change. Colorado workers could use a little negotiating on their behalf. Having a union represent your interests in bargaining is proven to lead to better wages and benefits.

Businesses also are correct to protect workers from possibly unnecessary dues and fees. There should be a very high threshold for workers to decide they want money withdrawn from their paycheck and those of their colleagues whether or not they join the union.

Hence why Polis is wisely calling for a compromise. Polis said Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie is working to get everyone to the negotiating table with the sponsors of House Bill 5. Sen. Robert Rodriguez, Sen. Jessie Danielson, Rep. Javier Mabrey, and Rep. Jennifer Bacon can still help unions organizing workers in Colorado without upsetting the delicate balance.

Polis says he won’t sign the bill as proposed because it eliminates a second vote. Instead, he has proposed the threshold for the second vote be lowered to something more reasonable like a simple majority or even just a supermajority – 60%. He said he’s open to anything at this point.

The governor also has pledged to work with the Department of Labor to expedite the second vote, so workers aren’t subjected to union-busting activities between the first vote and second vote that could sway them against supporting “union dues.” Polis said he thinks the state can get the administrative time down to 45 days.

We’ll go a step further and say the state needs to get more aggressive at cracking down on illegal union busting activities like the intimidation and retaliation tactics we heard an employee from Starbucks describe. As she worked to organize her colleagues her hours were cut, she lost benefits and feared she would lose her job.

A second vote only prolongs the amount of time workers can be subjected to that bad behavior and clearly state and federal law aren’t doing enough to discourage bad behavior. But a second vote also gives members of a newly formed union time to research how a union spends dues and decide if it is worth the cut to their paycheck.

In America, workers are guaranteed the right to organize. The federal law protects collective bargaining to level the playing field between employers and employees. Just last week on these pages we published a detailed analysis of how the decline of America’s middle class has occurred simultaneously to the decline in union membership.

Colorado is the only middle-ground state in the nation with its union laws. All the other states are either anti-union “right-to-work states” that prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees or they are pro-union states that guarantee what is called “union security” by allowing unions to collect fees that are automatically withdrawn from every employee’s paycheck.

Instead, in the middle of World War II, Colorado unions struck a grand bargain with employers, requiring a second separate election and setting a higher threshold for unions to be able to charge employees union fees. Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the proposal.

That bargain seems to have worked. Let’s tweak it to address complaints but not lose the Colorado Way entirely.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Vizguerra is not a threat to safety — she runs a local nonprofit, works at Target and has raised four children, three who are U.S. citizens.

Vizguerra is not a drain on society — there’s no indication Vizguerra has ever been on any type of welfare.

So why was the 53-year-old grandmother detained by federal officials outside of a Colorado Target this week and shackled in a chain and handcuffs? And why are local Republicans smearing her good name as if she is a gang member freshly arrested for brandishing a weapon?

We don’t have to guess.

President Donald Trump is on a mission to eradicate immigrants from the United States who came here illegally — all 10 million to 15 million of them — regardless of what they contribute to our communities. Since he first launched a bid for president in 2015, Trump has intentionally painted all illegal immigrants as dangerous criminals. He sees no difference between a mother working hard to support four children and a Tren de Aragua member engaged in organized criminal activity.

The stated mission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not changed, according to its website: “to protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.”

According to Denver’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, their goal is still “to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of noncitizens who undermine the safety of our communities.”

Vizguerra is not a threat to national security or public safety. She should not be deported and we call for her immediate release from the ICE detention facility in Aurora.

Vizguerra has repeatedly been granted stays of deportation so she could remain in America with her family.

Arresting her this week only makes a mockery of the hard, dangerous and serious work ICE officials perform every week to keep Americans safe from violent criminals who entered the country illegally. The federal employees at ICE did not sign up for their jobs to terrorize communities and steal grandmothers from their families without even a goodbye.

We have questions about Vizguerra’s legal status. Her family says she was working at Target but the Writ of Habeas Corpus her attorneys filed on her behalf admits that Vizguerra has no legal status in the U.S. Those two things are incompatible under current law.

America’s undocumented workers face this crush of obligation versus legality daily. For decades leaders — both Republicans and Democrats — have refused to provide a path to legal work or legal status but also have failed to secure the border from new illegal crossings.

Now it’s too late. For the next four years Trump will deport as many illegal immigrants as he can, ignoring decades of wisdom from past leaders who have said splitting up families and driving people from good jobs into hiding where they often turn to crime to make ends meet is not good for communities.

Since 2011, Vizguerra has been fighting a deportation order that stemmed from her 2009 arrest in Arapahoe County for a fake Social Security card found in her bag by deputies who had pulled her over for a traffic violation. She has unsuccessfully appealed the order, but has repeatedly been granted stays of deportation, in essence, legal permission to remain in America despite her deportation orders.

In 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump first took office, her application for renewal of her stay of deportation was denied, and she took shelter in the First Unitarian Society Church in Denver claiming sanctuary from removal.

Her story gained national attention, and we supported her efforts to remain with her young children and wrote an editorial that called for immigration reform that would secure the border and also provide the millions of people living in the shadows in fear of deportation a path to legal status and legal employment. We wrote: “Presented with the known facts at hand, we ask what would be the point of deporting Vizguerra? What would the United States of America gain from such a cruel, though legal, action? Would enforcement be worth the harm done to (four) innocent American children?”

Trump has failed to ever articulate a single answer to those questions because the answer of course is that there is no point of deporting Vizguerra, there is nothing for the U.S. to gain from this cruelty and the harm goes far beyond just her family.

The best case we can make against Vizguerra being permitted to remain in the United States is the simple fact that a judge ordered her removal and she disobeyed it before she was granted her first stay of deportation and then again in 2017 when she claimed sanctuary. As a society we cannot ignore judicial orders — the price we pay for that of course is the judge’s wrath as he doles out sentences for contempt of court.

We can’t see how Trump could make the argument that Vizguerra undermined the judicial system with a straight face, however, as he is now engaging in an orchestrated attempt to undermine the judicial branch, lashing out at judges he disagrees with, calling for their impeachment and ignoring their orders.

Undermining our judicial branch’s authority is a direct threat to the core of our republic — three co-equal branches of government working in tandem to preserve American’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

If Trump wants America to abide faithfully and without deviation to the courts, he must lead the way with his own actions first. Then we will be glad to have a conversation about whether or not the actions of those who sought sanctuary from judicial deportation orders pose a threat to America’s judicial order great enough to warrant their removal from this country.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

“With a Chinese Communist Party determined to overtake us by 2030,” OpenAI wrote Thursday to the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, “the Trump administration’s new action plan can ensure that American-led A.I. built on democratic principles can prevail over CCP-built, autocratic, authoritarian AI.”

Built on democratic principles? More like built on outright theft.

That’s why news organizations, including The Denver Post and The New York Times, have sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft over their breaking copyright law by vacuuming up millions of newspaper articles without permission or payment, constituting copyright infringement on a colossal scale.

Now OpenAI comes back with the absurd argument that this was somehow necessary for national security.

In their letter, Sam Altman’s crew added a whole lot of obfuscating, self-serving blather about “scaling human ingenuity” and “freedom of learning and knowledge” while describing the innovations of ChatGPT as part of some great and glorious trajectory from domesticated horses to steam power to electricity to printing presses and the internet.

You see the irony there? Printing presses.

For generations, those presses sent out the work of America’s reporters, the fruits of capital invested, and hard labor performed, in city halls and crime scenes and throughout all the communities they served.  They amplified and distributed a news organization’s work, as now does the internet.

They didn’t steal the work of someone else and then pass it off as their own.

Gutting generations of copyright protections for the benefit of AI bots would have a chilling effect not just on news organizations but on all creative content creators, from novelists to playwrights to poets. That iron-clad commitment to protecting the rights of owners of work they themselves created is precisely what distinguishes the United States from communist China, not the reverse.

This country has dominated the world of news and information by respecting not just the precious freedom of the press but also its right to protect its work. Had it not done so, there would have been no economic base on which to build the kinds of news organizations that can, and still do, keep a check on the government. Heck, there would have been no economic basis to build anything creative whatsoever.

Securing permission from, and fairly compensating, those publishers who created this great foundation of knowledge is the right, just and American thing to do.

The government should reject these self-serving proposals and protect the work of artists, authors, photographers, journalists and all other creators and copyright holders who have been the victims of these companies.

This editorial, written by the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board, is being published in more than 60 daily newspapers throughout the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing networks.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The hole Colorado lawmakers are trying to fill is about $1 billion and isn’t the result of reductions in revenue – the state’s economy has been strong the last four years – but rather is due to rising costs, new programs and the somewhat arbitrary cap on state spending imposed by voters in 1992.

Our general philosophy to plugging this hole is that cuts have got to be across the board — no department should be sacrosanct so that everyone faces a little pain.

This brings us to the tricky situation with education funding.

Collectively, school districts will see state funding increase from $9.8 billion this year to around $10 billion next year under two competing proposals to balance the budget.

That $200 million increase, however, represents a cut from anticipated revenue under a bipartisan and long-overdue deal reached in 2024 to update and improve the school funding formula. School districts are distraught that the deal they reached with the state is now being broken just as the funding formula is implemented for the first time.

“We had a deal last year that, for a whole host of reasons and probably others that I don’t understand, is not going to be honored,” Scott Smith, CFO of Cherry Creek Public Schools, said during a public meeting about the cuts that was covered by The Colorado Sun. “Why should we trust that any deal we reach now will be honored in the future?”

Smith summed up the anger and frustrations from school district officials nicely. Colorado has struggled for years to fix its broken funding formula precisely because changing the formula would create winners, districts that received more money under the change, and losers, districts that would face cuts.

The compromise used additional state money – about $500 million over several years of implementation — to backfill the changes and hold schools harmless from reductions they would have faced under the new formula. In other words, there would be winners, and everyone else would tie.

Two competing budget proposals to balance the budget would cut how much schools get from that $500 million pot next year. Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie proposed funding 10% of the promised increase and Gov. Jared Polis proposed funding 18%.

Polis’ 18% proposal would actually be the larger cut, however, as it also reduces funding to schools with declining enrollment by doing away with a 5-year-average of student attendance that gets plugged into the finance formula and instead basing the formal on every year’s actual hard-number attendance count. McCluskie’s 10% proposal would reduce the average to a 4-year time period.

We agree that the money should go where students are, but we also recognize that students move around frequently during a school year and many are sick or absent on count days. Some averaging over time is essential to protect schools from arbitrary cuts for students they are serving. Lawmakers might have to break their deal with school leaders, but at least they can listen to superintendents about how best to make cuts.

A two- or three-year average of student population counts for the funding formula with about 10% funding level would strike the right balance between cutting state funds as needed but not harming districts with more erratic budgeting.

Every department should share in the budget cuts needed to put the state back on a sustainable spending path. That includes K-12 education but also higher education, Medicaid, law enforcement, human services and more.

These cuts will hopefully remain temporary if the economy remains strong. We have concerns, however, that federal cuts to spending could hit Colorado hard. We urge lawmakers to consider long-term solutions.

McCluskie suggested last month that a long-term solution to Colorado’s budget woes could be asking voters to increase the amount of revenue the state can spend every year, thus reducing the amount Coloradans get every year in TABOR tax refunds.

If Democrats want Coloradans to consider letting the state keep more of their tax dollars, then the first good-faith step is to stop eroding our TABOR refunds with tax expenditures for pet projects like the proposed tax credit for Sundance Film Festival. The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights does not consider tax expenditures — credits and deductions that reduce the amount of tax someone owes — as spending.

Polis’ budget suggests phasing out about $83 million in tax credits over time, which is the direction we’d like to see the General Assembly go rather than continuing to add tax expenditures during tough fiscal times. Sadly, the savings realized by eliminating tax credits can’t be used to fill the K-12 education funding gap, instead it will go out in TABOR refund checks, but eliminating ineffective and sometimes rediculous tax credits is the right thing to do.

If McCluskie is serious about asking voters to forego refunds in support of K-12 spending, she’s got to start by protecting the refunds from more raiding tax expenditures this legislative session.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Luna said during the congressional hearing on sanctuary cities that she wasn’t trying to “bully” the mayors, but her actions will give every person in this country pause before they offer charity and care for the downtrodden and poor with questionable legal immigration status.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called in the mayors of Denver, Boston, Chicago and New York to answer questions about sanctuary policies intended to prevent local law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement.

The more than five-hour-long hearing highlighted all the absurdities of America’s broken immigration system from threatening to prosecute mayors who kept people from freezing to death to forcing ICE agents to chase someone just released from jail around a parking lot when local officers could have just handed the individual over.

Luna wants to criminalize the care Denver provided to refugees from Venezuela and immigrants from other parts of Central and South America by defining it as “harboring.”

The law – Title 8 Section 1324 – defines harboring as someone who knowingly “conceals harbors or shields from detection” someone who is in the U.S. in violation of immigration law.

The intent of that law is not to prevent people such as Denver Mayor Mike Johnston from opening cold-weather shelters for those who arrived in the city beginning in the winter of 2022. Furthermore, Johnston’s administration believed so strongly that the immigrants it assisted came here legally after making contact with border patrol, it helped thousands of them file for asylum and get legal work permits.

Did some of those who stayed in shelters cross the southern border with no intent of claiming asylum? Of course, and tragically, some of those individuals went on to commit crimes as members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But Denver did not knowingly shelter those individuals. The city merely offered life-saving space on the floors of recreation centers to anyone who was in need. Later, city officials helped people find apartments or other short-term housing solutions. The intent of finding people housing was never to shield them from deportation. The immigrant camps that were forming were unsafe and unsanitary and were harming our communities.

Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat from New Mexico, summed up Luna’s accusations well. “It’s total bull(expletive),” she said after thanking the mayors for their service.

Amid all the silly theater on display at Wednesday’s congressional hearing on sanctuary cities, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, brought substance and nuance to the conversation, which was supposed to focus on municipal policies around deportation and detention.

Jordan asked Denver Mayor Mike Johnston about an incident a few days ago when Denver Sheriff’s deputies released Abraham Gonzalez, who had been in jail for almost a year, to immigration officials waiting in the parking lot for him. Jordan wanted to know why Denver didn’t just hand the criminal – arrested in Denver for aggravated assault – directly over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, given that ICE had a lawful warrant.

According to a news release from city officials, Gonzalez ran from the ICE agents, forcing them to wrestle him to the ground. Jordan said one agent was assaulted, and one deployed a Taser.

Jordan wanted to know why ICE officers couldn’t have just entered the jail to get Gonzalez in a safe and secure transfer.

“That’s how stupid your policy is,” Jordan said.

He has a point.

Johnston said he has reached out to ICE to see if there is a better way to hand over people for whom ICE has a lawful detainer or deportation order.

This is the true debate about sanctuary cities. The question is to what degree city and state officials should assist federal officers in enforcing immigration laws.

Some of the answers to these questions are easy – police officers should not be asking residents if they are U.S. citizens as part of their work to keep Coloradans safe. Police officers have a hard enough job enforcing Colorado’s criminal statute without also having to be up-to-date with what immigrants from what countries who arrived on what dates have been granted Temporary Protected Status. Also, Denver should allow ICE agents into their facilities when handing over a person for deportation to avoid a wild chase through the parking lot where someone could get hurt.

But some sticky questions remain. Should Denver hold suspects past their release date based on an ICE request that isn’t backed by a warrant or lawful deportation order? Some judges have ruled that is unconstitutional.

Sanctuary cities – like Denver, Chicago, Boston and New York – have said they will not hold individuals for ICE beyond the court-ordered release date. The name “sanctuary” is a misnomer. Police and sheriffs aren’t offering illegal immigrants sanctuary from federal law enforcement, but they are refusing to violate the rights of individuals. Once ICE has a lawful order to deport or detain someone, then Johnston made it clear Denver officials will notify ICE of the date and time of release and have done so successfully more than 1,200 times since he was in office.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin, asked the mayors testifying whether they supported the U.S. having and enforcing immigration laws and whether everyone who violates those immigration laws should be deported.

Johnston didn’t answer the question, but he should have.

U.S. immigration law has been failing for so long as to have been rendered unenforceable. Deporting the more than 10 million individuals whose only crime is a misdemeanor immigration offense would tear apart families and upend peaceful communities.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu gave a succinct answer: “I do not support mass deportations.”

Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight, quickly responded: “I don’t think anyone is calling for mass deportations.”

President Donald Trump promised Americans the night before the hearings that he is requesting funding from Congress to “complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

That threat is why Colorado and Johnston are right to keep an arms-length distance between ICE operations and city and state law enforcement efforts. Trump may have the power to round up and deport people who have lived in America for decades and contributed to our communities with no legal problems other than their immigration violations, but Coloradans don’t have to support him.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

We urge caution as the White House rapidly cuts jobs and programs, but such prudence likely must come from Congress. After decades of being unable to cut the deficit and begin paying down the debt, now is the moment for Congress to rise to the occasion and replace the sledgehammer being wielded by the White House with something more artful, such as a ball pein.

U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper – two long-time fiscal moderates with bipartisan credentials — should lead a charge. The likelihood of two Democrats succeeding when Republicans have the House and Senate is low, but it’s better than the alternative of crying about Elon Musk being unelected.

Shutting down the U.S. government in protest of the cuts, will only make matters worse for federal employees and anyone in need of services from the U.S. government. Democrats who agree that the U.S. can’t sustain this level of spending and Republicans with concerns about the president’s approach can unite around legislation that begins the slow retraction of money from the U.S. economy.

Bold, meaningful cuts are needed. But indiscriminate slashing that harms more Americans than it helps is a blatantly cruel and vengeful act by the Trump administration. Congress, which holds the purse strings, is at fault for not wielding its power.

There are reasons to worry that President Donald Trump’s rescission plans could hit Colorado hard in the coming months. There are about 57,000 federal workers in Colorado. Let’s assume the state’s strong job market could easily absorb 10% to 15% of those employees losing their jobs as long as things remain stable in other parts of our economy. Gov. Jared Polis issued a press release of support for laid-off workers, outlining how they could file for the state’s unemployment insurance to cover some of their lost wages while they look for another job. He also noted that the state has 60,000 job openings at the moment.

That won’t work, however, if federal funding to states is also drastically slashed and the state finds itself cutting jobs and freezing hiring as well, or if tariffs impact businesses in the private sector and cause layoffs.

Far less easy to absorb will be the commercial real estate that could be vacated. The Denver Post reported last week that the federal government rents 4.1 million square feet of commercial real estate in this state and that 90% of that is in Denver, Larimer, Jefferson, Arapahoe, El Paso, Boulder and Adams counties.

Terminated leases will add empty commercial real estate space to a market already struggling to rebound from the change to work from home.

Our military bases employ thousands of civilians alongside thousands of enlisted members. Colorado is also home to significant military contractors, meaning cuts to the Department of Defense spending are likely to ripple through our private sector as well.

Colorado is also home to a base of scientists who work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden and the Geologic Hazards Science Center in Golden.

Bennet and Hickenlooper should lead Colorado’s House members in a thoughtful response to the cuts. If Democrats don’t come forward with their own proposal for eliminating the deficit over time, then Republicans will only be emboldened to continue with this executive branch power-grab.

For example, Congress can easily push back on the 7,000 Internal Revenue Service employees laid off last Thursday across the nation. Cutting staff from the IRS likely will not save money as the IRS is one department that largely pays its own way by recovering unpaid taxes from people who either accidentally or intentionally underpay. If layoffs aren’t going to actually net the federal government money, there is no way to justify them.

Congress could pass legislation requiring the White House to restore the IRS to full funding and the full employment levels necessary to enforce our tax laws. Whether or not Republicans would ever agree to such a pushback on policy from the White House is another question. The GOP has also spent the last 10 years unfairly vilifying IRS employees.

Americans expect Congress to exercise its constitutional duty to check the powers of the White House. The last time Congress attempted to put its foot down on Trump’s actions was over funding for the border wall, and in a show of weakness, lawmakers backed down.

America didn’t rack up $36 trillion in debt in a year, and we shouldn’t try to pay it all off in a single president’s administration. Eliminating the $1.83 trillion deficit (which has only grown since last fiscal year) may not even be possible without tax increases. Trump has said he plans to use tariffs to that effect, which will only work if Americans are still spending money on discretionary goods.

We need a long-term plan to stabilize our finances without tanking our economy. Colorado’s elected leaders need to step up now with a plan of their own that pushes back on this reckless approach to cutting spending.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.