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Colorado state Rep. Richard Holtorf, a Republican from the Eastern Plains, called a colleague “Buckwheat” while delivering remarks on the House floor this week. (.)

Holtorf said he meant it as a term of endearment, but most others didn’t take it that way — Buckwheat is a Black caricature, so many lawmakers interpreted it the same way as if he’d called someone “Speedy Gonzales” or “Aladdin.” Holtorf claims he was addressing Latino Democrat David Ortiz when he used that term, but Black caucus members were — and are — furious.

Holtorf offends his colleagues on a regular basis. He told Rep. Tom Sullivan, the father of an Aurora theater shooting victim, to get over that loss. He defended Rep. Ron Hanks for making a joke about lynching and claiming the three-fifths compromise wasn’t racist. During a debate on abolishing Columbus Day, he argued that the Indigenous people who were slaughtered by colonizers weren’t very nice people.��

What did feel new Wednesday was the reaction from the chamber. Last month, Black caucus members called on their white colleagues to help stamp out racism in the Capitol. Sullivan, who shouted Holtorf down this week, took that to heart.��

“You’ve got to say something when you hear something that’s outrageous. Who are you calling Buckwheat? I know what that word is. I know what you meant. I’ve listened to him the whole time he’s been here. I know who he is,” Sullivan said.

Ortiz said he hopes the chamber can reset and put an end to the “constant stream of f***ery.”

“The fact that white allies are ready to jump up to put some real pressure, I respect that,” he added.

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Top Line

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Denver’s going big on its latest attempt to house its homeless population: buying a hotel on the northeast side. Conrad Swanson has details.

Capitol Diary • By Saja Hindi

Ag’s windfall

��DZ��ǰ������’s $700 million state stimulus package is split into a bunch of separate bills. One that passed the House this week benefits the National Western Stock Show and other agriculture-related events.��

The state is giving $3.5 million to the more than 100-year-old stock show, which usually brings in $100 million or more but was canceled this year because of the pandemic..��

In addition to money for the Stock Show, gives $2 million to the Department of Agriculture for things like the Colorado Forum on Agriculture, the Colorado Farm Show in Greeley and county fairs, as well as another $3.5 million to the Colorado State Fair.��

“These events strengthen our western culture and are a big part of who we are as Coloradans. I’m proud the legislature is standing up to support Colorado agriculture, the Stock Show and local events that are vitally important to our communities,” bill sponsor Democratic Rep. Susan Lontine said in a statement.

State lawmakers wanted to help an industry that was struggling from the pandemic and are expected to allocate $34 million to $58 million to agriculture-related spending. Republicans have previously said they have felt the industry has been under attack in the state, so it����ap no surprise that this bill came with bipartisan support and passed 55-8 in the Colorado House before heading to the Senate.

Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican from Sterling and a co-sponsor of the bill, said it “truly is helpful in stopping the bleeding” at shows like the National Western Stock Show.��

More Colorado political news

• Universal preschool is coming to Colorado in 2023.
• Coloradans who have insurance could get a free annual mental health exam if this bill passes.
• Gov. Jared Polis signed a new law allowing medical cannabis in schools.
• A 2019 law let 17-year-olds vote in primaries. But after Amendment 76 passed, it may take a lawsuit to decide whether that����ap still the case.
• What exactly does the bill meant to lower jail populations do?

Federal politics • By Justin Wingerter

A Q&A with Peter Yu

, a Republican businessman and first-generation American from Loveland, is running against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in 2022. He recently took a break from crisscrossing Colorado to talk about his travels, why he thinks he can win next year and what he learned from to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse in the 2nd Congressional District. Our conversation has been edited for brevity.

What have you learned from traveling around Colorado? What are you hearing out there?

“There’s a common theme: People are just frustrated. They’re worried about their financial and future opportunities in this state and, honestly, they’re just exhausted with identity politics and they just want solutions rather than talking points. … The pandemic has hit small businesses extremely hard and most people are having a difficult time keeping their business open and their employees paid.”

Why do you think a Republican can win statewide?

“The truth is, this isn’t about a Republican winning a statewide race. It����ap more about a representative who truly represents the people. We need to stop making it about party affiliation because it doesn’t matter if you have an R or a D next to your name when you go to vote. The reality is, we all have the exact same issues right now. We’re coming off a pandemic and we need to stop playing politics and stop playing the fear game, because that doesn’t help anyone.”

What did you learn from the 2018 race?

“What I learned from the 2018 race is that it was a very identity politics campaign. That broke my heart a little bit, because obviously I ran in a district that leans heavily against me, but I honestly believed it was about the candidate and it wasn’t about the politics and the one thing I didn’t realize is that sometimes people can’t get past whether there’s a D or an R next to your name. That was the one thing that was a little bit of a surprise to me. However, the thing that really uplifted me and made me … continue on down this path is the response I got. Democrats, unaffiliateds, Republicans continue to call me, continue to talk to me and donated to me.”

More federal politics news

• Here’s how ��DZ��ǰ������’s senior senator helped create a major anti-poverty program.
• Colorado has resolved a dispute it had with the federal government over grant money.
• Susan Martinez, of Pueblo, for the 3rd Congressional District.
• Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

Mile High Politics • By Conrad Swanson

One more tool in Denver’s affordable housing toolbox

For decades, officials in ��DZ��ǰ������’s cities said there was a major obstacle to offering more affordable housing — what is commonly known as the Telluride Decision. But the state legislature is on a path to clear that blockage.��

In short, the that forced developers to include affordable rental units in new buildings — also called “inclusionary zoning” —�� qualifies as rent control, which is illegal under state law. For example, if a developer wants to build a complex with 100 apartments in Denver, the city cannot require 15% to be affordable housing.

But would legalize those types of requirements once more. The House and Senate have already passed amended versions of the bill and if the chambers rectify those differences, the measure will go to Gov. Jared Polis, who is expected to sign it into law.��

That means Denver could enact new affordable housing requirements by the end of the year or early next year, city planner Analiese Hock said — which would be beneficial considering the rising rents.��

But it����ap more complicated than you might think, Hock said.��

Denver would have to offer other options beyond requiring a percentage of affordable housing, like allowing developers to pay fees in lieu of building affordable housing or building affordable housing in a different area.��

And nothing is a catch-all solution, Hock said.��

“It����ap a tool that is good at providing a modest but steady amount of affordable housing into the market,” she said. “We don’t have the expectation that this tool will solve all of our affordable housing needs.”��

More Denver and suburban political news

• Expect the entire Denver metro to get older and more diverse in the coming decades.
• Denver landlords will be required to hold long-term rental licenses for each of their properties under a new law unanimously approved by the City Council.
• The Aurora ICE facility has its largest COVID outbreak yet, and it����ap not clear whether migrants were tested before arriving.��
• A proposed ballot initiative in Denver looking to strengthen the city’s homeless camping ban would put officials in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation, according to one attorney.
• RTD’s fares are pricey, and the agency plans to study how to change that for riders’ benefit.
• Westminster’s mayor, who faced a recall, stepped down.

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BILLINGS, Mont. — Payments for dead wolves. Unlimited hunting of the animals. Shooting wolves from the air.

Wolf hunting policies in some states are taking an aggressive turn, as Republican lawmakers and conservative hunting groups push to curb their numbers and propose tactics shunned by many wildlife managers.

In Montana, lawmakers are advancing measures to allow shooting wolves at night and payments to hunters reminiscent of bounties that widely exterminated the species last century. Idaho legislation would allow hunters to shoot them from motorized parachutes, ATVs or snowmobiles year-round with no limits in most areas.

And in Wisconsin, just weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration lifted protections for wolves in the Great Lakes region, hunters using hounds and trappers blew past the state’s harvest goal and killed almost twice as many as planned.

The timing of the Wisconsin hunt was bumped up following a lawsuit that raised concerns President Joe Biden’s administration would intervene to restore gray wolf protections. The group behind the suit has close links to Republican political circles including influential donors the Koch brothers and notable Trump loyalists — Kris Kobach, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Kansas, and rock star and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent.

Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 1800s, and flared up again after wolf populations rebounded under federal protection. What����ap emerging now is different: an increasingly politicized campaign to drive down wolf numbers sometimes using methods anathema to North American hunting traditions, according to former wildlife officials and advocates.

“It����ap not a scientific approach to wildlife management. It����ap management based on vengeance,” said Dan Vermillion, former chairman of Montana’s fish and wildlife commission. Vermillion and others said wolves were being used to stoke political outrage in the same way Second Amendment gun rights were used in recent elections to raise fears Democrats would restrict firearms.

Hanging in the balance is a decades-long initiative that brought back thousands of wolves in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions. Considered among scientists and environmentalists a major conservation success, the predator’s return remains a sore point for ranchers whose livestock are sometimes attacked by wolves and hunters who consider wolf packs competition in the pursuit of elk, deer and other big game.

In Montana and Idaho, wolf numbers exploded after their reintroduction from Canada in the 1990s. Federal protections were lifted a decade ago. The states have been holding annual hunts since, and wildlife officials cite stable population levels as evidence of responsible wolf management.

That����ap not satisfied hunting and livestock groups and their Republican allies in those legislatures, who contend 1,500 wolves in Idaho and 1,200 in Montana are damaging the livelihoods of big game outfitters and cattle and sheep producers.

“Too many wolves,” Republican state Sen. Bob Brown said of his mountainous district in northwest Montana. He’s sponsoring a bounty-like program that����ap similar to one in Idaho and would reimburse hunting and trapping expenses through a private fund.

A separate measure from Brown would allow the use of bait and night-vision scopes. Another proposal would allow snares, which critics say are indiscriminate and can accidentally catch pets or other animals.

In response to concerns that the treatment of wolves will drive away tourists hoping to glimpse one in places like Montana’s Glacier National Park, Brown said their negative impact can’t be ignored.

“I certainly believe there are people who come to look at wolves,” he said. “But we are also hurting the outfitting industry.”

Critics including Democratic Sen. Pat Flowers, a former state wildlife department supervisor, warned of a significant toll on Montana’s wolf population. State Senate Minority Leader Jill Cohenour, also a Democrat, said the proposals would “take us right back to having them listed” as an endangered species.

Wolves lost federal species protections in the western Great Lakes in 2011, but they were re-imposed three years later under court order.

The Trump administration lifted protections again five days before the November election, when Interior Secretary David Bernhardt travelled to Minnesota to announce the move.

On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, the White House said it would review the wolf decision.

Wisconsin officials already were planning a hunt in November when Hunter Nation, founded in 2018, sued to force a hunt immediately. The group cited a possible return of protections by the Biden administration.

Hunter Nation boasts its led by “America’s greatest Hunters and Patriots” on its website, which also includes praise for Trump. Its leader, Luke Hilgemann, formerly served as CEO at Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group backed by industrialists Charles Koch and his deceased brother, David, that has spent tens of millions of dollars on Republican candidates.

Hunters and trappers killed at least 216 wolves of Wisconsin’s 1,100 wolves over three days, nearly doubling the state’s target of 119 animals and forcing an early shutdown of the season.

Hilgemann participated, and said in an interview that he chased a wolf with dogs for 60 miles (96 kilometers) but never caught it. It����ap up to states to decide what kind of tactics they use, he said, while Hunter Nation will fight any attempt to halt the hunts. He said group has quickly grown to 20,000 members, but declined to divulge its financial supporters.

“Conservative, traditional American values of God, family and country — that����ap what we intend to focus on,” Hilgemann said. “We need to get ahead of our predator populations including wolves. They will quickly expand their range. They reproduce quickly, spelling trouble for other wild game, livestock and pets.”

Adam Winkler, a UCLA Law professor specializing in gun policy, said the group’s messaging appears aimed at mobilizing hunters to get behind conservative causes.

“I’m not surprised we’re seeing hunting groups wrap themselves in the mantle of patriotism,” Winkler said. “Patriotism has become the watchword of the right.”

Former federal wildlife agent Carter Niemeyer, who killed wolves that preyed on cattle in the Northern Rockies and was later involved in restoration efforts, said wolves are too resilient to be easily eradicated. But he warned the tactics being used will alienate large segments of the public to hunting and trapping.

“They’re running them down with hound dogs,” he said. “ That����ap wolf killing. That����ap not wolf trapping or wolf hunting.”

John Flesher contributed from Traverse City, Mich.

Samuels is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley contributed to this report.

Re: “Hickenlooper urges Interior nominee to keep Bureau of Land Management in Colorado,” Feb. 11 news story

Normally I would applaud bipartisan efforts to address issues as that has become a rarity these days. However, to learn that Sen. John Hickenlooper, Sen. Michael Bennet and Gov. Jared Polis have aligned themselves with the Trump regime’s anti-public-land advocates such as Ryan Zinke, David Bernhardt and William Perry Pendley in their desire to house the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Grand Junction is most distressing.

Clearly, moving the BLM headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction has the intended effect of marginalizing the agency and undermining its effectiveness as being the steward of our public lands. As one BLM staffer in Grand Junction noted, the move is a “charade.”

The local economic benefits of the several dozen or so jobs at the BLM headquarters in Grand Junction pale in comparison to the loss of BLM’s ability to coordinate with other agencies in Washington, as well as interact with leadership. As we move forward to a much-needed, more-balanced management of our public lands, the BLM headquarters should return to its rightful place in Washington.

Gene Reetz, Denver

Benefiting from taxes we pay

Three days after my age qualified me for a COVID vaccine, I got one. My second year on Medicare and Social Security and all those payroll taxes I paid for decades have paid off, big-time. Douglas County grades my dirt road and clears snow constantly. My neighbor’s kids get a decent education whether their parents have money or not. We have a huge military preventing any Pearl Harbors, and good police and fire protection. Big government spending does involve some waste and fraud (this happens in the private sector, too), but it works. Stop complaining about taxes. I, for one, am getting what I’m paying for. Now Gov. Polis, please throw money at the state’s unemployment insurance program — the jobless are not getting what we intended in timely fashion, and it����ap a shame.

Richard Opler, Parker

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An Associated Press analysis of government data shows the permit stockpiling has centered on oil-rich federal lands in New Mexico and Wyoming. It accelerated during the fall as Biden was cementing his lead over President Donald Trump and peaked in December, aided by speedier permitting approvals since Trump took office.

The goal for companies is to lock in drilling rights on oil and gas leases on vast public lands where they make royalty payments on any resources extracted. Biden wants to end new drilling on those same lands as part of his overhaul of how Americans get energy, with the goal of making the nation carbon neutral by 2050.

Companies submitted more than 3,000 drilling permit applications in a three-month period that included the election, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Officials approved almost 1,400 drilling applications during that time amidst the pandemic. That����ap the highest number of approvals during Trump’s four-year term, according to AP’s analysis.

In Colorado, a dozen permits are approved or pending to drill in Pawnee National Grassland, a birding destination where wildflowers and cactuses bloom below the buttes.

In Wyoming’s Thunder Basin National Grassland, a prairie expanse that abounds with wildlife and offers hiking, fishing and hunting, oil companies EOG Resources and Devon Energy — which amassed the most federal permits this year — have permission to drill three dozen wells among fields of sage brush.

The administration issued more than 4,700 drilling permits in 2020 — comparable to approval numbers from early last decade when oil topped $100 a barrel, roughly twice the current price.

INVITATION TO DRILL

Making it easier to drill was a centerpiece of Trump’s effort to boost American energy production in part by enticing companies onto lands and offshore areas run by the U.S. departments of Interior and Agriculture.

Under Trump, crude production from federal and tribal lands and waters increased sharply, topping a billion barrels in 2019. That was up by almost a third from the last year of the Obama administration.

But this year the coronavirus pandemic and crashing oil prices caused many companies to curtail their activity.

With markets still in flux and oil producers slashing budgets, major companies nevertheless have been acquiring enough permits to keep pumping through Biden’s upcoming term. The government approved about 500 new drilling permits in September, more than double the same month in 2019.

The oil industry’s fear is that Biden will follow through on campaign pledges and make it impossible or much harder to drill on public lands. “You go from having a champion in the White House, who steers the entire federal apparatus to wanting you to be successful, to someone who is hostile to the industry,” said Tom Pyle, a former Republican aide on Capitol Hill who now leads the industry group American Energy Alliance.

For Biden supporters, the stockpiling threatens parts of an ambitious climate agenda before the Democrat can get into the White House. Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters generates the equivalent of almost 550 million tons (500 metric tons) of greenhouse gases annually, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a 2018 study.

Trump administration critics say officials enabled the industry to reach its goals, noting that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and others have boasted how speedily permits were processed.

Bureau of Land Management spokesman Chris Tollefson said the agency had streamlined permitting while still following environmental laws.

“Markets, not the BLM, determine how oil and gas developers decide to acquire and develop leases,” he said.

Processing times for completed applications to the BLM have dropped from almost 140 days on average in the last year of Obama’s administration to 44 days in fiscal year 2019, according to congressional testimony by Interior officials. In 2020, some companies had permits awarded in a little over a month, AP found. Other permits took longer but an average could not be determined.

YEARS WORTH OF PERMITS

To undo the late-term awarding of so many permits, a former senior Interior Department official said the Biden administration could be forced to pay millions of dollars to companies to get them to relinquish drilling rights. Such a scenario played out in pristine areas of Montana where officials spent decades trying to buy out companies with drilling leases near Glacier National Park.

“This is classic, end of administration stuff, but for the Trump administration it����ap on steroids,” said Jim Lyons, deputy assistant secretary of Interior under Obama.

Houston-based EOG Resources amassed the most permits this year — 1,024 — including 549 since September, according to AP’s analysis.

In total, EOG has about 2,500 federal permits approved or in progress. “If he (Biden) tries to impose some regulations on how new federal permits are issued, we certainly already have an inventory, a large inventory, of existing federal permits that will sustain activity for several years,” company CEO Lloyd Helms told a November investors conference.

Oklahoma-based Devon Energy collected the second-highest number this year. As the presidential campaign wore on this summer, Devon executives assured investors that the company was amassing permits. By October, Vice President David Harris said the company had enough “federal drilling permits in hand that essentially cover all of our desired activity over the next presidential term.”

Devon’s more than 500 permits secured this year resulted from a long-term business strategy, not a political calculation, said spokeswoman Lisa Adams. “It was something in the works for years,” Adams said.

POTENTIAL MORATORIUM

Biden is nominating New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as interior secretary. And Haaland, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal by liberal Democrats, has said she opposes fracking and drilling on public land.

Even if Biden doesn’t immediately ban new permits, he could place a moratorium on them to study the situation in more detail, said Leo Mariani, managing director of equity research at KeyBank Capital Markets.

Most companies have up to two years to act on federal permits, so a one-year moratorium wouldn’t have much impact on oil supply and they could shift production to private or state-owned land, Mariani said.

But such a shift would come at a cost, because royalty rates on private or state-owned land can be twice as much as federal land. “Because the break-evens are so much lower, you’re not going to see every dollar re-allocated to other places,” said Parker Fawcett, analyst for S&P Global Platts Analytics.

With a ban on new federal drilling permits, U.S. production could fall by about 1 million barrels per day, or about 10%, by 2024, Fawcett estimates. “You will have a supply impact.”

Producers started talking about mitigating their risks about a year ago after Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she would ban fracking on federal lands, said Artem Abramov, partner and head of shale research at Rystad Energy.

Then companies began amassing federal drilling permits at more than $10,000 apiece.

More than 60% of the permit applications filed over the past year were in New Mexico, where about a quarter of the state budget comes from oil and gas revenues. And 20% of the permit applications were filed in Wyoming, where Gov. Mark Gordon says the state budget has taken a one-third revenue hit mainly because of the oil downturn.

“I definitely wouldn’t expect the New Mexican state government to support radical moves,” Abramov said. “They would push Biden toward a more gradual approach” to the oil and gas industry.

Jeff Small, current senior adviser to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, will be Boebert����ap chief of staff, the Daily Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Paige Agostin will be Boebert’s legislative director. She is currently associate director of domestic policy in Vice President Mike Pence’s office. Clarice Navarro, who was appointed by the Trump administration to be Colorado executive director for the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, has been selected as Boebert����ap district director.

Ben Goldey, who is currently press secretary for the Interior Department, will serve as Boebert’s communications director.

Cathy Garcia will serve as Boebert’s southern Colorado regional director. She has held the same position with Gardner since 2015.

Boebert will represent the state’s 3rd Congressional District after beating incumbent Scott Tipton in the Republican primaries and Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in November.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado, amends an earlier complaint that challenged the BLM’s approval of a plan to open up more public land in the southwest part of the state to oil and gas drilling. It follows a decision earlier this month by a federal judge that threw out three in Montana.

The judge, Brian Morris, ruled in September that Pendley served unlawfully as the acting BLM director. Morris said Pendley served in that role for 424 days, violating a federal law that caps at 210 days the time an acting director can serve in a position that requires Senate confirmation.

And any action taken by a person serving as an acting director in violation of the law “shall have no force or effect,” Morris said. Montana Gov Steve Bullock, who challenged Pendley’s tenure, asked the judge to block the land-use plans in his state.

About 60 different conservation organizations recently wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt that he should set aside all management plans, decisions and regulations that Pendley was involved with during the14 months he was acting director.

Natasha Léger, executive director of the Paonia-based Citizens for a Healthy Community, said that the land-use plan for southwest Colorado, issued earlier this year by the BLM’s Uncompahgre Field Office, should be invalidated like the Montana plans were.

“This is the first step in scrubbing the stain of Pendley’s corrupt, unlawful legacy from our public lands,” Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement.

The Interior Department has disputed that Pendley was ever designated as the acting director of the BLM. Bernhardt will continue to lead the department and all of its bureaus, including the BLM, and will rely on the BLM’s management team, including Pendley, the deputy director for Programs and policy, “who will continue to serve in his leadership role at the Bureau of Land Management,” according to a statement by Daniel Jorjani, the Interior Department����ap solicitor.

In addition, the final decision on the resource management plan for the Uncompahgre Field Office was signed by BLM Colorado State Director Jamie Connell, not Pendley, the national BLM office said in an email Tuesday.

“These special interest groups are trying to impose their radical environmental agenda on the hard-working people of Colorado, negatively impacting recreation access, conservation and energy development,” BLM spokesman Derrick Henry said in an email.

The Trump administration has never named a permanent BLM director. President President Trump said in June that he would nominate Pendley, but backtracked after intense criticism from advocacy groups and Democratic senators.

Pendley, a native of Wyoming, is the former president of the Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, known for challenging public lands regulations.

, including the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, and regional and state groups, including the Colorado Wildlife Federation and the Western Slope Conservation Center, said in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt that he should set aside all management plans, decisions and regulations that Pendley was involved with during those 14 months.

Those decisions would include a recently approved plan that will allow drilling on public lands administered by the BLM across six counties in southwest Colorado. Oil and gas leases issued on public lands in the state could also come under scrutiny.

“I think that the fallout from that is pretty broad,” Nada Culver, vice president for public lands and senior policy counsel at the National Audubon Society, said of the Sept. 25 ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana.

The plan released by the BLM Uncompahgre Field Office in April to guide the management of public lands in southwest Colorado for the next 20 years is arguably tainted by Pendley’s unlawful exercise of authority, Culver said.

But Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry organization, said it’s difficult to predict what the ruling’s effect will be. “It’s so far out of the norm that it����ap hard to see that any other judge will buy his argument or that it wouldn’t be overruled on appeal.”

Morris ruled that Pendley served as the acting BLM director for 424 days, violating a federal law that caps at 210 days the time an acting director can serve in a position that requires Senate confirmation. Any action taken by a person serving as an acting director in violation of the law “shall have no force or effect,” according to the ruling.

Pendley is the former president of the Colorado-based , known for challenging public lands regulations. President Trump said in June that he would nominate him as permanent BLM director, but withdrew the nomination after intense criticism from advocacy groups and Democratic senators.

There hasn’t been a permanent BLM director since Neil Kornze, who served in the Obama administration.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock sued in July to remove Pendley, a Wyoming native and longtime Colorado resident, as acting director on grounds that he was illegally overseeing the , which manages nearly a quarter billion acres of publicly owned lands, mostly in the West. That amounts to one in every 10 acres of land in the U.S. and about 30% of the nation’s minerals.

Colorado is closely monitoring the Montana case and is assessing “the State’s role in bringing resolution to the broader concerns raised by the Montana District Court����ap decision, in order to ensure that Coloradans’ interests are addressed going forward,” Conor Cahill, spokesman for Gov. Jared Polis, said in an email.

In a legal brief filed Tuesday, Bullock said three management plans for broad swaths of public lands in Montana should be retracted because of Pendley’s involvement. There might be other actions that should be invalidated, but the state lacks “critical information” about Pendley’s role in the decisions, the brief said.

In response to the judge’s order to identify which BLM decisions should be set aside, government attorneys wrote in a brief: “The answer is none.” A careful review showed “no relevant acts” taken by Pendley, the brief said.

Daniel Jorjani, the Interior Department’s solicitor, said in a statement last week that the agency believes the court’s ruling misinterprets the law and attempts to up-end decades of practice by administrations of both parties. But he said the department will comply with the court order while moving ahead with an appeal and other legal options.

Culver said the effort to cast Pendley, the BLM’s deputy director for policy and programs, as uninvolved with major decisions defies the facts.

“Both he and the secretary have made it abundantly clear that he has been in charge of the BLM and directing the bureau’s actions,” Culver said. “Those decisions and their far-reaching implications are relevant to everyone who cares about public land.”

And despite the Montana court ruling, Culver said Bernhardt has indicated that Pendley will continue in his leadership role at the BLM.��It’s clear that management plans and plan amendments go to the national BLM director for review rather than just to the state director, Culver said.

Pendley said in an October 2019 interview with Bloomberg Environment that any update to a local BLM land management plan is not a local decision.��Under federal law, BLM lands are managed for multiple uses, including mineral development, livestock grazing, recreation and conservation.

Updates with comment from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ office.

Re: “America’s largest land manager now amidst the public’s lands,” Aug. 31 guest commentary

William Perry Pendley seems proud of himself for moving jobs out west, scattering Bureau of Land Management employees across different cities and weakening the collaborative power of the agency. He seems proud of himself for following Donald Trump’s and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt����ap orders, pledging his full allegiance to individuals who have done immeasurable harm to our public lands, air, and water. How nice.

Now I’d like to hear from Pendley about his anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments. How many paragraphs will it take for him to justify mocking Indigenous spirituality and calling Native Americans an “issue”? How many lines will validate his desire to drill and destroy sacred cultural and archaeological sites? Can any amount or combination of words make up for his calling the Black Lives Matter movement based on a “terrible lie”?

Moving the BLM headquarters doesn’t look too great from the perspective of anyone who cares about the natural world. Shorter commute times don’t make up for the largest oil and gas lease sales in history. But then, proper land management also wouldn’t make up for racism. That is to say, even if Pendley were good at his job, he would still need to go.

It����ap unacceptable that Sen. Cory Gardner has refused to speak out against Pendley’s extremism. Shame on Gardner, Pendley, and anyone who practices or condones bigotry.

Fabio Cordeiro, Littleton

VA a place of heros

Re: “Trump disparaged war dead as ‘loser’,” Sept. 4 news story

A number of years ago, my wife and I visited the American Cemetery at Normandy where World War II soldiers killed in action were buried. At closing time and the sound of taps, three men saluted and at least one wept. When I go into our VA Hospital, I don’t see any losers, but I know I am in the company of heroes. Their physical appearances tell me so, with many being wheeled around by a loved one or walking at a slow but steady pace.

Philip J. Ritter, Denver

Shared streets pose dangers

Re: “Denver’s shared streets are a change worth preserving,” Sept. 4 guest commentary

After reading Kevin Mitzner’s column on the “wonders” of the Shared Streets Project that Denver initiated this spring/summer, I just had to write a reply.

I don’t know where Mr. Mitzner resides, but our home is right along 11th Avenue in Congress Park and each and every day there is a near fatality or collision. All spring/summer the “Road Closed” signs get turned, moved and hit by cars/trucks who don’t want to stop or whose vehicle clearance was too wide for the new narrow berth of the street. The gravel bags meant to weigh down the legs of the large metal signs are broken and there is gravel everywhere. Many motorists don’t stop at the stop signs but cruise right on through; moving trucks/delivery trucks drive over the curbs to avoid hitting the signs.

And most importantly, kids on bicycles, runners and pedestrians are at the mercy of what each motorist����ap idea of what the large orange signs mean: Which street is closed? Do I make a U-turn? Confusion and chaos reign. Moving the signs into the intersection (the city did a couple of weeks ago) helped, but the most helpful act of the city would be to remove these signs!

We have lived along 11th Avenue for 18 years and it was never a traffic-laden street to begin with. The Shared Streets Initiative was a solution in search of a problem that did not exist.

Vicki Kelley, Denver

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Pendley, a former oil industry and property rights attorney from Wyoming, has been leading the agency for more than a year under a series of temporary orders from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Democrats alleged the temporary orders were an attempt to skirt the nomination process, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and conservation groups have filed lawsuits to have Pendley removed from office.

Trump announced Pendley’s nomination to become the bureau’s director in June. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, confirmed Saturday that the president intended to withdraw that nomination.

“Good!” Bullock, a Democrat, tweeted Saturday. “William Perry Pendley wants to sell off our public lands – and has no business being in charge of them.”

The bureau oversees nearly a quarter-billion public acres in the U.S. West and much of the nation’s onshore oil and gas development.

The White House did not offer an explanation for the decision, which is not expected to become official until the Senate returns to session. The Interior Department said in a statement that the president makes staffing decisions and that Pendley continues leading the agency as deputy director for programs and policy.

Pendley, who in a 2017 essay argued that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” spent three decades as president of the nonprofit Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has worked on behalf of ranchers, oil and gas drillers, miners and others seeking to use public lands for commercial gain.

Among the cases Pendley worked on was one challenging grizzly bear protections on national forest land. In another, he sought to validate an energy developer’s claim to drill for oil on land considered sacred by the Blackfeet Indian Tribe near Glacier National Park in Montana. A federal appeals court rejected the effort two months ago.

The author of books that include “War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier,” he has criticized environmentalists as extremists and expressed support for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose family has engaged in armed standoffs with federal agents.

In his announcement of the nomination, Trump said Pendley had “worked to increase recreational opportunities on and access to our Nation’s public lands, heighten concern for the impact of wild horses and burros on public lands, and increase awareness of the Bureau’s multiple-use mission.”

The Interior Department has disputed the notion that Pendley wants to sell off federal lands, saying the Bureau of Land Management has acquired 25,000 acres under his leadership.

In his position at the agency, Pendley has overseen the relocation of most of the bureau’s jobs from Washington to various locations in the West, including its new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado — a move conservationists consider an effort to weaken the agency.

The agency has also sought to ease rules for oil and gas drilling that were adopted under the Obama administration. One recent proposal, which would streamline requirements for measuring and reporting oil and gas produced from federal land, is projected to save energy companies more than $130 million over the next decade.

“William Perry Pendley has been unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management every day since he was appointed acting director in 2019,” Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said in an emailed statement. “The fact that he was nominated this June and not withdrawn until millions of Americans and elected officials spoke out illustrates the wrongheaded priorities of this administration.”

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called for the Trump administration to remove Pendley from his position.

“Withdrawing William Perry Pendley’s nomination confirms he couldn’t even survive a confirmation process run by the president����ap allies in the Senate. Keeping him on the job anyway shows the depth of disdain Secretary Bernhardt and President Trump have for the Constitution,” Rakola said. “The Bureau of Land Management director is a Senate-confirmed position for a reason. Whoever is in charge of one-tenth of all lands in America must be approved by the Senate, and these bald-faced attempts to evade the Senate’s advice-and-consent duties cannot stand.”

On Thursday morning, Trump will join Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a Colorado native, for a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. Their goal is to highlight the Great American Outdoors Act, legislation from Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, that is expected to pass the U.S. House on Wednesday afternoon.

The bill, which President Donald Trump supports and will soon sign into law, fills a maintenance backlog at national parks, including Rocky Mountain National Park. Ivanka Trump and Bernhardt will deliver remarks about it at the park Thursday.

On Friday morning, the first daughter will join Gardner, along with Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services officials, for a tour and roundtable talk at an undisclosed child care facility in Colorado.

The group will talk with parents, care providers and others about the need to reopen child care centers and the best way to do so during a pandemic.

“I am looking forward to visiting the great state of Colorado and learning how this administration’s policies are helping citizens across the state,” Ivanka Trump said in a statement provided by the White House on Wednesday.

“Working with Senator Gardner on the Great American Outdoors Act, we are securing funding for the next 100 years to preserve our national parks and public lands. Additionally, I’m looking forward to visiting with Coloradans to hear how this administration’s pro-family policies have positively impacted them,” she added.

Ivanka Trump visited a Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton last July. The trip to discuss workforce development was originally scheduled to occur in April but was rescheduled following a shooting at nearby STEM School Highlands Ranch.