Free Republic

Colorado’s pension plan is on track to be fully funded by 2055 — 14 years after the 2041 target date set by the Colorado Legislature in 2010. Now, lawmakers will need to decide if they want to stick to the 2041 target date, or agree that it will take longer than they planned for the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association to have the money to pay for the promised benefits to PERA’s 529,000. The probability of the financial projections, as well as other variables, were discussed today with members of the Colorado Legislative Audit Committee, who heard the results of...

Nearly a third of the innovative health insurance plans created under the Affordable Care Act will be out of business at the end of 2015, following announcements Friday that plans in Oregon and Colorado are folding. In just the past week, four co-ops, as the nonprofit plans are known, have decided or been ordered to shut down. Their demise means that eight of the 23 co-ops in existence a year ago will be unavailable to consumers shopping for 2016 coverage through insurance marketplaces created under the ACA

With the mainstream media, at least the majority that is left of center, flooded with story after story touting Obamacare's success, the news coming this morning from Denver that Colorado's largest nonprofit health insurer and participant in that state's insurance exchange Colorado HealthOP is abruptly shutting down, forcing 80,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016, was a slap in the face for the Obama administration's crowning achievement. According to AP, the health insurer announced Friday that the state Division of Insurance has de-certified it as an eligible insurance company. That's because the cooperative relied on federal support, and...

Colorado's biggest nonprofit health insurer announced its closure Friday, forcing nearly 83,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016. Colorado HealthOP announced Friday that the state Division of Insurance has de-certified it as an eligible insurance company. That's because the cooperative relied on federal support, and federal authorities announced last month they wouldn't be able to pay most of what they owed in a program designed to help health insurance co-ops get established. The Colorado announcement makes the co-op the seventh in the nation to collapse. Similar nonprofit insurers have already failed in Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa/Nebraska, Nevada, New York...

Drillers in a few of the biggest shale plays in the country are set to scale back their oil production dramatically next month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s forecast released Tuesday. The EIA said in its Drilling Productivity Report that overall U.S. oil production would fall 93,000 barrels per day to 5.12 million bpd total in November, the largest decrease recorded in the agency’s data going back to 2007. The drop would also mark the seventh-straight month of production pullbacks. Three of the largest U.S. shale plays — the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Niobrara — together could lose...

Once again, the EPA, rather than preventing pollution, is causing toxic spill at a mine in Colorado. Last August 5th it was the Gold King Mine, and the 3 million gallon spill polluted the Animas River. This time, it was the Standard Mine, near Crested Butte, and 2000 gallons of wastewater flowed into a nearby creek. And the EPA, once again, is guilty of misconduct.

Once again the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] has failed to notify the appropriate local officials and agencies of the spill in a timely manner.” These are the words of U.S. Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO) of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in response to another toxic spill resulting from EPA activities at an abandoned mine in western Colorado. According to the Denver Post, an EPA mine crew working Thursday at the Standard Mine in the mountains near Crested Butte, triggered another spill of some 2,000 gallons of wastewater into a nearby mountain creek. Supporting Tipton’s remarks to Watchdog Arena, the Denver Post...

A female high school student awaits a disciplinary hearing and could face expulsion for wearing a Halloween costume to school that prompted officials to lock down the building Wednesday. An unnamed female student was spotted in the hallway at Pueblo County High School early yesterday morning wearing a gas mask and trench coat, and a classmate reported her to school officials, The Pueblo Chieftain reports. The teen was hauled to the office where she was interrogated by the police, who also placed the school on lockdown for about an hour.

The controversy over the Confederate flag is hitting close to home for a Pueblo couple. Police are investigating, after someone burned a flag hanging outside their home, and damaged their property. Police say the Rebel flag hanging in their front yard was burned and the markings KKK were painted on their mailbox and home. Eddie Adkins says he's not a racist, but now he fears for his family's safety. "I'm scared to go to sleep 'cause what if it's my house that gets burned. Pueblo's getting pretty bad," he said.

As the weeks go by it is becoming increasingly apparent that a profound disconnect exists amid a very large portion of the current year electorate regarding the goals and objectives of the apparatus we call the GOPe. The group within the Republican party apparatus affectionately known as the “establishment”, or GOPe, does not now – nor do they ever – consider the progressive side of the political continuum, Democrats, as their enemy. The enemy of the GOPe is the conservative base within the republican party. f the GOPe lose a presidential election to a progressive democrat nothing amid their sphere...

Liberal readers have scoffed at my repeated warnings about the dangerous prospect of an enemy combatant dump on American soil. Over the years, I've flagged the Obama administration's scouting forays in Illinois, Kansas and South Carolina. Now, the White House is considering my adopted home, Colorado, as the new digs for the dregs of Gitmo. If there was ever a time for Coloradans of all political stripes to unite under the "Not in My Backyard" banner, this is it. The feds have already polluted our waters in the name of protecting us. Nobody at the EPA has paid any price...

Two allotments delayed pending more studies. A coalition of environmental groups have forced public land managers to delay a grazing permit decision on Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Grand Canyon Trust, Western Watershed Project, Wild Earth Guardians, National Resource Defense Council, Wildlands Defense, the Sierra Club and Durango-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness collectively filed a 27-page protest against the proposed Flodine and Yellow Jacket grazing allotments on the monument ... they want the two allotments permanently closed to grazing ... The groups challenged a recent decision plan by the BLM to issue 10-year terms for the allotments, located...

Six men were arrested this week after local and federal authorities targeted an elaborate illegal marijuana grow that covered a full mile of federal land, adjacent to Colorado Highway 141 at the Dolores River and near the Mesa and Montrose county lines. All totaled, 153 pounds of marijuana were hauled away in recent days by federal authorities, who boated it in trash bags from one side of the Dolores River to the other. Leonel Olaguez Cabrales, 22, Angel Guzman Gutierrez, 31, Sergio Enrique Arevalo Portillo, 26, Jose Eleno Rodarte Garcia, 38, Eduardo Arias Torres, 27, and Juan Mejia-Vasquez, 41, were...

The Democratic Colorado legislator who was the swing vote on the failed construction-defects reform bill earlier this year will not have the opportunity to cast a second vote on the subject as a member of the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Gunbarrel, announced Thursday that she will drop the size of the state Legislature's so-called “kill committee” from 11 members to nine for the 2016 legislative session and will remove state Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, from the committee as a result. ... House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, also must remove one Republican...

Health insurance provider Colorado Access is going to cut Medicare coverage for the coming year. As a result of the move around 5,500 senior and disabled customers will have to look for alternatives. Chief operating officer of Colorado Access, Matt Case has said that the Denver-based nonprofit will also let go 83 employees who were a part of Colorado Access Medicare and its subsidiary Access Health Colorado. Besides this, extra 40 openings will remain unfilled. Case said that Colorado Access has also drawn down administrative expenses, cutting down the salaries of its executive teams. Case said, “While it's never easy...

Whole Foods will stop selling products made using a prison labor program after a protest at one of its stores in Texas. The company said the products should be out of its stores by April 2016, if not sooner. Whole Foods said it has sold tilapia, trout and goat cheese produced through a Colorado inmate program at some stores since at least 2011. Michael Silverman, a Whole Foods spokesman, said the company had sourced the products because the program was a way to "help people get back on their feet and eventually become contributing members of society."

-snip- Family members say Maddux was bright and doing well in school and not sure why he went into the cabin. -snip

Republican attempts to recruit a well-known challenger for a Colorado Senate race suffered a setback Wednesday when a prominent prosecutor said he wouldn’t run against Democrat Michael Bennet. George Brauchler, lead prosecutor in the case against convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes, responds to questions during an interview Friday, Aug. 14, 2015, in Centennial, Colo. Brauchler said that the jury's refusal to sentence Holmes to die for one of the worst massacres in the country's history does not mean the public is growing wary of capital punishment because only a single juror blocked the execution. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)Arapahoe County District...

Bowie Resource Partners plans to lay off nearly 100 people at its Bowie #2 Mine near Paonia in the latest setback to coal employment in the North Fork Valley. The company said Tuesday that it anticipates laying off 78 workers and 19 contractors from the mine, where 181 full-time employees and 19 contractors work now. ... it is continuing to evaluate the market for the mine’s coal after losing a contract to sell to the Tennessee Valley Authority a year ago. The loss of that contract caused Bowie to eliminate about 150 jobs at that time. Bowie operates three underground...

Despite a long process involving collaboration between local officials the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Western Colorado, the federal land agency is proceeding with the closure of roads that have been traveled for 50 or more years. The road closures comprise a portion of the BLM’s Resource Management Plan (RMP) for Mesa County, of which, 73 percent is controlled by the federal government . ... public roads, used by off-roaders, hunters, farmers, ranchers and, during wildfire season, firefighting crews. ... Jody Green, a member of Public Lands Access Association and long-time activist working to preserve access into federally-managed lands,...