The party had pushed to retake the state Senate with the help of a new group, Advance Colorado, that assisted with candidate training and donated to Republican efforts. But on election night, the GOP found itself even further adrift, outnumbered by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio in the Senate and losing everywhere else, too.

The then-GOP chair, Kristi Burton Brown, said that night that the party had run a strong slate of candidates, but it hadn’t mattered. Colorado had “fundamentally shifted” away from a Republican Party that once jockeyed for power.

A year later, with a new leader at its helm, Advance ran the campaign to crush , a Gov. Jared Polis-backed proposal to curb property tax increases that also would’ve allowed the state to keep more of its revenue. The measure’s failure forced a special legislative session.

But more importantly for a battered conservative movement, it suggested that conservatives could still win in the state — maybe not as candidates, but a little farther down the ballot.

“After 2023 happened, it was like, ‘Why don’t we try to go on the offensive on this, if (Democrats) aren’t?’ ” said Michael Fields, the group’s president.

As the institutional conservative movement has withered in Colorado, the infrastructure and financial support that once powered the Republican Party and its candidates have found a new home — and new influence — in Advance Colorado, according to interviews with more than a dozen consultants, politicians and activists from across the political spectrum. And while money still backs Republican candidates and committees, Advance has proven itself as the most successful wing of the conservative movement in the state.

Led by Fields, 39, Advance’s small group of consultants and officials has mastered the ballot process with the help of a network of conservative — and largely secret — donors and like-minded groups. The Denver Post’s reporting shows that former Gov. Bill Owens and billionaire Philip Anschutz have played supporting roles as it has successfully advanced conservative policies in a state that has not elected a Republican to statewide office since the Obama administration.

Advance’s victories continued in 2024, when it backed two winning ballot measures, including one that required the cash-strapped legislature to spend $350 million on police funding. It also threatened to run two property tax measures that, had they passed, would have cut taxes and blown gaping holes in government budgets.

That move forced yet another special session. As frustrated Democratic lawmakers returned to the Capitol that August, they gave a promotion to Advance’s leader.

He was, they complained, Gov. Fields.

Despite the GOP’s rapid disintegration in the state, Advance now finds itself at the center of a fourth election cycle, the most expansive and significant ballot contest for the organization and in Colorado’s recent history. Much of that fight will be dominated by the tripartite tax war: Advance is running a measure that would cap the state’s income tax, while opposing two other ballot proposals that would increase taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations and would allow the state to keep more money for schools.

The result of those contests alone will help determine the state’s fiscal situation for the near future. But Advance is backing six ballot measures in all, with major potential implications for energy, criminal justice and immigration policy.

For conservatives, it’s a remarkably prominent position for a movement that has scrambled to find relevancy. Advance has offered not only influence and a counterpunch to Democratic electoral dominance but a ray of hope that, while the GOP brand is in tatters in a state that’s roundly rejected President Donald Trump, the core ideas that animate it — and the money that can put those ideas in front of voters — still have purchase in Colorado.

If they didn’t, voters wouldn’t back Advance’s policies, and it wouldn’t wield the influence it now does.

“What Advance has succeeded in doing — conservatives have long said that our ideas win, even if our candidates don’t win,” said Tyler Sandberg, a Republican consultant. “They put that to the actual test by putting them on the ballot and passing them pretty overwhelmingly.”

For liberals and Democrats, Advance stands as something between a worthy adversary and, in the view of some, a Trojan horse for wealthy people who want to cut taxes and shrink government.

Ian Silverii, a veteran liberal consultant who’s working to oppose Advance’s proposals, blasted the group for packaging complex policy as simple yes-or-no questions to an electorate that may not grasp the full impact of the bargain. Other critics said that Advance could run whatever it wanted at the ballot without the burden of having to figure out how it would work, should voters pass it.

“It truly is remarkable what you can do when you have donors and corporations who are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars in secret money to influence our politics,” said Shad Murib, the chair of the Colorado Democratic Party.

Whatever the depth of their antipathy, Advance’s opponents have been forced to reckon with it as a legitimate political force.

The group has won at the ballot, forced special sessions and now has a serious chance of passing sweeping reforms across a number of policy areas in November. While its prior campaigns faced little opposition, a coalition of liberal groups is banding together this year to fight Advance’s measures and promote its side’s larger tax-reform proposals. Some of the groups have also hinted at pursuing ballot reforms next year.

Advance is “defining the criminal justice conversation; they’re defining the energy conversation and the pollution conversation,” said Chris deGruy Kennedy, a former state representative involved in the property tax negotiations two years ago. He now leads the progressive Bell Policy Center, which will face off against Advance over the income tax measures. “And by virtue of this contest with us, yeah — whichever way this goes will define the state budget conversation.”

Group rises as state party flounders

After the Republican failures of four years ago, Fields was recruited from another conservative group — which had unsuccessfully backed — to come to Advance and shape its policy agenda.

The candidate losses in 2022 were steeper than conservatives had expected. Soon after, the Colorado Republican Party elected far-right firebrand Dave Williams as chairman, kicking off a series of internal disputes and lawsuits that continued for three years. The party is now a shadow of itself: As of July 31, the state GOP owed more than $271,000 in debts and had fewer than $60,000 in its federal bank account, according to campaign records.

Craig Steiner, the current chair of the state GOP, did not return a message seeking comment.

Anschutz, a conservative megadonor, had regularly contributed to the party. But he hasn’t cut a check to the state GOP — at least one that’s publicly reportable — since 2022. He also did not return a message seeking comment.

But as the institutional GOP floundered, Advance was notching headline-grabbing wins at the ballot. Simultaneously, its annual revenue grew from $1 million to $5.7 million between 2021 and 2024, according to federal tax records.

Ralph Nagel, a prominent businessman and an Advance donor, said Owens, the last Republican to serve as the state’s chief executive — from 1999 to 2007 — invited him to join the group’s supporters as conservative donors sought to coordinate support and organization. He said Advance was pulled together by Owens and Anschutz, and supporters include an invite-only group of four or five dozen donors who gather for dinner twice a year.

“It’s a curious thing — if there was a book written on this era of this group, it wouldn’t be that long,” Nagel said. “But it would be so credible. Is it really that simple to do important things? And it turns out: Yes, you can.”

“It’s a terrific success,” he continued, praising the group’s backers as committed businessmen who wanted to steer the state in the right direction. “You have to be proud of it.”

Advance is not the first group to bring significant cash into Colorado politics. The business-friendly group One Main Street has spent millions in largely untraceable dollars to support moderate Democrats in recent years. Outside groups still spend money to elect Republican and Democratic candidates as Democrats reach for supermajority control of both chambers in the Capitol.

Most famously, the mythologized “Gang of Four” — a group of wealthy liberals that included Polis, then a State Board of Education member — brought their fortunes to bear to send Democratic candidates to the Capitol more than two decades ago.

But while the Gang of Four’s spending coincided with the beginning of the state’s leftward tilt, Advance has found success as the name-brand conservative movement has collapsed. That shift also helped shape the group’s focus.

“I think there was a recognition by the supporters of Advance (that) maybe this isn’t the best bang for our buck,” said George Brauchler, the district attorney for the 23rd Judicial District who was the first president of Advance Colorado. Instead, they thought: “Maybe the issue here is the R and D next to the names that����ap driving this outcome. Why don’t we instead focus on conservative issues and see if we can get conservative issues on the ballot — because Colorado isn’t nearly as blue or left as elected representatives suggest.”

Advance has largely focused on fiscal policy and public safety issues, which, in cases like the police funding measure, can double as fiscal restraints. Fields said the group typically comes up with its own ideas, polls possible ballot language to gauge public support and files different versions of that language with the state title board, the administrative gatekeeper for ballot access.

“Once it’s actually going to move, there are other groups and other people, and we’re constantly just saying, ‘Hey, we have an idea. Do people want to help us put this on?’ ” Fields said.

Nagel said Fields and his team give presentations to the donor group, and that while donors may have their own ideas, Fields has been broadly respected and trusted to steer Advance.

Like Fields, he said the group’s campaigns were often planned two to three years out.

“We fund a base amount, and then everyone makes more contributions on a project basis — (for) ballot initiatives or whatever’s going on — and then most of us still continue significant support of candidates and old-fashioned politics involvement,” he said.

Fields said his group focuses on the issues facing the state, and it has balanced its priorities between playing offense and defense. The property tax wars forced Democratic concessions, for instance. But when Democrats moved this year to redraw the state’s congressional districts as part of a multistate redistricting war, Advance fought the ballot proposals and put forth its own measure that would block any changes.

“We are doing stuff that I believe can pass because voters understand it,” Fields said, adding that the group’s leaders have shelved ideas that don’t have popular support. “And we are that voice, I believe, of the center of unaffiliated voters right now.”

‘A clearinghouse for dark money’

To Advance’s critics, though, it’s little more than a black box that takes in mostly dark money and churns out ballot measures that serve conservative donors’ economic interests.

Steve Fenberg, a Democrat and former president of the state senate, said Advance is a “clearinghouse for dark money,” referring to donors whose identities are largely undisclosed. He said the group was proficient at boiling complex issues down to overly simplified ballot questions. Policy, he argued, is supposed to be nuanced and complicated.

“They’re a shell of an entity, in my opinion, with a good and charismatic leader,” he said. “But at the end of the day, they’re there to hide major donors who want to have an influence on Colorado’s future.”

Fields declined to identify his financial supporters, other than to say that more than 12,000 people have donated to Advance. (He didn’t know what the average donation was.)

Some of those donors are disclosed in federal tax filings. In 2024, as Advance readied to run five ballot measures, Nagel’s foundation gave the group $475,000. foundation gave $400,000. The Norwood Foundation, run by the leaders of a , gave $250,000. A group run by erstwhile U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea contributed $627,000 that year, while the Wisconsin-based Bradley Impact Fund gave $500,000.

Advance is also connected to a larger, multimillion-dollar conservative donor and spending network that includes spending committees and think tanks like the Greenwood Village-based Common Sense Institute, which has received support from Anschutz’s son and other donors, like the Coors family foundation.

The group and its broader network have included many of Colorado’s most prominent conservative voices. have included Burton Brown, the former state GOP chair who lamented the state’s shift back in 2022, and top Republican lawmakers like state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and then-House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese.

West Group, a law firm that’s worked with Advance, is staffed by former officials from the Owens administration. Owens himself is also involved in Advance’s work, and the law firm for which he works was paid by Advance in 2023 and 2024, tax filings show.

Dick Wadhams, a former state GOP chair, referred to Owens as the informal chairman of Advance, playing an important role with donors.

“He’s not running it day to day, but he’s certainly played a big role in Advance, and he’s not stayed on the sidelines as a former governor,” Wadhams said. “I think you’ve got to have somebody of Bill Owens’ stature and with a record of achievement … for donors but also just to show that this is a serious organization.”

Fields says he discusses Advance’s ideas with Owens, whom he describes as an “informal advisor” who has “a special relationship with donors.” Nagel, who said he was invited to the group by Owens, said the former governor was the “face” of the group.

In response to an interview request, Owens told The Post in a statement that he was “proud of the work Advance Colorado is doing to promote common sense policies and protect Colorado’s future. It has now become a critical part of the infrastructure pushing back against the Left’s stupid policies.”

Pursuing simple-sounding measures

Fields, Wadhams and others can, and do, point to Advance’s past success as evidence that voters support its criminal justice agenda, as well as its drive to keep the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights intact. That 1992 voter-passed amendment requires voter approval for tax increases and restricts growth in government revenues, and it’s come under repeated attempts by Democratic-aligned groups to pare it back.

Advance’s record is not perfect: A school choice proposal in 2024 failed, for instance. Still, its influence exists because voters have either backed its proposals or Advance can credibly argue that voters will pass them, which prompted the 2024 special session.

“Pound for pound, we’ve out-fought them, right?” Nagel said of Democratic interests in the state. “If you deal with the revenue model with the state and keep it proportional to good policy — their thing was always raise more taxes, make government bigger and more complicated, and less focused.”

But like Fenberg, Democratic and liberal critics argue that Advance essentially distills its proposals into simple, even deceptive, language that masks the true impact.

For instance: Did voters in 2024 know that requiring the state to provide $350 million to police would mean taking that money from the rest of an increasingly beleaguered state budget?

More to the point: Are ballot questions the right way to address complex issues such as — to cite two Advance measures on this year’s ballot — fentanyl-related sentencing or whether Coloradans have ?

“I think one of the major problems is that the opposition can just either burn the house down (through ballot-passed tax cuts) or just be like, you have a right to natural gas,” said Scott Wasserman, who previously ran the Bell Policy Center. “And it����ap the governing coalition” — meaning Democrats — “that has to figure it out. If we’re just going to govern by brinksmanship, this is not going to work.”

But he said Democratic leaders and liberal groups had been slow to respond to coalesce and respond to Advance. There was little organized opposition to its three ballot measures in 2024.

This year, though, a coalition of liberal groups has joined together in an effort to head off Advance’s half-dozen proposals.

“Advance has gone deeper and broader in what they’re doing,” said Carolyn Siegel, a spokeswoman for the coalition, which is broadly organized under the name Vote Common Sense. “And people recognized they can’t be fighting off these bad policies one by one, but they need to kind of work together to expose whose money is really behind Advance — and what are the real impacts of some of these measures that aren’t about the sound-good things they try to make them about?”

The breadth of that coalition speaks to the extent of the reach of Advance’s proposals this year: It includes the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, which is concerned about a measure that would require law enforcement to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in certain circumstances; Conservation Colorado, which opposes the natural gas measure; Cobalt, the abortion advocacy group; and the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which is involved in opposition to the fentanyl measure.

The measures have broader implications outside their specific policy areas, argued Kyle Giddings of the criminal justice group. If the fentanyl measure passes and sends hundreds more people to prison, the state , on top of existing pressures. (Earlier this year, Polis asked lawmakers to devote $200 million to a new prison.)

That would mean less money for the rest of the budget, with far-reaching impacts.

The anti-Advance coalition has raised roughly $1 million across its spending committees already. Advance’s measures will mostly be supported by a group called Brighter Colorado, which had raised $275,000 as of last week. Another group, focused on supporting Advance’s income tax cap and opposing Bell’s progressive income tax, has not reported any money raised yet.

Beyond the results of this election, Giddings and others hinted — without providing specifics — that they may push for ballot reforms in the future.

The rise of opposition groups — and their threat to pursue ballot reforms — is a sign of both Advance’s growing prominence and the seriousness with which liberal groups are now taking it. In the near term, the results of the November contest are likely to be significant in determining funding for schools, the tax burden on corporations and wealthier individuals, how the state regulates natural gas and how law enforcement interacts with ICE.

For his part, Fields chafes at the suggestion that his group simply does the bidding of wealthy donors. He is adamant that Advance proposes measures that will benefit Colorado, and that the group only has as much influence as voters give it.

“Voters decide, right?” he said. “Eventually, you get an answer on it, one way or the other.”

but the intent of this measure isn’t so plain. Colorado law already requires ballot measures be written in understandable language accessible to the “widest possible audience.” Could this ballot initiative be about power rather than accessibility?

This isn’t the first time since the state adopted its initiative process in 1910 that voters have been asked to revise how initiatives and referenda appear on the ballot or in the state voter guide known as the Blue Book. For example, in 1992, Coloradans voted to require the state to mail voters information about each ballot measure including arguments for and against the proposal. This provision was part of Amendment 1, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), which is better known for its impact on taxes and revenue.

Two years later, voters mandated ballot measures cover only a single subject. The Title Board, appointed by the Colorado secretary of state, attorney general, and the Office of Legislative Legal Services, determines whether the text of a ballot proposal meets the single subject rule and other draft requirements. Opponents, more often proponents, appeal the Title Board’s decisions as a means to keep proposed initiatives off the ballot.

Legislators have also mandated changes to the ballot language. In 2021, the General Assembly passed a law requiring initiatives that reduce taxation to include information about the impact on funding of state government programs. Measures that would increase taxation, however, had to state their purpose was to “increase or improve levels of public services.” The following year, lawmakers referred Proposition GG to the ballot to require fiscal impact summaries showing how tax initiatives will affect income taxes for taxpayers at various levels of income.

If empowering voters with information about public policy tradeoffs was the goal, lawmakers would have made all ballot proposals disclose counterargument data within their text. Rather, this was self-serving. Democrats, who have tried unsuccessfully for years to rid themselves of TABOR limits, thought that by manipulating the language of ballot measures they could lobby Coloradans to vote for higher taxes and ditch their TABOR refunds.

This year, Advance Colorado is striking back by putting Initiative 234 on the ballot. If the constitutional amendment passes, it will be more difficult to render fiscal and taxation impact information into middle school reading material. That����ap not all.

Because there are multiple tests to determine the grade level of text, notes Ari Armstrong from Complete Colorado, “by failing to define what constitutes an eighth-grade reading level, the measure invites inane and costly legal battles.” Of the four states that have adopted an eighth-grade reading level mandate, two have faced law suits. Looks like Initiative 234 may be less about equipping voters and more about equipping lawyers to gum up the process before a measure can reach the ballot.

That����ap just as well. We pay state lawmakers $50,000 a year to hear arguments and counterarguments, consider tradeoffs, make compromises, and work together to legislate on our behalf. Thanks to Open Meetings Laws, Colorado Open Records Act, lobbyist registration rules, and investigative work by the press, the public can see into this deliberative process and hold lawmakers accountable.

It����ap not perfect by a long shot but it beats lawyers funded by anonymous donors quibbling before the Title Board over whether a verb tense or semicolon renders the text too complex for the average eighth grader.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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

If approved, would also exempt that sales tax revenue from falling under the state’s spending cap set by , the mechanism that determines refunds to taxpayers. The measure could generate an estimated $175 million annually for programs that improve ecosystems, protect wildlife, mitigate wildfire damage and provide outdoor access, according to supporters of the proposition.

The measure would not increase taxes, raise prices or change the retail experience for consumers or businesses, said Tarn Udall, a senior attorney for , one of the conservation groups supporting the ballot measure. The proposition would apply to tax collected on the sale of products like tents, campers, skis, boats and fishing equipment.

During the petitioning phase, the state . The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office announced Aug. 21 that the petitioners submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The proposition’s proponents said its passage could spur much-needed investment in the state’s natural resources. Many projects are ready to go but lack funding, they said.

“Colorado’s lands and water are foundational to our communities, economy, and way of life,” Robyn Paulekas, the executive director of Keep It Colorado, said in a statement. “We have a unique opportunity to make smart, long-term investments that conserve working lands, protect water resources, expand access to the outdoors, and reduce wildfire risk.”

Proposition 137 would dedicate the majority of the set-aside sales tax revenue to — the trust fund that allocates proceeds from the Colorado Lottery to conservation, outdoor recreation and wildlife projects — and to wildfire mitigation programs through and the Colorado State Forest Service.

Great Outdoors Colorado would receive about $83 million a year. The money could be used to designate new public lands and state parks, maintain trails and outdoor infrastructure, and restore ecosystems. If approved, the proposition would .

Wildfire prevention programs would also receive about $83 million, which they could use for prescribed burns, wildland firefighting training and to help local communities create wildfire response plans.

Wildfire prevention is significantly more cost-efficient than wildfire response and cleanup, said Jennifer Mueller, the CEO of , a Colorado nonprofit that works to prevent wildfires.

“The longer we wait, the larger of a problem this becomes,” Mueller said.

Smaller amounts — about $4.3 million each — would go to the state’s Outdoor Equity Grant Program to help people access the outdoors and to the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office to help create new jobs in the industry.

A broad swath of conservation and fire groups support the ballot measure, including American Rivers, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Conservation Colorado, San Luis Valley Great Outdoors and the Wilderness Society.

The committee supporting the bill — called — received most of its funding from large national nonprofits, including the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and . One of the heirs of the Walmart fortune and his wife, Tom and Olivia Walton, have also chipped in.

Then their second child was born, and things got a lot harder.

“He had some medical things, and the job I was at before having him couldn’t hold my place while I was trying to take care of him,” Kildahl-Brooks said. “That put me out of a job.”

Without work, she couldn’t afford childcare. Without childcare, she couldn’t take a new job.

“It all boiled down to: I couldn’t find a job because I couldn’t get childcare,” she said. “And that was one of the biggest reasons why we couldn’t afford rent.”

The family was evicted from their home in Fort Collins in the fall of 2025.

Kildahl-Brooks’ story is not unusual in Colorado, where childcare costs, housing prices and stagnant wages have collided into a crisis that’s pushing families out of the state or out of the decision to have children at all.

Affordability challenges are compounded by a freeze on the state’s main childcare subsidy program, making things far worse for families and providers.

It costs $28,922 a year to raise a child in Colorado, the 10th-highest price tag in the country, according to an annual LendingTree study. For many families, that cost alone is enough to push them into poverty. Unaffordable housing, food and childcare compound, trapping families in cycles like the one that cost Kildahl-Brooks her home.

Nowhere is that bind more visible than in childcare. Families across the state are caught in an impossible situation, unable to work without care, and unable to afford care without work, while a patchwork of state and local funding programs attempt to provide support.

The childcare-employment dependency

Kildahl-Brooks, her husband and their two children, ages 2 and 5, eventually pieced things together to find a new place to live in Fort Collins.

After months of searching, Kildahl-Brooks found a job, and they secured childcare with help from , a nonprofit in northern Colorado that supports families facing homelessness, poverty and housing instability.

But affording that care remains a month-to-month struggle. The family qualifies for the , the state’s primary subsidy for low-income families, but can’t access it. Larimer County froze new enrollments in February 2024, when pandemic-era federal funding ran out.

Instead, the childcare center offered them a discounted rate of $200 a week, nearly a third of their household income. They’re covering the cost with temporary support from a program that helps military veterans and their families with rent and daycare costs. That support runs out next month, leaving them to find another solution to pay for the care that lets them keep working.

Kildahl-Brooks worries about what that instability means for her kids.

“As much as my husband and I try to shield our kids from it, it’s going to affect them,” she said. “Poverty is horrible on kids. It robs them of a wonderful childhood.”

Interconnected crises create instability

Affordability pressures are interconnected. Addressing one crisis, like housing, without considering its ripple effects on childcare, which influences workforce participation, misses the full picture of the economic vulnerability that people face. Traditional measures of poverty also miss the full scope of who is impacted.

When policymakers consider how many people need support, they rely on the . According to this measure, Colorado’s official poverty rate is 9.6%. That rate is slightly higher in Larimer County, where 10.5% of residents are experiencing poverty, while Weld County matches the state average.

Yet according to alternative measures of poverty like the , the statewide share of households whose income is insufficient to meet basic needs rose from 24.9% in 2022 to 26.8% in 2024.

The Self Sufficiency Standard calculates the income a working family needs to cover the basics such as housing, childcare, food, healthcare, transportation and taxes, without public or private assistance. It����ap maintained by the and distributed by the . The measure offers an alternative to the federal poverty measure, which many criticize for being outdated.

The 2024 Self Sufficiency Standard report will be released this fall. Charles Brennan, the director of income and housing policy at the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, noted a particular concern around childcare.

“Comparing 2022 to 2001,” he said, “childcare costs were among the fastest-growing expenses over the period and likely continues to be a major driver of cost increases.”

While there has been a focus on the increased cost of living and inflation occurring post-pandemic, Brennan said Colorado had affordability issues long before COVID-19. “Really, we were seeing the cost of living increase faster than wages throughout the 2000s and 2010s.”

Cost pressures extend to providers

As the state’s budget tightens and public funds for childcare support are frozen, 14,000 children who qualify for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program and are eligible to receive childcare subsidies can’t get them.

New enrollments are frozen across 25 counties in Colorado, including Larimer and Weld, due to funding issues. This doesn’t just impact families, but also the providers who rely on the funding to offer care for children whose families can’t afford the true cost.

State Sen. Scott Bright, a Platteville Republican, runs , a multi-site childcare center in Greeley and surrounding areas. The business was started by his grandmother in the 1960s; he bought the company from his mom about 10 years ago.

Since the Child Care Assistance Program freeze, Bright has become increasingly worried about his business and ability to keep the doors open.

“Our challenge is we don’t have new families stepping in our front door unless they’re transferring from another center,” he said. “So that’s what’s causing us to go from 90% (occupied) down to 50%.”

In addition to strain caused by fewer families with Child Care Assistance Program funding, providers also experience the pressure of operating cost increases, which Bright said is mostly labor, “as the total cost pushes the cost of childcare to families, it just has become increasingly unaffordable.”

Solutions are being proposed across the state and in northern Colorado, but Bright said they fall short.

“The state doesn’t have the budget to prop (the industry) up, and it’s way too big of an issue for the counties to carry on their own,” he said. “We’re in a situation right now where there aren’t solutions unless they come from some new idea, new source.”

Bright proposed one of these new ideas in the 2026 legislative session. was inspired by the universal childcare program in New Mexico that uses surplus oil and natural gas severance taxes to fund childcare.

“If the government has funds in the treasury that are not immediately needed within the next six to 12 months, can we reinvest those funds, get a little bit higher rate of return and use that to help fund low-income childcare?” he said.

The bill didn’t pass, but Bright intends to introduce a similar bill in the 2027 session.

Regional funding fills some gaps

Regional funding in areas of Larimer County provides some support for local families.

Estes Park is one of the first cities in the state to use lodging taxes to address affordability issues in their community. After residents voted yes on the 6E ballot initiative in 2022, the was established to provide tuition assistance to families. The city raised the lodging tax from 2% to 5.5%, and the extra 3.5% is dedicated to subsidies for both housing and childcare.

The program launched in 2023. Carlie Speedlin, the housing and childcare manager for the town of Estes Park, said that much of the childcare funding has gone to tuition assistance to fill the gap created by the freeze of the state’s assistance program. The funding also provides middle-income tuition so households aren’t paying more than 10% of their income on childcare and supports licensed childcare providers with annual grants that cover operating costs.

Even with a holistic program like the one in Estes, Speedlin said affordability challenges still plague the industry in the area.

“We lost a lot of families during COVID … and then real estate exponentially increased,” she said.  As a result, the community is seeing lower enrollment at schools, including childcare centers.

Speedlin is taking the current challenges of enrollment and population seriously, but she’s taking a long view. The 6E funds have contributed to the development of 109 workforce housing units. Speedlin hopes this will put the town in a proactive position to help future families.

“We don’t have a 300-kid waitlist right now, but we still need to be investing in things,” Speedlin said.

In broader Larimer County, a 2025 ballot initiative established a new 0.25% sales and use tax increase that will go into the Kids Thrive Fund, administered by , a nonprofit organization that provides support and resources to childcare providers and families.

The Kids Thrive Fund will give financial support to families to cover care, increase workforce compensation and improve childcare facilities. Families will be able to apply for support in early 2027, but the money will only go so far.

The initiative was expected to create $28 million in annual funding for Larimer County families — below the estimated $40 million to $60 million required to make childcare free for the county’s 18,000 children aged 5 and under.

Julie Malmberg Grawe, the chief impact officer at Northern Colorado Kids Thrive, said the tax will bring in just close to $20 million in its first year because spending has come in below projections.

With the funding they have, Malmberg Grawe estimates about 1,000 families will be supported. The financial assistance will be distributed so the families with the most need will receive the most support and applications will be processed in the order they are received.

“Long story short, that money, it’s going to run out,” Malmberg Grawe said. “There’s an incentive to get your application in sooner because it is first-come, first-served.”

Univesral preschool only covers a small portion

The program provides 4-year-olds with up to 15 hours per week of tuition-free preschool. The state spends roughly $349 million annually to fund universal preschool, which only covers about a third of a standard work week, and only for the single year before kindergarten.

Colorado had 380,794 children aged 5 and under in 2024, according to , a census by the , a nonprofit advocacy and research organization. Center-based childcare in the state costs an average of $20,978 a year, according to data from the — meaning universal care for all children 5 and under would cost the state nearly $8 billion, far more than current funding sources provide.

While there are initiatives on the 2026 ballot that could provide more funding in some communities, the costs will still exceed what any of the current or proposed future programs could cover altogether.

These include the , a proposed 2.579-mill property tax increase to support childcare costs in the area, and a statewide , which would raise Colorado’s flat 4.4% income tax rate for individuals and businesses earning more than $500,000 annually. If passed, that measure would raise $2 billion a year for child care, healthcare, and K-12 education.

Additionally, will be on the ballot, which asks voters whether to raise the cap, letting Colorado keep an extra $4.6 billion for K-12 education, childcare and school readiness across the state.

Current programs might stop the bleeding caused by the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program freeze, but they cannot fix the issue of how expensive it is to have a family in Colorado.

For now, families like the Kildahl-Brookss are left navigating a system of expiring grants, frozen subsidies and first-come, first-served funds, a patchwork built to manage a crisis, not solve it.

What that patchwork looks like in practice, for the families living inside it, is a narrowing set of options. Bright, the state senator and owner of a childcare facility, has watched that narrowing happen firsthand as enrollment freezes push families out of programs and centers out of business.

“Zero choices is not a choice. One choice is not really a choice,” Bright said. “They have to take whatever is there and that’s not a fun thing for a parent.”

Now she lives in a Denver House district that has become a chronic Democratic battleground. Smith and her husband receive more mailers on some days than she put out during her entire campaign, which cost $36,700 in today’s money. The race to represent her, in one of the safest Democratic seats in Colorado, has now surpassed $1.2 million in total spending.

The eye-watering total almost certainly means that, heading into Tuesday’s primary, the fight for House District 6 between Rep. Sean Camacho and challenger Iris Halpern is the most expensive House primary in Colorado history.

“It’s scary, right now, to think that we’re going to waste that money, at this time, on these stupid attacks, when there’s so much work that needs to be done,” said Smith, 71, who lives in Lowry.

She sighed, remembering how much her unsuccessful Democratic challenge against Owens, the incumbent state representative and future governor, had cost. “Think about it. What could we have in this district that we don’t have now,” she asked, if the money were spent elsewhere?

When House District 6 was redrawn in the 2022 redistricting effort, it was for Democrats, or any party for that matter. But the seat has been less a comfortable sinecure than the legislature’s most expensive see-saw: In the three election cycles since redistricting, it has played host to three Democratic primary contests.

The district, which extends east from Capitol Hill all the way to the Aurora border, has become a proxy battlefield in an ongoing war between competing financial and ideological interests in the Democratic Party — one where weary voters catch volleys of mailers in the crossfire. The last three primary races in the district, including this year’s contest, have cost roughly $2.5 million in direct and outside spending, the bulk of it coming from dark-money groups backing more moderate candidates.

That’s enough to buy 7.5 million meals through the or a year’s worth of diapers for 3,425 babies through the charity.

That spending is a sign of the times, political experts say. Colorado Democrats have settled into one-party control in Colorado over the past decade, and that has meant more Democrats in the Capitol, more ideological diversity within the party — and more opportunity for infighting.

It has also meant that business interests, which once spent campaign cash in tossup districts, are looking for new places to spend their money and influence policymaking. District 6 is among the priciest of several legislative districts that have been the focus of outside spending this year. In all, roughly $3 million has been spent, largely in seven Democratic legislative primaries, by groups affiliated with One Main Street, a centrist dark-money organization that doesn’t disclose all its donors.

Colorado Labor Action, funded by the state’s major unions, has dropped more than $900,000 against One Main Street’s favored candidates in a handful of races, and other outside groups have poured in further cash.

“There has been a fundamental shift (away) from spending money in the general elections between Democrats and Republicans,” said Alec Garnett, a District 6 resident and a former Colorado House speaker. “And that money is shifting into Democratic primaries because that����ap where these outside interests believe that they can make a difference, in terms of the ideology of the candidates.”

This year in House District 6, Camacho, the incumbent, is a moderate Democrat seeking to fend off a progressive challenger in Halpern, an attorney. Camacho won the seat with nearly 85% of the vote in the 2024 election after beating then-Rep. Elisabeth Epps — one of the most left-wing, and controversial, lawmakers in the House — in the primary.

Epps, in turn, had won the seat two years earlier in an open race after beating a more moderate Democrat.

Why has the district become such a battleground? Part of the answer is circumstantial: The seat was open in 2022, and Epps was a magnet for criticism in 2024. Denver, Garnett said, is also the “headwaters” of the Democratic Party in the state. The voters in District 6 tend to be younger, and it’s home to some of the state’s most prominent politicians, including both U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, who are now facing off in the Democratic primary for governor. It’s also host to the governor’s mansion and the state Capitol building.

Victory in the primary could provide a springboard for a progressive political leader, as Epps once appeared to be. A win might also help set the tone for a Democratic Party still in search of a defining identity. Epps’ victory in 2022 was part of a wave of progressive wins, and the next legislative session featured debates, with mixed results, about supervised drug-use sites, eviction protections and assault weapons bans.

But Epps’ loss in 2024, after an outburst during a special legislative session that saw her reprimanded by House leadership, came against a backdrop of more moderate victories across Democratic primaries.

For Halpern’s outside–spending supporters, beating Camacho this week would mean putting a more progressive lawmaker back into what they see as a progressive district. It would also knock out one of the leaders of the legislature’s moderate — and much-criticized — Opportunity Caucus, which Camacho co-chairs.

For the groups opposing Halpern, backing Camacho is partially a matter of defending a candidate they’d helped elect two years ago. His voting record, they’d argue, has been in line with Democrats across the Capitol and doesn’t warrant booting him from office.

Their support of Camacho is also part of their ongoing effort to keep pragmatic Democrats in office.

‘Campaign has just become about the money’

But that higher-level reasoning that’s crystallized into an avalanche of campaign literature has not been celebrated by the House District 6 residents who spoke to The Denver Post.

“I’m a pretty engaged person; I’m probably going to vote no matter what,” said Zach Robertson, who lives in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood. He said he had not voted yet but was leaning toward Camacho. “But (the spending) has me more cynical. This campaign has just become about the money — versus about the issues or campaigning on the ground.”

He’d looked at Camacho’s legislative history and his voting record, and they seemed fine for a Democrat. He didn’t buy the attack ads against Halpern, which falsely accused her of being a secret lobbyist.

And he knew there had been a split between different factions in the party, though he said he didn’t understand why it seemed to keep coming to a head in District 6.

It was much the same for William Thompson, a 37-year resident of the district who was once involved in Democratic organizing. He’s also supporting Camacho, and he questioned the integrity of the independent groups putting out mailers — which he felt were coming from interests based outside District 6.

“I can see where some people would be disgusted by the whole process and say, ‘To hell with it, I’m not going to vote,’ ” he said. ” … And I think it hurts the party, too.”

Amid all the noise, Smith, the onetime Owens opponent, said she wanted to hear about policies that would help her and her husband stay in Denver, even as they age and rely on a fixed income.

She said she’d heard both candidates speak in person and that she was supporting Halpern. She didn’t like feeling like she was the intended audience for attack ads from outside groups, especially when she wanted substance.

“Do (they) think we’re stupid?” Smith said. “There’s a part of you that wants to say, ‘OK, alright — now tell me what you’re going to do for us. What is it you’re going to do so that Colorado and HD6, the people here, can afford to live here in a great state, in a beautiful city? What are we going to do to protect that for future generations?’ ”

Drowning in negativity

The primary has been contentious. The biennial conflict’s reignition this year has sparked a mailer and advertising bonanza, most of it focused on critical messages.

Five dollars out of every $6 spent in House District 6 has come from outside groups, not from Camacho’s or Halpern’s campaigns. By law, the campaigns cannot coordinate with the outside groups that spend money in support of them.

In six days, a Post reporter who lives in District 6 received 10 mailers for or against Camacho and Halpern. Garnett said he received four mailers in one day last week.

Most of them have been attack ads: “Every mailer I get is negative,” he said.

As in 2024, Camacho is backed largely by dark-money groups tied to One Main Street, which generally supports “pragmatic” and pro-business Democrats. Halpern has received support from the PAC funded by the Colorado AFL-CIO and the Colorado Education Association.

In an interview, Camacho said he tries to run positive campaigns, including this go-round. But “one of the most frustrating parts” of the deluge of outside money, he said, is that those groups go so negative and threaten to drown out the message the candidates want to share.

He described himself as a “strong labor (and) anti-TABOR guy,” referring to the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which restricts taxes and spending in Colorado. He touted bills he’d run that sought to protect older people from financial fraud and to regulate artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.

“I’m trying to get out my message, but I can’t control what outside groups say or do,” he said. “That’s really concerning, frankly.”

Halpern told The Post that she knew the history of dark money in the district when she announced her candidacy in January. She also knew it’d be hard to outraise an incumbent.

But still, the amount of money — and how vicious the attacks have become — has shocked her.

Her , for example, launched with a video blasting Opportunity Caucus members for attending a private fundraising retreat in the mountains in October. But now it also features a banner at the bottom declaring “False accusations DISMISSED” — a reference to a complaint filed with the secretary of state’s office alleging that she’d illegally worked as a lobbyist.

As her website notes, that complaint . But an anonymous PAC continued to make the accusation in ads to voters. Earlier this month, Halpern sent the group behind it, Denver Progressives United, a cease-and-desist letter.

“It’s getting very dirty,” Halpern said. “There’s no accountability. And voters, and even I, don’t know who is donating to these dark-money groups.”

She and Camacho are both Democrats, and they would likely vote the same on bills that reach the floor of the House. But which bills reach the floor — and in what shape — is the key difference, she argued.

She criticized Camacho for the AI chatbot bill that, she argued, was “a giveaway to the richest companies in the world” because it limited monetary damages. She also knocked him for a vote he cast in committee that helped in mountain communities.

Other money-soaked races this year

If it’s any consolation to House District 6 residents, they’re not alone in being targets of so much spending.

A similar fight is spilling out of mailboxes in nearby Senate District 34, which covers the northwest corner of Denver, including part of downtown. Also considered one of the safest seats anywhere in Colorado, the District 34 Democratic primary has pulled in a whopping $1.5 million in total spending in the race between Andrés Carrera, who worked for the city of Denver, and Chela Garcia Irlando, who leads an environmental nonprofit.

The majority has come from outside dark-money groups, and most of that from One Main Street-aligned committees backing Carrera. Irlando has received substantial support from the labor PAC that’s supporting Halpern, as well as from Conservation Colorado and others.

Between the two Denver legislative districts, candidates’ campaigns and the outside groups backing them have spent roughly $3 million — enough for 9 million meals or diapers for 4,100 babies — for two seats that will almost certainly elect whichever Democrat emerges from Tuesday’s primary.

The Denver races have been by far the costliest of this primary cycle. But the labor PAC and One Main Street network have also squared off in races in Broomfield and Aurora. One Main Street has also been active in primaries for seats based in Thornton and Summit County.

While Denver’s Senate District 34 won’t have another primary election for four years, House District 6 could host another expensive primary in 2028.

In conversations with The Post, campaign operatives involved in the outside spending who declined to speak on the record expressed a hope — if not quite an expectation — that the tug-of-war over House District 6 might end after this race, regardless of who wins.

Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Denver, said the fighting in the primaries, in that House district and elsewhere, may change only if the money and attention are needed elsewhere.

“I think with such a weak Republican Party statewide — we’ve maybe moved from purple to solidly blue — then the fights that are left are within the blue,” Teske said of Democratic races. “So the money and the attention is going to get funneled there.”

But that might change if Republicans “put together a more competitive set of candidates across the state” that gives them a shot at winning the legislature or the governor’s office, he said.

House District 6 is full of engaged Democrats, said Rep. Steven Woodrow, who represented the seat before the boundaries were redrawn in 2022. He now represents House District 2, which includes Washington Park, and is not running for reelection. He described the primary as a microcosm of the broader moderate-vs.-progressive fight within the party.

“That rift is somewhat based on policy differences, no doubt, but it’s also largely based in approach and philosophy regarding change and operating within the system that we have,” he said.

Woodrow, who has not endorsed either Camacho or Halpern, said it made sense that outside groups who’d backed Camacho before would defend him now. They fought hard to land Camacho in the seat back in 2024. Why would they pull back the next cycle?

“I don’t begrudge folks for trying to protect the gains they feel they’ve made,” he said.

But the cost has been staggering, and voters have noticed. Two who spoke to The Post pointed out how physically large this year’s mailers have been. Others criticized their mysterious origins.

“What is wrong with us?” lamented Elizabeth Pace, a longtime District 6 resident and Democratic voter. “We have lost (our way), even in this small, liberal, progressive area of town. It����ap very discouraging.”

She supports Halpern but earlier backed Camacho and gave money to Epps’ 2022 opponent, Katie March. She said she resented the crush of attack ads, and she got a knot in her stomach even when she saw negative ads against Camacho.

“It’s negative to the point of, I want to put this down — I don’t want to see this anymore. I will reject the premise on its face,” she said. “That is bad. That is bad for us in this little haven that we call democracy.”

But as the two-man race has progressed, the praise has masked bubbling criticism about how little daylight truly exists between their respective platforms as they vie for the party’s nomination for the November election to succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. The Republican nominee will also be decided in Tuesday’s primaries.

In separate interviews, the Democrats have sought to highlight their differences — while emphasizing their approaches and experience as difference makers.

Bennet, who has served 17 years in Washington, D.C., has underscored how his experience in the public and private sectors — including as superintendent of Denver Public Schools and working on corporate mergers for billionaire Phil Anschutz — has revolved around leading change.

Weiser, who first won office as part of the 2018 blue wave election, has countered that his experience administering his office, launching programs, and designing and enforcing regulations means he’s ready-made to lead the state.

Or, as they characterized their differences:

“In general, I’d say my approach is more ambitious than his,” Bennet said.

“I’ve got broader experience and broader plans,” Weiser said.

Each candidate has also attacked the other for what he describes as vagaries in the other’s plans.

For Democratic primary voters still trying to decide which direction to go ahead of the primary, here’s how each man describes how he’d handle some of the bigger issues facing the state. Their campaign websites — and — feature reams more information on their visions for the state and how they plan to enact those visions.

Housing and affordability

Each candidate describes housing affordability as a key hurdle for the next governor — and touts his proposal as a marquee policy for his governorship.

Weiser has set a goal of 40,000 new “attainable” homes throughout the state to ease the housing crunch. He’s promised to create a chief housing officer position and institute other changes to cut red tape and speed up the development of starter homes.

He wants to lower the cost of permitting fees for starter homes compared to those for “mega mansions,” and to work with local governments to incentivize them to encourage more starter home development. Many of those fees are set at the local level, where building permits are handled.

Renter protections also win a shout-out in Weiser’s plan, through crackdowns on so-called junk fees, accountability for out-of-state investor landlords and a ban on algorithmic rent setting.

Bennet, likewise, sets a hard goal in his housing plans: that housing shouldn’t cost more than 30% of a Coloradan’s income.

“Nobody can live a middle-class life, or save, if they’re spending 40% or 50% of their income on housing,” Bennet said.

To reach that goal, Bennet has proposed streamlining the application process for state-assisted housing projects and providing state-backed financing for private housing projects. That would be done using tools like guaranteed loans and a revolving construction loan fund.

Colorado voter guide: Stories and explainers for the 2026 primary election

He has also pitched working with state and local agencies to find land that can be sold below market rates to build affordable and workforce housing.

In a debate co-hosted by The Denver Post in May, both candidates said they did not support the “current path” pursued by Polis and state legislators, in which the state has overruled local governments or otherwise side-stepped local control on land use.

TABOR and state spending

Both Bennet and Weiser support reforms to the spending cap set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which significantly affects state budgeting each year. But neither wants to touch the constitutional amendment����ap requirement that voters decide on tax increases.

The 1992 change to the state constitution, among other things, limits growth in government spending to a formula based on population growth and inflation. A bipartisan coalition led a campaign to reset the cap in 2005, but it otherwise hasn’t been touched — despite multiple failed attempts led by Democrats over the last several years.

Democrats frequently blame the cap on the state’s fiscal woes, while Republicans often contend that any change to the cap would be a de facto tax increase.

Weiser goes a step further than Bennet in supporting reform and has pledged to lead the charge on reforming the spending cap.

Weiser doesn't have a specific goal of eliminating the cap, raising the cap or doing something else. But he's said he’d hold a series of town hall events across the state to hear from Coloradans about what to do.

He’d then bring that proposal to the ballot box, likely in 2028.

“I'm open to all those ideas, and there's a lot of details. And I want the public to feel a sense of buy-in, a sense of understanding — and that we can work through what's the best proposals we can come up with together,” Weiser said.

His plans would also depend on what voters do this November. The general election ballot is set to include at least one proposal — put forward by the legislature — that would exempt education spending from the spending cap. Backers of a second proposal, which would shift to a graduated income tax, are gathering signatures now to place it on the ballot.

Both Bennet and Weiser support the education spending proposal.

Bennet did tie the state’s year-in, year-out fiscal crunch of recent years to broader problems.

"Colorado is in desperate need of a 10-year agenda,” Bennet said. “We need a strategic vision for how we're going to address the fiscal crisis our state is facing, how we're going to invest in the long term in our education system, how we're going to wrestle with the projected healthcare costs that threaten to bankrupt our government."

Education and (a green) economy

As with his housing goal, Bennet has set a clear parameter for measuring success when it comes to education and workforce development. In this case: wage growth.

He has proposed providing access to return-on-investment data for early childhood and K-12 education as well as higher education and training programs. He also wants to raise teacher pay and make it easier to become licensed. For students, Bennet envisions making sure every high school graduate is ready for post-K-12 life through improved access to college classes, a year of career preparation and summer apprenticeships.

Bennet has proposed a cap-and-invest program that would steer the state economy toward a greener future. He would enlist Colorado leaders to design and implement the program, in hopes of giving businesses “a predictable and reliable, market-based path to comply with emissions reduction requirements in an economically efficient manner.”

Money raised from the program would go to pollution reduction and clean energy technologies to help the state hit .

Weiser wants to create a “cradle-to-career” pipeline that spans from early childhood education to job training. The education side includes promises to raise teachers' wages and provide down payment support; to expand universal preschool and boost youth mental health services; and to create a ColoradoCorps that would help young adults enter the fields of teaching, law enforcement, nursing, counseling and firefighting.

"What I want to do is make sure we've got the wind at the back of everyone who is building a business, and that our state is working to make it easier for those businesses to get built ... and this is a place where people want to build a future," Weiser said.

Weiser also wants to continue Polis’ push for geothermal energy, while investing in battery storage to take advantage of solar and wind energy.

Healthcare and drugs

When it comes to improving people's health, Weiser has laid out a goal of establishing universal access to primary care. To accomplish that, he wants to expand the state employee health plan to include teachers and school districts and, possibly, small businesses.

He would also invest in the state’s existing Colorado Option on the health insurance marketplace. For prescription drugs, Weiser said he would crack down on hidden fees charged by pharmacy benefit managers and join multistate purchasing pools to buy pharmaceuticals.

Weiser has promised to fight surprise billing, price collusion by drug companies, and corporate ownership and consolidation of medical practices.

Bennet describes his healthcare aim as creating a "Colorado Public Option," a common shorthand for allowing people of all stripes to buy into public health insurance. On his campaign website, he describes his program as a bridge for Coloradans who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford coverage on the individual insurance marketplace.

In an interview when he unveiled the plan, Bennet set the household income limit at 200% of , or $66,000 for a family of four. Medicaid now covers families making up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

Like Weiser, Bennet wants to allow other entities, including county governments and people between the ages of 25 and 35, to be able to buy into the state employee health plan. He also wants to remake Medicaid to pay providers based on the quality of care rather than the number of procedures they perform.

But with eight large construction projects underway, another eight coming, not to mention a Bus Rapid Transit corridor planned for Colorado Boulevard, the neighborhood faces a gauntlet of disruptions on its way to transformation.

Parking, long a challenge, has tightened as multiple blocks get redeveloped. Cars face a good chance of getting covered in construction dust, and some stores require navigating a maze of barriers to reach.

Getting in and out, or just around, the district, has become tougher, including for workers.

“Employees in hospitality, retail and other supporting industries by and large do not live in or near Cherry Creek,” said Nick LeMasters, CEO and president of the Cherry Creek Alliance. “For many, housing is unattainable in nearby neighborhoods. Compounding the problem is limited transit service.”

The Colorado Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit project, which is currently planned to stretch along a 7-mile corridor from 40th Avenue down to either Yale or Hampden avenues, should eventually make it easier to reach the area via transit.

But if the BRT along Colfax Avenue offers a guide, adding additional transit stations and rebuilding Colorado Boulevard could prove highly disruptive and snarl traffic for years.

Wishing to avoid that headache, the this month in favor of a “no build option” through its city limits.

Yet, all of those can be viewed as growing pains toward maturity.

Unlike Downtown and the Denver Tech Center, Cherry Creek isn’t worrying about what to do with nearly empty office buildings or how to fill large stretches of vacant storefronts.

The Cherry Creek submarket has an office vacancy rate of 10.5%, but in Cherry Creek North, where the heaviest construction is underway, the rate is closer to 1.9%, according to the , which the Alliance released on Friday.

Downtown Denver is struggling with vacancy rates closer to 40%, while the metro area is just under 30%, according to CBRE. Some of Downtown’s most prominent office towers are selling at discounts of 90% or more. Some may eventually need to be torn down.

By contrast, Cherry Creek has become a model of how to balance residential, retail and work, with 12,600 residents, 16,829 employees and 16.8 million visitors last year, according to the report.

Cherry Creek generated $119 million in tax revenues for Denver last year, up 3.9% from 2024. It now accounts for about $1 in every $20 of retail spending in the city.

That success has drawn attention and investment. Cherry Creek has welcomed about a dozen major developments in the first half of this decade, and has another eight under construction through 2028.

They represent a mix of office, retail and apartments, with a sprinkling of luxury condos from a new Waldorf Astoria Residences, Colorado’s first, at 185 Steele St.

The largest project now going up is Cherry Lane at 2375 E. 1st Ave., with 380 apartments, 132,655 square feet of retail, and nearly 50,000 square feet of office space.

UMB Financial, which has been a downtown fixture on the southeast corner of Broadway and 17th Avenue for more than three decades, plans to relocate there.

“Cherry Creek offers a strong mix of walkability, dining, retail and amenities that support work-life integration and make the area attractive to both current and prospective associates and clients,” said UMB Financial’s Chairman and CEO, Mariner Kemper.

Although UMB is and will remain based in Kansas City, Mo., Kemper chose to live in Denver and build a flagship office here in the early 1990s.

Although the area lacks downtown’s transit options, Cherry Lane will have dedicated parking, and the neighborhood provides “unique and meaningful benefits,” Kemper added.

As large as Cherry Lane is, even larger projects are planned later this decade.

Demolition began in March on the west side of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in the area that used to host Elway’s and the Container Store.

Cherry Creek West could add 830 apartments, 600,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of retail in two phases.

Taller buildings are going up, and things are looking up. And yet Cherry Creek is also vulnerable as it grows. A sense of worry about what might come next was a theme on Friday morning as the Alliance hosted a breakfast to discuss its report.

Taxed into leaving

Willy Walker, chairman and CEO of Walker & Dunlop, one of the nation’s top commercial real estate mortgage servicers, moved to Denver during the pandemic.

Like Kemper, he chose to make Denver his home, even though his company is based in Bethesda, Md. He spends most of his days traveling, squeezing in The Walker Webcast when he can each week.

“For the last two years, the narrative in every single meeting is ‘What’s going on in Denver?'” said Walker, whose public company oversees a $144 billion mortgage servicing portfolio spread across 7,000 properties.

Once a popular destination for workers and businesses relocating, the region is now experiencing domestic outmigration. That has resulted in a temporary oversupply of apartments.

Metro Denver had the second biggest decline in apartment rents last year after Austin, which has made it harder for multifamily investors to earn a return, said Walker, who was the keynote interview on Friday when the Alliance released its report.

But unlike Austin, which got ahead of itself, Denver appears to have veered off the race course.

Investments in the state have increasingly become the problem children in portfolios, Walker said. And it doesn’t help that Denver and Colorado are viewed as having a heavier regulatory hand and less friendly business climate.

Under Mayor Michael Johnston, Denver has done better at providing shelter to people living on the street, has made a serious dent in crime, and is speeding up approval times for developments, Walker said.

Walker said he has told a positive narrative as much as he can. But that has become harder as the state looks for ways to fill budget shortfalls.

One ballot measure referred by the state legislature would weaken the refunds taxpayers receive under the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights. But more worrisome for Cherry Creek and wealthier areas is from The Bell Policy Center.

“Protect Colorado’s Future” would take Colorado’s flat 4.4% state income tax rate and replace it with a five-bracket system. Most residents will pay less in state taxes, but those earning $500,000 a year or more could face a higher tax rate of between 7.4% to 8.4% if the measure passes in November.

Matt Joblon, CEO of BMC Investments, a leading developer in Cherry Creek, said Colorado could follow down the path of Washington state.

After that state passed a 7% tax on long-term capital gains above $250,000, its wealthiest resident, Jeff Bezos, relocated to Miami, said Joblon, who shared the stage with Walker.

Bezos regularly sells shares from his large stock holdings, and his wealth is large enough to move the needle. His relocation to Florida cost Washington and Seattle $1.8 billion in lost revenues in 2024 and 2025, Joblon said.

Rather than backing off, Washington’s state legislature this year passed a 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1 million, and has debated putting a 1% wealth tax on portfolios above $250 million.

Those initiatives have contributed to an outflow of wealthy residents to states with more favorable tax policies. Rather than bridging shortfalls, both Seattle and Washington now face more difficult fiscal predicaments, Joblon said.

Likewise, Colorado risks driving away its wealthiest residents with higher income tax rates, said Walker. With his children out of the house, he said he isn’t being held back.

And if there is a Denver neighborhood vulnerable to a flight of wealthy residents, it would be Cherry Creek North, where the median listing price on a home is $3.15 million.

Joblon said he and Walker spent 90 minutes talking to Chris deGruy Kennedy, president and CEO of The Bell Policy Center, about their concerns.

“If you get rid of TABOR and if you see income taxes grow, you will kill Colorado,” Joblon warned. “People will move, people will leave here, you will lose your tax base.”

But Kennedy, reached Friday afternoon, said Initiative 195 is an attempt to address serious budget shortfalls that will harm the state’s most vulnerable residents if not addressed.

As of 2023, there were just over 15,000 taxpayers, single and joint, who made more than $1 million per year. That group had $3.29 million on average in taxable income.

Their state taxes would go from an average of $144,700 to $252,285 at the proposed tax rate of 7.67%, he calculates.

Those earning between $500,000 to $1 million per year would see their state income taxes rise from an average of $27,764 to $31,369.

“I was disappointed that they were exclusively focused on the impact of tax rates on the very wealthy and that they paid lip service at best to the challenges with the state’s Medicaid budget and what the cuts mean for rural health care and the families of severely disabled kids,” Kennedy said.

Walker’s alternative is to obtain the revenues needed from higher taxes on assets, which can’t pick up and leave, rather than from people, who can.

But Kennedy counters that proposals to increase sales and property taxes would “put a huge burden on the bulk of hard-working Coloradans in a way that would exacerbate the cost-of-living struggles.”

With hundreds of high-end apartments and condos planned in the years ahead, November’s election could prove a pivotal one for Cherry Creek’s future direction, as well as those who would benefit from higher state tax revenues.

The budget limited much of what lawmakers could accomplish in the 120-day annual session, which ended Wednesday night. Philosophical differences — despite Polis overseeing unified Democratic control of the Capitol throughout his tenure — killed more efforts.

But Polis, whose final term ends early next year, will also leave office having checked off some issues that have lingered for years.

“I’m so proud of everything we’ve done so far,” the governor said Thursday during a post-session event. “It����ap been really a great honor to work with you all.”

Here are several takeaways from this year’s session.

‘Must-fix issues’ get focus

Lawmakers finally ended the two-year debate over artificial intelligence regulations, while passing a bipartisan measure that attempts to ease the state’s ongoing problems with criminal defendants who are deemed too incompetent to proceed in the criminal justice system.

The majority Democrats passed bills intended to curb the federal government����ap impacts on the state. They also advanced a smaller package of housing bills — including one that would give money to affordable developers and cities working on transit infrastructure and another intended to ease the rising cost of homeowner’s insurance.

“We tackled the must-fix issues facing us,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie said Thursday. “… And we did it all with federal attacks and a billion-dollar deficit nipping at our heels.”

In past sessions, the budget served as something of a legislative sun. Legislation and lawmakers revolved around it in a predictable, if not always passive, pattern. This session, though, the budget felt more like a black hole.

Very few bills with even a modest price tag survived its horizon, limiting lawmakers’ ambitions. And the weight of the cuts it required sapped both the lawmakers who drafted the budget and the broader legislature as a whole.

Because of those dire fiscal straits, the 2026 session lacked the sweeping policy debates of prior years. Some of the most consequential debates — over data centers, immigration enforcement, tax policy and more — ended either with bills dying or being heavily amended. And as they strained to find ways to respond to President Donald Trump, the Democrats who control the chamber wrestled with the limits of their own power and of their own unity.

Lawmakers passed bills requiring college campuses to stock abortion pills and banning pet stores from selling cat and dogs. They worked to ease mounting prison population issues. They made it easier to sell homemade food and, in a contentious vote, made it harder for farmworkers to get overtime pay.

But after successive years of the Democratic majority largely rallying around gun control and abortion proposals, Democrats this year had fewer marquee red-meat policies around which to coalesce.

Instead, the 2026 session felt at times like a legislature catching its breath.

Case in point: While lawmakers passed a bill making it easier for nonprofit organizations to build housing, two other measures in Polis’ yearslong land-use reform push died for lack of support. One bill’s sponsors cited a legislative land-use fatigue — and a desire to slow down while recently approved policies go into effect.

Polis puts stamp on final session

While Colorado won’t know for weeks what the final veto tally is, several lawmakers expected Polis to break his personal record for the number of vetoed bills — 11 last year. More than a dozen are rumored to be on his shortlist for axing, after several more were voluntarily killed or amended to avoid the gallows.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was north of 20 (vetoes),” Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat, said.

On Thursday, Polis wouldn’t say how many bills he might reject. He said he’d defer to his usual multi-tiered analysis to determine if the bills are “good for Colorado” before signing or killing them.

Several lawmakers have been explicit about waiting for the next governor to run bills that Polis opposes. Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat, said he had delayed some bills related to Colorado River usage because he couldn’t reach an agreement with the Polis administration. The two Democratic contenders to be the next governor, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, are more aligned on needing to be proactive about likely cuts, Roberts said.

“You can sense that there’s a change in mood coming in this building, knowing there’s going to be a transition on the first floor,” Roberts said.

Republicans have found plenty of reason to criticize Polis, and did so again this year. House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, a Colorado Springs Republican, joked that Polis’ penchant for self-identifying as a libertarian mostly serves to anger libertarians for “damaging the brand.”

But he appreciates when the governor has broken with the Democratic majority.

“He has vetoed some really bad bills, and he has been kind of a backstop in certain cases,” Caldwell said.

Budget misery — again

Lawmakers walked into the Capitol in January knowing the budget outlook was bad. As the session progressed, the prognosis only worsened.

For the third time in two years, lawmakers needed to find some $1 billion in program cuts and new revenue to balance the budget. The deficit sucked much of the policymaking air out of the Capitol.

“For the most part, all of us came in here knowing that was the reality, and we were willing to make the choices that we needed to do to get (a balanced budget) done,” Roberts said. “But it definitely made some of the bigger policy ideas or aspirations that some of us may have had more challenging or outright impossible.”

Lawmakers raised tuition for state universities, took an axe to Medicaid and dipped into the state’s savings account to bridge the budget gap. But they were able to preserve some programs, such as Medicaid coverage for immigrant children, and keep K-12 education funding even.

“At the end of the day, even though it was really, really hard, I think we got to as good of a place as we could have gotten. And we did it without a lot of drama,” said Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat on the budget committee.

But this is likely only the latest in a series of deep cuts to balance the state budget. Medicaid costs continue to outpace overall budget growth and what����ap allowed under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, as do prison costs — challenges that will likely define the next governor’s first budget and the next Joint Budget Committee’s work.

Before the next batch of elected officials get to work, voters will have at least one chance to directly weigh in. Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 135, a referred measure for the November ballot that would exempt education funding from the TABOR formula used to set state spending caps. It would direct extra revenue — billions of dollars over the next decade — to education. The original version would have freed up money for other state spending priorities, but sponsors narrowed the measure to keep it education-specific.

But the measure, if passed, would also essentially eliminate TABOR refunds, such as they exist after the state uses excess money for other tax credits, for the foreseeable future — drawing sharp opposition from Republicans.

Good year for businesses, law enforcement

Moments after ending his final post-session news conference, Polis signed the AI bill, a negotiated settlement that eased requirements that tech companies had blasted as burdensome. After that, he signed a bill requiring the state to conduct regular reviews of rules and regulations, a priority for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

“This is a big step in good government, efficiency and making Colorado more competitive,” the governor said, “and taking a look at Colorado’s laws and regulations to really make sure they’re minimizing red tape and reducing costs for the private sector and all Coloradans.”

The signings were emblematic of a particularly strong year for the broader business community. One of Democrats’ more progressive affordability-focused bills died quickly, while a bill that would have put workplace safety protections in state law fell apart on the session’s final day.

Another bill, proposing to assess fees on large businesses that don’t provide health insurance to all of their workers, failed after passing the House. Bills that would have ended business-friendly tax incentives similarly collapsed or, in one case, were amended to direct money to restaurants.

The Sum and Substance, a blog run by the chamber, wrote Thursday that the business community had entered the year with plans to ask lawmakers to “do no harm” to the private sector. Four months later, “it appears that business leaders not only reached the no-harm bar but exceeded it significantly.”

Law enforcement, which has found the Capitol increasingly hospitable after the major police reform measures from several years ago, similarly chalked up a litany of wins this time.

Opposition led by the state’s elected district attorneys torpedoed legislation that would’ve allowed Coloradans to sue federal agents for civil rights violations. Police criticism killed another immigration bill and three other measures that sought to limit law enforcement����ap ability to buy and access Coloradans’ personal information and license plate history.

The shadow of Trump

Last year, Trump’s return for a second term dominated the legislative session. As the president����ap agenda began to rapidly roll out, lawmakers responded to his actions often in real time, while also taking proactive steps in areas like elections or healthcare.

This year, Trump’s shadow still hovered over the legislature, and the dizzying pace of national and international news often made the Capitol, and the state-based debates within it, feel like a bubble.

“The world around us shaped, at times, what our agenda might have looked like,” McCluskie said. “There were immigration crackdowns, children being detained, rising political violence, chaos in Washington. And much of that led us to step up and assert our authorities as a state.”

Indeed, Democratic legislators passed bills related to vaccines, immigration enforcement and healthcare subsidies. But they were less unified in how to respond elsewhere — while facing the hard limits of their own powers.

State lawmakers can’t stop federal agents from wearing masks, for instance, so Democrats brought a bill requiring local law enforcement officers to identify themselves — and to intervene if police see a federal agent using excessive force. But that bill died in its first committee, with two Democrats voting against it.

Two more Democrats voted against the “No Kings Act” — the bill opposed by the district attorneys — which would’ve allowed Coloradans to sue federal agents for civil rights violations. The legislature instead passed a more narrow — and more legally endangered — bill that applies only to immigration agents.

Polis has also not said if he will sign that bill, as he preferred the broader version, and his opposition to another immigration bill prompted significant changes prior to its passage.

“We tried” to respond to federal action, said Brown, the Louisville Democrat. “We’ll do our best. But we can probably only cushion the blow, to some degree.”

Re: “School cellphone policies are being decided right now — with or without you,” April 26 commentary, and “DPS panel advocates phone ban in schools,” April 17 news story

Cellphones are a fact of life in our technologically sophisticated world, and public schools are responsible for teaching 21st-century skills to our youth. A total ban on cellular technology leaves our teens unprepared for the reality of career and life after graduation.

Just as “abstinence only” education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy, complete technology bans do not foster responsible cellphone use or the self-direction required of emerging adults. Many of these young adults hold jobs, drive cars, and vote in presidential elections. They are responsible cashiers, lifeguards and babysitters. They can be drafted to serve our country in a time of war, and I think we can trust them to text friends to find a lunch meet-up or use their phone to buy lunch during the weekday.

With a total cellphone ban, I wouldn’t have gotten the “I’m OK, Mom” texts after multiple school shootings and SWAT incidents, hours before any Denver Public Schools notification arrived.

Today’s youth are growing up in a world infinitely different from the one I grew up in. The responsible and appropriate use of cellphone technology should have a scaffolded approach consistent with other learning and technology objectives. Just as the educational needs and expectations of a second grader vastly differ from those of a 12th grader and the cellphone policy should be too. Please don’t completely ban phones and watches in our high schools!

Joanne Scarbeary, Denver

Vote no on SB 135 and tell legislators to ‘live within their means’

Re: “SB 135 allows us to give our kids the education they deserve,” April 26 commentary

Senate Bill 135 is a boondoggle. would reduce TABOR refunds for more uncontrolled spending. Kevin Vick pointed out in his April 26 commentary that schools lack air conditioning. And that teachers are woefully underpaid. K-12 education is specifically funded by Amendment 23 and provides an inflationary increase.

Sixty percent of my property taxes in Adams County go directly to K-12 education. Teachers receive a pension benefit that most Coloradans do not. Who wouldn’t want a guaranteed pension as part of their compensation package?

As far as maintenance, school districts should be more responsible with their funds. recently that Joint Budget Committee member Barb Kirkmeyer calls this a slush fund, and the bill does not detail how the $28.5 billion would be spent.

Colorado Medicaid has proved that the progressive leadership cannot be responsible with funds, given the fraud that has occurred in that program. And here the progressive party in charge wants more money with no accountability.

The progressives who are in charge of our government should do what Coloradans are already doing: live within their means. The answer to SB 135 is a big “No.”

Jeff Jasper, Westminster

This immigrant’s love story hits readers differently

Re: “Waiting to be together,” April 26 news story

This article is a biased piece intended to make us all feel sorry yet again for people who skirt the system and then cry foul when they are asked to live with the consequences of their decisions.

My son met an amazing Canadian woman 10 years ago while she was traveling through our country on vacation. Love ensued and they jumped through all the hoops required by our immigration policies. Was it easy? No. Even after they got married, they had to spend another year apart (and she was not even allowed to come here for a visit) before she was able to move here legally and get her green card. She is now a citizen.

When I read slanted stories like the one in The Post, I have to think, “Cry me a river! Go back to your own country and come here the legal way like so many before you.”

Michelle Murphy, Lone Tree

Kudos to your writer, Elizabeth Hernandez, for her portrayal of the story of Lucie Donovan and her ICE-detained husband, Juan, father of three; a roofer without a criminal history, who overstayed a 2018 work visa, and was swept up in an instance of ICE serving an arrest warrant upon one of his acquaintances in 2025.

Sadly, even with legal representation and despite the writer’s well-documented description of their love and marriage, this couple is necessarily making plans for what seems like a looming contingency of failure on his green card case, of voluntarily moving to Mexico.

Lord knows, America doesn’t need roofers, or special education teachers for that matter, right? There’s not much real fact or significant numbers to back the oft-repeated President Trump mantra about removing the worst, the prison rejects, the gang members and criminals, but there seem to be countless cases like Juan’s.

Peter Ehrlich, Denver

Hardware stores stocked with lifelong memories for readers

Re: “Hardware stores hold the mundane, the magical,” April 26 feature story

Every day except Wednesday and Sunday, I pull out The Post’s sports section, find the pages with the comics, puzzles, Asking Eric, and tech news, and toss away the sports. That starts my day over breakfast. On Sunday, the routine is different. I find the Life & Culture section to check Sunday night TV listings for Channel 6 and read Asking Eric before I rip off the last two pages and begin the two crossword puzzles.

This Sunday, I was waylaid on Page 1 with the feature about hardware stores, and I read it first, before TV or Asking Eric. The author is a person after my own heart. I grew up with a father and brothers who saved every little part, gadget, fastener, stored in wooden cheese boxes on a bank of shelves, all carefully labeled. A few of those boxes are still in my own garage. When I began buying houses for rentals in the mid-1980s, Hugh M. Woods was my go-to because it was smaller. I lamented when they closed the General Hardware on South Broadway because it always had the older parts I needed. Then I converted to Ace Hardware, where my motto has been “it’s an hour in Home Depot, and 10 minutes in Ace” because, after all, time is money. There is always someone to greet me and direct me if I don’t know my way. 12th Avenue Ace Hardware and Ace on The Fax are my stores, and you captured them perfectly.

Thank you for disrupting my routine. Great article!

Jessie Tramutolo, Denver

Loved your column Sunday morning about 12th Avenue Ace Hardware. Like you, that place is our go-to for all sorts of stuff. We also love Moore Lumber & Hardware in Pine Junction and its sibling in Bailey. Hardware stores are being eased out, it seems, in favor of the Home Depots of the world, and it’s a damn shame. I’m hoping that 12th Avenue will survive long past the time that we will.

Caroline Schomp, Denver

I love them too, and my husband, Dick, and I especially liked the larger Country Stores we found when living in New England. And your description of your dad in his workshop made me nostalgic for my dad and his. He made special things for my sister and me. Unfortunately no desks.

I can still smell the sawdust. Thanks for the memories.

Dotttie Lamm, Denver

Editor’s note: Lamm is a former first lady of Colorado.

Are New Mexico voters content with Democrats’ outcomes?

Re: “New Mexico gubernatorial race: Haaland’s run hits a primary snag,” April 26 news story

Reis Thebault����ap New York Times article regarding Deb Haaland’s surprise primary challenge from Sam Bregman in New Mexico’s Democrat primary for governor also put a spotlight on that state’s most dire problems.

The story stated that New Mexico has one of the highest percentages in the country of residents who are reliant on food stamps and Medicaid, one of the highest rates of violent crime, and one of the worst national rankings in education. Situations like these don’t develop overnight, but over decades of bad governance.

Since 1987, New Mexico has had three Republican governors for a combined 20 years in office, and three Democrats for another 20 years through the current term. Equal blame there, but the numbers in the state congress tell the true story. During the same period, the Democrats have held a majority in the state House of Representatives every year except the 2015-2016 legislative session. Even more amazing, in the state Senate, the Democrats have had the majority every year.

Why do the citizens of New Mexico keep voting for the same Democratic state leadership that has proved itself over 40 continuous years to be woefully inept at lifting the quality of life in their state? Maybe they should change the slogan on their license plates to The Land of the Enchanted by the Democrat Party.

Kevin Getz, Westminster

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That����ap just one example of what more than three decades of chronic school funding shortages under Colorado’s decades-old spending cap has led to. Our educators, school leadership and staff, parents, and students can give you hundreds more: teachers buying their own school supplies while also being drastically underpaid, districts forced to cut back to four day weeks, students unable to access the mental health care or resources they deserve, and parents scrambling to work with their local schools to piece together the supports they need to help their children thrive.

Senate Bill 135, and the critical school funding it represents, is about whether Colorado’s children, in every kind of public school, in every corner of this state, get the investment they deserve.

A recent Denver Post opinion piece claimed that SB 135 is a backdoor attack on taxpayers dressed up in the language of helping kids. I want to be direct: that claim is factually incorrect, it����ap politicians playing politics with children’s futures, and it badly misses the point of what is actually at stake.

The truth is, this measure is a targeted, structural update to an outdated limit initially set in 1992, more than 30 years ago. Let that sink in. Given the extreme amount of growth and change the state has experienced, our schools are burdened by an arbitrary cap set more than a quarter-century ago.

Let’s start with the facts. This measure does not raise the tax rate, not even by one percent. Coloradans will not pay more than they do today. It simply allows Colorado to use all revenue it already collects instead of paying some as TABOR refunds.

Equally inaccurate is the claim that this would take away TABOR refunds forever. That is simply not true. The measure raises the revenue cap. When Colorado’s economy grows, and revenues exceed the new cap, refunds remain on the table, just like they always are.

Every student in Colorado is underfunded by roughly $4,000 per year. That adds up to a $3.5 billion to $4 billion annual shortfall for our public schools, putting Colorado near the bottom nationally in teacher pay. As a result, educators are leaving the profession, classrooms are overcrowded, and mental health counselors and other critical supports are disappearing.

The tragic part is our state has the money; what we lack is the ability to use it, because of an outdated rule written when the internet was barely a concept and Colorado’s population was millions of people smaller than it is today.

Most importantly, Colorado voters would make the ultimate decision.

: it refers the policy outlined above to the November 2026 ballot, which, if voters approve, would allow the state to retain revenue it already collects and invest it in K-12 education first. This measure also relieves pressure on the broader state budget by leaving more funds available for priorities like Medicaid, behavioral health, infrastructure, and public safety.

The measure will provide stable, predictable increases in education funding of up to 2 percent annually over 10 years, and mandates a yearly public audit so Coloradans can see exactly where every dollar goes. That����ap not a “paltry” amount. In good economic times, that����ap hundreds of millions of dollars each year for upgrading classrooms, boosting teacher pay, improving security, and enriching learning in our schools. It is a structured, transparent investment in our kids and our communities.

That����ap why this measure has such a broad base of support. The Colorado Education Association is joined by Stand for Children, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the Public Education and Business Coalition, and more because Colorado’s students cannot afford more years of the same structural underfunding.

The critics of SB 135 are missing the bigger picture. This is not about politics. This is about whether a child sitting in a sweltering Denver classroom in August, or a rural school that has cut its counseling staff for the third year in a row, or a teacher who finally left the profession because she couldn’t make rent, will finally get the support they need.

This bill gives voters the chance to answer that question. I believe they will say yes, and I hope you join me in supporting this common-sense measure so our kids and our grandkids can benefit from the quality education they deserve.

Kevin Vick is the president of the Colorado Education Association.

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