Re: “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” July 12 editorial

Your recent piece on Tina Peters read less like measured journalism and more like a coordinated effort to smear a county clerk who dared question the machinery of elections — while a 70-year-old lady spent over 600 days in jail.

It began with the April 6, 2021, Mesa County municipal election. Before official results were tallied at 7 p.m., a candidate received an eerily precise victory call from her campaign manager. Not psychic hotline stuff — just enough to raise eyebrows for the clerk responsible for certifying the results. Tina Peters started asking questions. Suspicion isn’t a crime when your job is ensuring elections are verifiably trustworthy.

She was preserving federal records per her oath (Supremacy Clause). Courts rejected full immunity, but the state-federal tension remains. In 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her convictions but threw out the sentence, ruling the judge improperly punished her protected speech. A 9-0 Supreme Court precedent backs this: You can’t crank up penalties simply because someone won’t stop talking. Notably, she was never charged with breaching or destroying records. She was fulfilling preservation duties during the “Trusted Build” update.

Elections thrive on verifiable trust. Questioning the process — especially when oddities appear —shouldn’t turn someone into Public Enemy #1. The Denver Post can keep its narrative, but courts and federal complaints keep revealing real tensions worth honest debate. With transparency and scrutiny, we can strengthen trust in our elections moving forward. Brighter chapters are possible.

Brad Hackman, Lakewood

So Trump declares that mail-in ballots and voting machines are rigged so Democrats can win elections. Why hasn’t anyone confronted Trump that he doesn’t declare the same thing when Republicans win, including himself?!  And do the MAGA people not see the irony in that?!  I wonder if Tina Peters can look herself in the mirror without seeing her nose grow while continuing these lies and atrocities.

Marcia Murphy, Centennial

This is in response to the lengthy, excellent editorial on the almost completely flawless way that CO runs its election. It was very well explained.

But I am still confused as to why everyone seems to ignore the fact that in Mesa County, President Trump won 68% of the vote. How is that not critical to proving that Tina Peters is nothing but a scam artist. What was she looking for? How could that percentage be nothing but nearly total victory for Trump when we now call a 15-point victory a near landslide? She wanted to be MAGA royalty and thanks to our governor, she has now achieved it.

Judith Pettibone, Denver

The editorials published by The Post, while reliably expressing an opinion left of center, can also on occasion, reflect a strategic pragmatism.

Sunday’s offering was no such occasion.

The bloated-font headline, “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” reeks of the leering hyperbolic headlines of social media that rarely deliver on their promise but scream anyway. Using the dense and over-the-top Trump post on his Truth Social (that’s so unlike him), re: rigged elections as a jumping-off point, The Post makes an enormous leap of faith in the headline that he declared “democracy dead”, but he did no such thing.

He didn’t then, and as far as a Google search goes, he never has. What he did was chum for outrage by saying voting machines were rigged, and you bit and delivered, big time. His attempts to undermine public confidence in elections are tired and ineffective, even to supporters like myself.

Our democracy will survive, even continue to thrive, despite who occupies the White House.

If, as you asserted, you are “exhausted” with countering these stale and benign accusations, here’s a virtuous piece of advice: stop doing that. And while you’re at it, stop mimicking the trolling websites on social media with desperate headline-hype to attract clicks. It’s beneath you.

Jon Pitt, Golden

It¶¶Òőap confusing. Just last month, President Trump and many of his media supporters made (unfounded) claims of fraud and predicted the imminent collapse of the electoral system as vote counting in California stretched to days after primary Election Day and his preferred candidate for Los Angeles for mayor fell short of the final ballot. This month, I haven’t heard a peep about the fallibility of vote counting as the GOP primary election stretched to nine days and the more establishment gubernatorial candidate lost her early lead to an outsider. One might infer there was an ulterior motive in claiming fraud in the first place.

Randy Livingston, Denver

Rampant fraud did plague Colorado’s primary election, just not how Trump and Tina Peters might claim. Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office failed to get its updated election instructions posted clearly on all county election office websites. Consequently, an estimated 75% of voters were not officially informed, in a timely and non-partisan way, how to obtain and vote a Unity Party ballot. Only Republican or Democratic ballots and their instructions were automatically mailed to voters in the June primary.

Additionally, news media such as KUNC, KUSA, and the Colorado Sun, excluded Unity Party candidates from forums or voter guides where “all candidates for the same office” were required to be invited. That had the “effect of favoring
a group of candidates”, namely Democrats and Republicans, in violation of IRS or FCC regulations. So, the election was not “free and fair.” Attorney General Phil Weiser is responsible for enforcing rules to ensure “fair” elections, but he and Marx benefited from an “unfair” election.

Had voters been properly informed, the “fair” election results might have favored Kirkmeyer. That speculation is unknowable. However, claims of election fraud due to misrepresentation or omission of critical acts are easily knowable and provable. They’re neither “outlandish claims” nor “isolated incidents”.

Should Weiser and Griswold be disqualified? Should the election be nullified and run again – legally and fairly? Do violating news outlets need to lose their tax-exempt status or FCC licenses? Colorado’s “gold standard” election integrity is at stake. The primary election needs an unbiased investigation and accountability.

Jeff Peckman, Englewood

Time to re-evaluate the wolf reintroduction

Re: “On the front lines,” July 12 news story

Having read many articles regarding the wolf reintroduction program in Colorado, I am wondering if this program is producing any positive results. It seems that millions of dollars are being spent on hiring 18 range riders, compensating ranchers and farmers for their loss of livestock and herding dogs, as well as the cost of obtaining and tracking wolves.

Now, after so many years since the initial reintroduction program began, have we as taxpayers and interested parties gained any real advantages from this program? It seems to me that the problems encountered have overwhelmed any potential advantages. Also, why doesn’t Colorado Parks and Wildlife conduct a study to evaluate this program? All concerned, taxpayers, supporters, opponents and government officials need to know if this program is worth all the effort that has been put into it.

James Sebben, Minturn

I read with dismay the numerous articles commenting on the hardship ranchers must endure because of the introduction of wolves to Colorado. The default position in all of these articles is that ranchers have more rights than other people, in that they must be compensated for losses due to predation.

It would be useful to augment this point of view by exploring the premise that cattle ranching is a good thing and must be protected. To me, it is the same as dog meat farming, at one time prevalent in Asian countries.  There is fundamentally no difference between farming dogs for meat and raising cattle.  The only cultural difference is that Western cultures revere dogs but consider cattle a meal in waiting.

Just as dog meat farmers are abandoning their former way of making a living and developing new livelihoods, the same can happen to cattle ranchers.  I find their practices equally abhorrent and unworthy of protection.

Claire Moulden, Thornton

No to gerrymandering, but Colorado is a long way from competitive districts

Re: “Colorado Supreme Court just saved us the shame of making a mistake the size of Texas or California,” July 12 opinion column

I agree with Krista Kafer when she says in her Sunday op-ed that Coloradans should leave the process of redistricting to the newly created Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission.

But I don’t agree that their actions thus far have been true to their mission. The wording is clear enough. “The 12-member bipartisan commission is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent.” But then, as Krista states, “The Commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.” That¶¶Òőap right. One competitive district. How is that “maximizing the number of competitive districts?

Colorado’s congressional districts are not competitive. They generally still favor candidates from one party over another. Just look at the data from the 2024 election. While Gabe Evans, a Republican, won Congressional District 8 by just about 2,500 votes and Jeff Hurd, also a Republican, won Congressional District 3 by just about 19,800 votes, the rest of our districts clearly favored one party over another.

Jeff Crank, a Republican, won Congressional District 5 by 50,000 votes. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, won District 4 by 52,000 votes. Brittany Petterson, a Democrat, won District 7 by 60,000 votes. Jason Crow, a Democrat, won District 6 by 70,000 votes. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, won District 2 by 164,000 votes. And the venerable Diana DeGette, a Democrat, won District 1 by 190,000 votes!

Based on the data, the State of Colorado cannot say that it¶¶Òőap done a good job of making our congressional elections more competitive because they have not. There is a lot more work to do.

Mike Dubrovich, Parker

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The Aurora hospital and Denver Health stopped prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to people under 19 in January, following a federal threat to cut Medicare and Medicaid payments to any hospital that provided gender-affirming care to minors.

Families of transgender patients sued, alleging that Children’s was discriminating based on gender identity. A Denver court originally ruled in the hospital’s favor, but the Colorado Supreme Court reversed that decision, ordering Children’s to restart gender-affirming care.

The hospital reported in June that it had complied, but that its providers had independently decided not to offer that type of care because of the legal risk.

The plaintiffs made a motion to hold the hospital in contempt, arguing that Children’s decision to post a letter stating its providers wouldn’t offer that service effectively continued to deny care, and that the hospital is responsible if its providers discriminate based on gender identity. They asked the court to impose a $50,000 daily fine until the hospital starts offering gender-affirming care again.

Children’s countered with a filing stating that it had followed the court’s order by restoring gender-affirming care to its “scope of services” that providers could offer, and that it can’t force doctors to write certain prescriptions for patients. A Denver District Court judge will bring the parties in on Monday to schedule a future hearing on the contempt allegations and to decide who should testify.

The Trump administration has taken multiple steps to punish providers of gender-affirming care, including issuing subpoenas for patients’ and doctors’ records; forbidding Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming care for minors; and threatening to withhold payments for all types of care from facilities that don’t halt their gender-affirming programs, based on a declaration from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that such care is “neither safe nor effective.”

The threat of that nuclear option may no longer be in play. , that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wouldn’t move forward with a formal rule to withhold Medicare and Medicaid payments from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth. It could, however, propose a similar rule at some future point.

, HHS disputed the story, saying it continued to review public comments and would issue a rule along those lines.

Paula Greisen, who represented the family that sued Children’s, said she hoped the report reflects a federal decision that care “should not be weaponized,” but the hospital hasn’t changed its conduct as threats diminish.

“It is becoming clear that the Children’s Hospital’s board of directors was simply using these now-withdrawn threats as a thinly veiled excuse to cease providing this necessary care to thousands of children,” she said in a statement.

Children’s said that the plaintiffs were attempting to force it to stop granting admitting privileges to physicians who refused to offer gender-affirming care, which would ultimately harm patients.

“Revoking the medical staff membership of these physicians would not restore access to medical gender-affirming care. Instead, it would further limit access to the broader scope of gender-affirming services these same providers offer every day, including care that supports the mental health, well-being and safety of gender-diverse patients,” the hospital said in a statement.

A federal court placed the Kennedy declaration on hold, and it no longer appears on HHS’s website. The rule preventing Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming care for minors appears on track to take effect, which would force states to decide whether to pay for it themselves — assuming it survives any legal challenges.

The U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed Children’s for patient records, though a magistrate judge recommended throwing the request out.

In 2025, Children’s treated 257 kids with puberty blockers and 549 with hormone therapy for gender dysphoria, which is distress caused by a mismatch between someone’s sense of gender and how the world sees them. Children’s does not perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors.

Colorado’s current congressional district map was drawn up by the Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission and approved by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2021. The 12-member bipartisan commission, created in 2018 by a majority (71%) of Colorado voters, is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent. The commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.

Responding to President Donald Trump’s putsch, I mean push, to eradicate opponents’ representation in Congress, Colorado Democrats proposed ballot initiatives for November that would circumvent the bipartisan commission, initiate mid-decade redistricting, and approve gerrymandered maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections that would eradicate all but one Republican-majority district. Republicans counterpunched by proposing initiatives to favor their party in all but three districts.

In each case, sidestepping the voter-approved commission would require multiple actions. Since the Colorado Constitution forbids piling multiple subjects into a ballot initiative, advocates broke the steps into different proposals and added language stating each must pass for all to take effect. So while they appeared to be separate single-subject initiatives, they acted as a single multi-subject proposal. The Supreme Court, however, saw through this clever ruse and ruled all five proposals violated the state constitution’s single subject rule.

Supreme courts in Utah and Virginia have done likewise by abrogating attempts by legislators to gerrymander maps to gain seats for their respective parties. But pro-democracy Republican state lawmakers in Indiana, Kansas, and South Carolina didn’t need the courts to do the right thing, they joined Democratic lawmakers and stopped efforts by Republican colleagues to eradicate the small number of Democratic congressional seats in those states.

Since then, Trump has retaliated against the Indiana senators who opposed gerrymandering by recruiting opponents to run against them in the primary. Five of these principled Republican senators lost to MAGA challengers.

Of course, gerrymandering is not new. The term “gerrymandering” goes back to 1812, but the pernicious practice has been around since representatives discovered they didn’t need good ideas and good character to win if they could manipulate district boundary lines.

Back in the 2021-2022 round of redistricting, long before Trump’s recent gerrymander push, New Mexico, Illinois, Oklahoma and other states gerrymandered their maps to eliminate districts winnable by the minority party.

Last year, the unethical practice gained steam when Republicans realized Trump’s rising unpopularity could cost them control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Since then, eight Republican-majority states and one Democratic-majority state have succeeded in redrawing district lines in the majority’s favor.

Perhaps these politicians sleep at night by telling themselves that the ends justify the means. They didn’t start the fight; the other party did. They didn’t really disenfranchise their fellow Americans, who can still vote for a losing candidate and get an “I voted” sticker. Might makes right, doesn’t it?

To paraphrase my hero former Rep. Liz Cheney, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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For now, knock Colorado out of the nationwide partisan redistricting wars kicked off by President Donald Trump as Republican- and Democratic-led states have jockeyed for an advantage by adopting new congressional maps.

The state Supreme Court concluded that the ballot measures, which would’ve temporary re-drawn maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections, violated the state’s requirement that ballot proposals encompass only a single subject. Three of the rejected ballot measures were backed by Democrats seeking to grow their congressional power in the state, while two more were backed by conservatives with similar aims for Republican candidates.

“Changing long-settled law by modifying the timing, frequency, criteria, and entity responsible for congressional redistricting represents a significant change beyond the proponents’ stated central purposes (of) … congressional redistricting by adopting a new temporary map,” Chief Justice Monica MĂĄrquez wrote in one of the opinions.

The single-subject requirement is intended to prevent voter confusion and “log-rolling,” meaning when a voter supports one part of a complex ballot initiative but not another.

In two opinions, the justices wrote that the various measures raised log-rolling concerns because they generally would’ve changed how maps are drawn while also instituting new maps in 2028 and 2030, in ways favorable to either Democrats or Republicans. The justices argued that a voter might want to change how districts are drawn overall but may not support the partisan map proposals in the upcoming elections, or vice versa.

In her opinion rejecting two of the ballot measures, MĂĄrquez wrote that each proposal “represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.” The other opinion was authored by Justice Richard L. Gabriel.

The rulings were welcomed by conservative groups, while the campaign that filed the Democratic ballot measures called the outcome “a legal setback over a technicality.”

Democrats here had initially sought to redraw the state’s maps ahead of the 2028 election — the soonest new boundaries could take effect here — which prompted retaliatory proposals from Republicans. But given Colorado’s distinctly Democratic voter base, the liberal push was likely to find more fertile ground, had one of the Democrats’ measures reached the ballot box.

Democrats and Republicans currently have a 4-4 split in representation in Colorado’s U.S. House districts, with one of those considered a swing district. Colorado’s congressional and state legislative districts are drawn by independent redistricting commissions, which were created through separate ballot measures and first produced maps in 2022, after the 2020 census.

The rulings bring, at least for now, a sputtering end to one front in the broader redistricting wars, which started with a GOP-friendly rewrite in Texas and has led several other states to overhaul their congressional maps in the past year.

Colorado’s role in that conflict was always more subordinate: Under the proposals rejected Monday, new maps would’ve been temporary and would not have played a part in the coming November election.

Still, had it succeeded, the redistricting push in Colorado would’ve allowed Democrats to pick up as many as three seats and expand national Democrats’ ability to respond to GOP gerrymandering elsewhere.

Instead, in the absence of new ballot measures, the current congressional boundaries will be in effect until the commission undertakes the next regular round of redistricting, after the 2030 census.

The court’s decisions, then, represent a win for conservatives in Colorado, who had sought to protect both the state’s independent redistricting process and the Republican-leaning congressional seats that would’ve been imperiled by Democrat-friendly revisions.

In a statement, the campaign backing the Democratic proposals, Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, said the justices “thwarted” Colorado’s effort to push back against President Donald Trump.

“The success of this partisan attempt to sideline Coloradans from responding to Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting scheme is disappointing,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the campaign. “While Trump and his MAGA allies regularly sidestep the law and ignore voters, efforts to respond have once again been dealt a legal setback over a technicality.”

Shad Murib, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a statement that the ruling was “a loss for America but a win for Republicans backing Donald Trump’s efforts to rig congressional elections.” He said the court had “denied voters the chance to have their say” and had “emboldened MAGA politicians in other states.”

Republicans, meanwhile, declared victory.

Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said the court had “accurately decided that political games cannot be played with Colorado’s Congressional maps.”

“The court¶¶Òőap decision is a win for fairness and a blow to the Democrats’ national attempts to take away the voice of citizens who want to choose their own representation,” Fields wrote.

Advance Colorado still has an out for signature collection that would block 2028 redistricting. If passed in November, the proposed constitutional amendment would need to be repealed if Democrats in the future wanted to create new maps early, Fields said. He said Advance was still “likely” to run that proposal.

Scott Gessler, a former secretary of state whose law firm filed the Republican measures, wrote that the court “soundly rejected the Democratic efforts to manipulate the ballot process to overturn Colorado’s nonpartisan redistricting process.”

Three of at issue in Monday’s rulings were tangled together. Two of them, Initiatives 241 and 242, would’ve replaced the existing redistricting process and implemented new, temporary maps for 2028 and 2030, respectively.

Each would have taken effect only if the other passed. Republicans, in response, filed Initiative 328. It, too, would’ve passed only had Initiative 241 been approved. The measure would’ve also implemented new maps, albeit not the Democratic-friendly ones proposed by 242.

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field had already raised $2.3 million and had spent more than $2 million of it, in large part to gather signatures for the ballot. Much of that money came from the Fairness Project, which has backed liberal ballot measures elsewhere, and American Opportunity Action, a relatively new, Democrat-aligned dark-money outfit.

The campaign also received $150,000 from a political action committee tied to the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House.

The City Council drafted the proposal in light of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that prohibits cities from handing down sentences that are harsher than the state’s penalties for the same offense. But , brought by the council’s three most progressive lawmakers, goes beyond what the ruling mandates by also changing the sentences for low-level, municipal-only crimes in an effort to decriminalize what they call “crimes of poverty.”

“When we just put people on a conveyor belt through the jail because they are poor, because they are unhoused, because they are committing crimes of desperation, that does not solve those issues. It, in fact, makes them worse — and it is a massive waste of public resources,” said Councilwoman Sarah Parady, one of the bill’s sponsors, during the first full council vote last week.

that don’t have a counterpart in state law include the failure to leash a dog, violating curfew, smoking indoors, disturbances of the peace and littering. The proposed changes would reduce them to a maximum penalty of 10 days in jail and a fine of $300, down from the 300 days in jail or $999 fine that are the current maximums for most municipal crimes.

The proposal has gone through more than a dozen iterations as the sponsors have worked with Mayor Mike Johnston’s office to find compromises over how to reduce some of those sentences without risking public safety.

In a letter to the council, Johnston said he was no longer opposed to the legislation after the most recent round of changes.

“As a result of the dialogue between my office and the ordinance’s sponsors, we were able to resolve every single concern we had with the legislation,” Johnston wrote in the June 24 letter.

His administration called out specific municipal-only crimes that officials prioritized for keeping a more severe sentence, including some that often intersect with domestic violence, like threats to property and flourishing a weapon.

Other local crimes, such as indecent exposure and wrongs to minors, will also remain in a higher sentencing tier.

What the proposed changes would do

The proposed ordinance — which is set to have its final vote Monday unless a majority of the council votes to postpone it — would lay out a new 5-tiered sentencing structure and align the city’s maximum punishments with state statutes for similar offenses.

The new municipal sentencing scheme would break down offenses in five buckets:

• Class 1, which deals with the most serious offenses, such as assault or domestic violence, would stay the same. Those penalties cannot exceed 364 days in jail and a $999 fine.
• Class 2 would now equate to a Class 1 misdemeanor offense under state law. These crimes — such as threats, trespassing and harassment — would be punishable by up to 300 days in jail and a $999 fine.
• Class 3, which includes prostitution, resisting arrest and shoplifting, would line up with Class 2 misdemeanor offenses under state law. People convicted under this tier would face up to 120 days in jail and as much as $750 in fines.
• Class 4 would encompass crimes considered petty offenses under state law, such as public urination, panhandling and public indecency. They would be punishable by up to 10 days in jail and not more than a $300 fine.
• Class 5 would concern civil infractions under state law and could not carry jail time.

The ordinance also would create a commission to make recommendations for appropriate penalties for municipal-only crimes. The committee would include about 20 people and would submit a written report by next March.

It would include representatives of the mayor, the city attorney, the municipal public defender, the Denver Police Department, a business improvement district, and advocates for immigrants and racial justice reform, among others.

How Denver got here

The court-mandated changes have been a long time coming. In 2021, on the heels of nationwide protests for racial justice, that significantly lowered the potential penalties for misdemeanor and petty offenses in Colorado’s state courts.

The changes made many low-level crimes, like petty theft, shoplifting and trespassing, punishable by a maximum of 10 days in jail.

In his letter to the council, Johnston said he disagreed with the state’s decision to reduce penalties for many of those crimes, saying he believed the change would have a “negative impact on public safety.”

But those reforms didn’t impact municipal courts, which are not part of the state judicial system. As a result, someone charged in municipal court faced the possibility of exponentially more jail time than an individual charged with the same offense in state court.

In 2023, Denver councilmembers and stakeholders began working to address the sentence disparities. Then, in December, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that it¶¶Òőap unconstitutional for a city to exceed state sentencing caps for like crimes.

The ruling forced cities around Colorado to reexamine their codes, judges to alter their advisements and prosecutors to change their plea deals.

“The majority of this, it¶¶Òőap already happening,” Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, one of the bill’s sponsors, said of what’s proposed. “We’re not making any new crimes, we’re not taking any crimes away. People will still be accountable.”

The council sponsors initially wanted to classify all municipal offenses that don’t have a state counterpart as Class 4 violations — meaning judges could impose a maximum of only 10 days in jail. They pointed to data showing that the vast majority of people charged in Denver’s municipal court — at least 75% — are at or below the federal poverty level.

About 12,000 municipal-only offenses are prosecuted each year, and between September 2023 and September 2025, 600 people were sentenced to more than 10 days in jail for municipal-only offenses, according to the sponsors’ presentation.

Johnston’s administration and several council members opposed that change, saying it would hinder the city’s ability to enforce fire and licensing codes for things like landlord regulations.

In response to the pushback, the sponsors decided to leave the majority of the city’s code at the general penalty (300 days in jail and a $999 fine).

Tensions around changes

The council conversations around the ordinance have been exceptionally tense, with council members losing decorum in some meetings as emotions have run hot. The council committee chambers overflowed during an April meeting when members of the public had a chance to weigh in on the changes.

Council members Darrell Watson, Amanda Sawyer and Kevin Flynn have led opposition to the bill. Council members Chris Hinds and Flor Alvidrez also voiced concerns throughout the process.

“If we make a mistake and pass something that has a dramatic effect on victims of crime 
 we can make whatever changes we need,” Watson said during the initial council vote. “But victims of crime, for the decisions we make tonight and next week, do not have a do-over.”

During last week’s discussion, Watson pressed the sponsors on their motivations for earlier versions of the bill, even as they amended away some of the elements he opposed.

Council members, including the President Amanda Sandoval, have lambasted Watson, who is the chair of the committee that first considered the bill, for using that position to hinder the bill’s passage.

In a 10-2 vote last week, Watson and Sawyer were the only members who voted no, with Flynn absent. Hinds, who represents the city’s urban core, voted yes but hinted he may not support the bill’s final passage.

“There is a concern from the community that the revitalization of downtown is fragile, and we don’t want to negatively impact the revitalization of downtown by eroding municipal-only offenses,” he said.

The council will take its final vote after another public hearing on the ordinance that’s set on its 5:30 p.m. meeting agenda.

Next month, the city will bid goodbye to a parcel at the northwest corner of East Arapahoe Road and South Olathe Street that’s owned by Regis Jesuit High School. It will revert to Arapahoe County’s oversight in a rarely used legal process in Colorado known as .

Before year’s end, the largely vacant property is expected to be absorbed into Aurora through an annexation request from the high school, boosting the size of Colorado’s third-largest city by the same 18 acres and change.

It’s unusual for a city in Denver’s expanding suburbs to willingly give up territory, and the proposal initially landed with a thud for a Centennial city councilman who’d lose part of his district.

“I never expected to shrink my city,” Councilman Don Sheehan said. “My first reaction to the proposal included words not suitable for print.”

It’s an understandable reaction from an elected leader in one of Colorado’s newer municipalities. Centennial , and has been on a steady growth trajectory over the last quarter-century. The city, with a population of nearly 110,000, covers just over 30 square miles south of Aurora and east of Littleton.

When the details of the jurisdictional shift were sorted out, however, Sheehan’s concerns about becoming a diminished city were allayed.

“In the end, the positives outweigh the negatives for all concerned,” he said.

The Centennial City Council approved the disconnection on June 16. It goes into effect in mid-July.

For Regis Jesuit High School, which initiated the disconnection process two years ago, it came down to a desire to consolidate its campus on South Lewiston Way fully into Aurora, where it opened 36 years ago.

But the school’s history . Founded by Italian Jesuits in 1877 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, the school soon made its way to northwest Denver, where it was located on the campus of Regis University. Both entities formally separated in 1979, and a decade later, the high school moved south to Aurora.

Regis Jesuit, which enrolls around 1,600 students, bought the 18-acre parcel in 2017 with plans for it to host multipurpose artificial turf fields, a fieldhouse, a retreat center and a 175-space parking lot. Regis Jesuit built seven tennis courts on the land three years ago.

Diana Rael, the vice chair of the private Catholic school’s board of trustees, said having the southern portion of the campus in a different city from the front office just a few hundred feet away is a recipe for confusion and aggravation.

From who provides water (Aurora Water charges a premium to provide water outside its service area) to which city’s land-use codes apply to who responds to 911 calls at the school, it all adds up to a bifurcated mess, Rael said.

“Being in two different cities for emergency services is very confusing,” she said. “Essentially, all of our utilities go through Aurora. It’s a melting pot of codes out there.”

Municipal disconnection is “extraordinarily rare” in Colorado, said Andy Peters, a land use attorney with Otten Johnson Robinson Neff and Ragonetti.

“The possibility of disconnection is typically used as leverage in a conversation about what a landowner could get from a city,” he said. “People rarely go through with it.”

Rare doesn’t mean never. Centennial itself has approved disconnections twice since the city’s inception — once in 2007 and once in 2013.

And two years ago, Greenwood Village disconnected a 5.78-acre parcel stranded from the rest of the city by Interstate 225, according to . The land was transferred to the jurisdiction of Arapahoe County. At the heart of that move was the city’s stated inability to meet adequate emergency response times to the property, where a developer planned to build homes.

Neil Marciniak, the economic development director for Centennial, said the city made sure to come away with an agreement with Regis Jesuit that looked out for its interests, too.

“We understand Regis’ desire to consolidate their campus in one jurisdiction,” he said. “And we fully expect Regis Jesuit to continue being a good neighbor to residents of our city.”

The disconnection agreement comes with a list of conditions designed to ensure that the property’s future absorption into Aurora doesn’t turn into a nightmare for residents of Centennial’s Cherry Creek East and Lazy Hills Ranchettes neighborhoods to the east.

“We wanted to make a crystal clear agreement about what land uses are allowed and what land uses are prohibited,” Marciniak said.

Regis Jesuit can’t build a stadium, a mortuary, a group homes or after-hours clubs on the 18 acres. It is also barred from placing a marijuana dispensary or a sexually oriented business on the property, the agreement states.

“That’s probably not something a private Catholic high school would be looking to do,” Rael said wryly.

There are more practical land use limits in the agreement. The height limit of any building would be 38 feet along the eastern edge of the parcel, with an exception for a 60-foot-tall fieldhouse on the west side.

“If there are buildings, they need to push them as far to the west of the property as possible,” Marciniak said.

Regis Jesuit’s facilities must screen its athletic operations from the nearby neighborhood with trees and landscaping. Access to the parcel will be restricted from Arapahoe and Olathe, forcing traffic to enter the school’s property from Lewiston Way in Aurora.

Those concessions helped sell the disconnection to Sheehan, the Centennial councilman. Because the high school is a nonprofit entity and isn’t taxed, it sends little revenue to the city. Yet Centennial has had to provide public safety services to the property, Sheehan said.

“From a fiscal standpoint, it’s a net positive to the city to not be serving this property any longer,” he said.

While losing 18 acres may look bad on paper for a city, Centennial has, on net, gained far more land than it has lost. In fact, the city was on a bit of an annexation tear a decade or so ago, inviting criticism from Arapahoe County residents that Centennial was engaged in a land grab.

Similar protests a decade and a half earlier were what led to Centennial’s incorporation in the first place. In the 1990s, residents in unincorporated Arapahoe County grew tired of Greenwood Village’s attempts to annex adjoining land to bolster that city’s tax base.

After a legal challenge that went , voters living inside the proposed boundaries of Centennial .

Once the new disconnection from Centennial is complete, there are just a few details to work out, as Regis Jesuit prepares to file a formal annexation application with Aurora. It can’t come soon enough for the school.

“We’re ready to submit tomorrow,” Rael said.

The Aurora hospital had stopped allowing providers to provide puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children in January after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding. The hospital does not perform gender-affirming surgeries.

Families of four children sued Children’s, and in May, the state Supreme Court ordered the hospital to resume offering gender-affirming care. Children’s now defines gender-affirming medication as within its scope of practice, meaning its providers can offer it — but none are doing so, as .

The doctors at Children’s are employees of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the hospital can’t force them to provide specific services, such as making a doctor opposed to abortion perform one, a senior official at Children’s said Tuesday. That official declined to speak on the record, citing the charged environment around gender-affirming care.

In this case, the doctors don’t object to the care, but are afraid the federal government will target them if they continue to provide it, the Children’s official said.

A has to individual providers of gender-affirming care in multiple states, and hospitals have come under legal pressure to fire doctors who prescribed it.

John McHugh, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Children’s, said the hospital was trying to “side-step” the Supreme Court’s order. Children’s wouldn’t allow providers to discriminate based on race or other characteristics, so it can’t permit them to deny care to transgender children, he said.

If Children’s doesn’t make a change, the plaintiffs could go back to Denver District Court and argue the hospital is in contempt, McHugh said. Kids covered by Medicaid have nowhere else to go for gender-affirming care, and the hospital’s attempt to make the doctors responsible could damage their trust and relationships, he said.

“It is, I think, devastating to our clients, to have fought this far
 and to have the hospital trying to play games with compliance and to try to throw their providers under the bus,” he said.

In 2025, Children’s treated 257 kids with puberty blockers and 549 with hormone therapy for gender dysphoria, which is distress caused by a mismatch between someone’s sense of gender and how the world sees them.

Children’s paused gender-affirming care following a declaration in December from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the care was neither safe nor effective.

The declaration had threatened to cut payments from Medicare and Medicaid to any hospital offering gender-affirming care for minors. About half of Children’s patients are covered by Medicaid, and if the federal government stopped paying, they wouldn’t be able to receive any type of care there, including cancer treatment and organ transplants.

Parents of transgender kids treated at Children’s sued, arguing that the hospital was discriminating on the basis of gender identity because it still allowed cisgender children to receive puberty blockers and hormone therapy for other conditions. The hospital said its decision wasn’t discriminatory, and that possible harm to Children’s and its entire patient population outweighed damage to the plaintiffs.

In May, the Colorado Supreme Court effectively ordered the hospital to resume gender-affirming care by sending it back to a lower court, with instructions for the original judge to issue the order.

Colorado and 18 other states sued to block enforcement of the Kennedy declaration, and an injunction currently . The Department of Human Services could appeal to a higher court, though.

Federal officials had also issued a and threatened to refer Children’s to the Office of the Inspector General for investigation.

A magistrate judge recommended throwing out the subpoena, but a federal district court judge still needs to make the final ruling. A social media post suggested the Office of the Inspector General could be investigating the hospital, though it wasn’t clear if it has pursued the issue.

The Trump administration has alleged that any bills to Medicaid for gender-affirming care should be considered “false claims” and that prescribing medications off-label for that care should be considered mislabeling drugs. Off-label prescribing refers to a doctor’s decision to prescribe a drug if they believe the drug is the best option, but the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved it for a specific condition and population. Much of Children’s prescribing is off-label because drugmakers don’t always invest in pediatric studies.

Other hospitals have faced legal jeopardy in connection with gender-affirming care.

In May, Texas Children’s Hospital settled with the state attorney general to revoke admitting privileges for five doctors who previously provided gender-affirming care, meaning they could no longer see patients in that hospital. It also paid about $10 million to settle allegations it had billed Medicaid incorrectly, such as by using a different code to avoid the scrutiny applied to gender-affirming care. The to settle similar allegations.

agreed to fund for people who received gender-affirming care but changed their minds, which studies suggest is a rare experience.

, , , University of Chicago Medicine, Rush University System for Health, Children’s National Hospital and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center all stopped providing gender-affirming care to youth while facing federal pressure since 2025. Children’s Minnesota paused services in February, but .

Aware — and annoyed — that he’d been nabbed for exceeding the 35 mph speed limit, Anderson didn’t realize the monthslong legal quagmire in which he would soon be embroiled. It’s one that echoes an all-too-familiar battle pitting the .

When the 44-year-old computer repair specialist received his ticket in the mail, it said he had 30 days to pay it or challenge it. Through deft use of the artificial intelligence chatbot Claude, Anderson dug into state law. He found that in 2023, the state legislature had that stipulated that the response time given to motorists caught by speed cameras “not be less than forty-five days after the issuance date on the notice of the violation.”

With that, Anderson hit on a legal discrepancy that he felt obligated Aurora to void his $40 ticket. And not only his ticket.

“I’m not against safety,” he said, “but if you want everyone to follow the laws, you need to follow the laws, too. I’m really hoping they have to refund the fines to those that got a 30-day notice.”

Through a public records request this week, The Denver Post learned that Aurora had issued 26,268 speeding tickets to motorists since the city began enforcement through its automated photo safety program in late December. As of May 31, it had collected $627,000. Around 60% of violators had paid their tickets, the city said.

“If you have a program that’s going to make you millions over the next few years, you should be able to follow proper procedure,” Anderson said.

He noted that the city’s has a link to the very state law he’s holding up in his defense.

Anderson requested a hearing to dispute the ticket within the 30 days allotted. A magistrate commended Anderson for his gumshoe research into the matter — “You did a good job and you’re making the city work,” she told him during the April 30 appeal — but she refused to dismiss the ticket.

The city agreed with the magistrate, telling The Post this week that Aurora is a home-rule municipality, “meaning the city has the constitutionally protected right to make local decisions at the local level.”

“The 30-day timeline between issuance and due date on these fine-only, civil violations is an example of the city exercising said authority,” said Jennifer Soules, an Aurora spokeswoman.

That’s not how two sponsors of the 2023 bill see it.

Former state Rep. Leslie Herod, a Denver Democrat, said the 45-day response period was deliberately inserted in the law to give violators a reasonable amount of time to both receive and respond to the ticket.

“Forty-five days was put in there intentionally, and Aurora should follow the law,” she said.

Outgoing state Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat, said the legislature saw the use of speed camera systems as a matter of “statewide concern” that would give localities little discretion on enforcement.

The first paragraph of the bill says so — adding that the “enforcement of traffic laws through the use of automated vehicle identification systems … is an area in which uniform state standards are necessary.”

“We were trying to balance people’s civil liberties with the push for traffic safety and saving lives,” she said. “We would hope the municipalities would enforce it to the letter of the law.”

Lawmakers, Froelich said, wanted to make sure that people who might work in another location in today’s work-anywhere environment had adequate time to collect their mail and respond.

“Fifteen (extra) days may not seem like much to Aurora, but it may be for this guy,” she said.

The underpinnings of the dispute over Anderson’s speeding ticket have flared often in Colorado, where state lawmakers gave towns and cities the ability to enact . The problem that repeatedly arises is the conflicting interpretations of how the state or the cities wield their respective powers.

“There’s always been tension between state decisions and local sovereignty, and that won’t go away,” said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “If the driver wants to pursue this, it will come down to the courts.”

That’s where two recent prominent home-rule and state preemption cases landed.

Last year, six metro Denver cities sued Gov. Jared Polis over the enforcement of several housing laws that require municipalities to take steps to increase housing density. The plaintiff cities, including Aurora, claimed that the state laws encroached on their local home-rule authority to oversee land-use matters. The case is ongoing.

And in the waning days of 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court handed down a ruling forbidding cities from punishing lawbreakers beyond what state courts would allow for the same offense. The justices ruled that when a municipal ordinance and a state statute prohibit identical conduct, the municipal penalties for such conduct “may not exceed the corresponding state penalties for that conduct.”

Preuhs said it was not totally clear who had the legal advantage in the Aurora speeding ticket case. But if he had to bet, he would give the edge to Aurora.

“Given the civil nature of it and the power of cities to set speed limits and enforce them, it wouldn’t surprise me that they would have the power to set a reasonable time frame for a response to a ticket,” he said.

Questions about the terms and conditions of speeding tickets issued by radar-activated cameras will only increase as the technology proliferates. Local governments in at least 27 cities and towns in Colorado have approved automated speed camera enforcement.

The Colorado Department of Transportation‘s first speed cams on Interstate 25 north of metro Denver caught more than 4,000 drivers speeding between Mead and Berthoud in March. Denver expects to install its first fixed cameras along high-accident stretches of Alameda Avenue and Federal Boulevard later this year, adding to the four photo radar speed vans that police move around the city.

Anderson, who did pay his $40 fine after his appeal failed, doesn’t know what his next steps will be with Aurora.

Municipal leaders in the Weld County town of Kersey voted in January to refund thousands of dollars it overcharged drivers caught by its speed cameras, according to . While the situation in Aurora is different, Anderson could envision a class-action lawsuit arising from all of the drivers who paid their $40 fine but didn’t have enough time to formally lodge an appeal.

He to tell his story.

“I’m not going to stop,” he said. “There’s a lot more road to go down.”

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The mounting complaints about Joanna Landau, the agency’s new executive director, came to a head during a two-hour public meeting attended by more than 200 people late Friday afternoon, just before the start of the three-day holiday weekend.

Staff and contracted attorneys for the Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, known as ADC, said Landau has cultivated a culture of fear within the agency since she was hired in September and put such a heavy emphasis on keeping costs low that attorneys worry the office’s increasingly shoestring approach may ultimately limit their ability to mount complete defenses for their clients.

The small state agency contracts with private defense attorneys to represent indigent defendants who cannot be represented by the , typically when public defenders — the first choice for indigent defense — have a conflict of interest.

“(In) four decades of being a contract defender, the defense community has never had a more heightened level of concern about ADC leadership, nor a more widespread disillusionment about the fairness of providing effective representation to the poor than at this very moment,” James Castle, a longtime Denver defense attorney, said during Friday’s meeting, hosted by the that oversees the Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel.

Landau did not return requests for comment Tuesday.

The commission hired her in September to replace longtime ADC director Lindy Frolich, who retired last year after 20 years in the job. Landau previously held a variety of positions related to indigent defense in Utah, including working as the executive director of , an organization that supports indigent defense in the state.

But that resume didn’t make for a smooth transition into the Colorado agency, current and former ADC staff members told The Denver Post.

Landau quickly implemented a strict hierarchy at the agency, requiring subordinates to work up a chain of command before contacting her — an about-face from Frolich’s collaborative approach, attorneys said. Landau also tamped down on communications between staff and contracted attorneys, limiting the support contractors were accustomed to receiving from the central state office, they said.

The 41-person state agency contracts with roughly 1,200 attorneys and support staff statewide to represent indigent defendants. Insiders were puzzled by Landau’s laser focus on tightening purse strings — there is no indication, aside from it being a lean budget year, that the agency faced any direct outside pressure to cut costs, they said.

At the core of the criticism Friday was a sense that Landau’s top-down, arms-length approach to leadership is undermining what has long been a thriving indigent defense community. Nearly two dozen speakers raised concern during the meeting, some fighting tears, with several calling for Landau to be fired.

“We have people and staff members who have been working for this agency for decades,” said Jennifer Henslee, a longtime ADC contractor. “That is something to be proud of. And she’s dismantling it. Because she is so awful as a leader. This is a disaster. Disaster.”

‘Culture of fear’

In February, Landau reprimanded a longtime ADC employee, Jonathan Rosen, when he voiced concerns about Landau’s treatment of another employee in the office. That reprimand — for insubordination — eventually led to Rosen’s departure from the office in March.

“When I confronted her about her behavior, there was no discussion about what she did and why she did it,” Rosen said. “It was just, ‘You are wrong, you shall be punished.’ I’m not saying she can’t do these things. What I am saying is she is causing a lot of damage and it is negatively impacting the people who support the clients.”

He’d been a key resource for contracted attorneys since 2013 — he was, for many, their first call when they needed advice on a tricky legal situation — and his forced departure raised alarm both inside the office and out.

Formerly robust in-office Tuesdays dwindled as other employees began to fear retaliation for crossing Landau, said a current employee who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

“It has been heartbreaking to see the change since Joanna took over,” she said. “There is just a culture of fear that has taken over. …No one is in the office anymore. And when they are, everyone is tiptoeing around like, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?'”

That rigid top-down approach put off contracted attorneys, many of whom could make more money by taking private clients, but who do ADC work because they are passionate about it, attorneys said in Friday’s meeting. JB Katz, a longtime attorney contractor, resigned in May over Rosen’s ouster, she told The Post.

“ADC contractors have been a previously quiet, committed workforce who have worked and sacrificed for the good of the poor and disadvantaged for many years,” Castle said. “Director Landau’s only significant contribution during her imperious leadership over the last year has been to awaken the sleeping giant of incredible and altruistic contractors. They will no longer be silent. The clients, the workers and justice demand they speak up.”

Delayed billing, focus on costs

Landau’s perceived focus on cost-cutting drew significant criticism from contracted attorneys both during and before Friday’s meeting, with attorneys describing delayed billing and increased scrutiny of their expenses.

One attorney received pushback from ADC when the attorney requested funding for a second paralegal to help sift through thousands of pages of discovery in a murder case, Rosen said.

“I have yet to hear anybody tell me their clients have been better served by any of the changes she has made,” he said. “Representation is harder; clients are not being well-served. (Contractors are) not interested in sticking around.”

The agency’s payments to attorneys for completed work have also slowed under Landau’s tenure, taking weeks longer to be issued and causing problems for attorneys who rely on timely payments, multiple attorneys said during Friday’s meeting.

Defense attorney Amelia Power said her firm has yet to be paid for a hearing for post-conviction relief she handled in November.

“I worry this is a result of extreme examination of costs and hours that is coming from the top, specifically Joanna,” Power said.

In in January, Landau wrote that she was committed to balancing budget constraints with defendants’ constitutional rights. The agency received $83 million in funding for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, state budget records show.

“I focused on fiscal responsibility and the extreme economic stress facing Colorado, while knowing the Constitution requires the ADC to ensure Colorado’s indigent clients are represented by competent defense teams,” she wrote in the letter.

Members of the Commission for the Alternate Defense Counsel, who are appointed by the Colorado Supreme Court, agreed to consider the raised concerns after Friday’s meeting and said they planned to follow up with an announcement about next steps in the coming days.

The group had not issued such a statement by Tuesday afternoon.

The hospital had paused offering puberty blockers and hormonal treatment for gender-affirming purposes in January, following a threat from the Trump administration to cut federal funding to facilities that offer that care to minors. Children’s hospitals rely heavily on the joint federal-state Medicaid program.

Denver Health also suspended youth gender-affirming care at the same time, but isn’t facing a lawsuit.

Families of four transgender children sued. They alleged Children’s had discriminated on the basis of gender identity, because it still offered the same treatments to cisgender children with other conditions, such as an unusually early start to puberty.

Denver District Court Judge Ericka Englert opted not to require Children’s to restart care, finding that the potential harms to the hospital and its other patients from losing federal funding would outweigh harm to the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case in April, determined that the original court erred by allowing discrimination against one group because of potential harm to a larger group.

The order , but with direction to issue an injunction preventing the hospital from halting gender-affirming care. Five of the Supreme Court justices agreed with the ruling, with Justice William Hood III writing for the majority. Justices Brian Boatwright and Carlos Samour Jr. dissented.

A spokeswoman for Children’s Hospital Colorado said the hospital was examining the ruling on Monday morning and couldn’t yet comment. In 2025, Children’s treated 257 kids with puberty blockers and 549 with hormones for gender dysphoria.

In December, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that gender-affirming care was neither safe nor effective, and that the department could seek to end federal funding for hospitals offering it to children. , pausing enforcement of Kennedy’s declaration.

In April, an Oregon judge determined the federal government performing gender-affirming care because the department didn’t follow procedures for new rules and infringed on states’ rights to regulate medical care.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser released a statement that hospitals should feel safe providing gender-affirming care following the state Supreme Court ruling.

“The Colorado Supreme Court decision and the Oregon federal court order should give Children’s Hospital Colorado the direction it needs to resume gender-affirming care, and I hope the hospital will not delay another day,” he said.

for children with ongoing gender dysphoria – distress caused by the difference between a person’s internal sense of gender and the way the world sees them. , commissioned under a law temporarily banning minors with gender dysphoria from receiving hormonal treatment, found that youth who received the care had better mental health outcomes.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons to recommend delaying gender-affirming surgery until the patient turns 19, however. Only a small percentage of minors receiving gender-affirming care underwent surgery.

Hospitals in other states whose laws support gender-affirming care have also because they fear the loss of federal funding. Clinics that don’t accept Medicaid have been more likely to continue care as usual, though they may not be accessible to lower-income families.