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April 2008
Senator drops plan to add $72-a-year fee on old cars
DENVER (AP) — A proposal to raise fees on older cars to pay for fixing highways is being scrapped but lawmakers are still trying to find a way to raise money to pay for bridge repairs.
Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, said today that a revamped proposal, which could come as early as Thursday, would eliminate a provision requiring the drivers of older cars to pay a total of $75 a year to keep their car on the road. Right now, they pay $3.
He declined to provide any other details about possible changes. Previously, he had said he was also considering lowering the two other proposed fees in his bill — a $25 charge tacked onto car registration fees and a $6-a-day fee on rental cars.
Tapia acknowledged that possible changes might only bring in enough money to focus on bridge repairs but, with only about a week left in the legislative session, he said it would be worth starting there.
“Even if we did that, I believe we would have accomplished something,” he said.
Even though Republicans have criticized the largely Democratic proposal some GOP lawmakers have also been involved in talks to reach a compromise on how to come up with money to pay for bridge repairs.
Sen. Josh Penry, R-Fruita, said there is no bipartisan support for raising car fees but Republicans have proposed using a projected increase of $100 million in severance tax revenue next year to pay for roads.
Another Republican proposal involves the annual one-percent increases in education funding required under Amendment 23. Those increases will end after 2010 and the GOP has proposed redirecting that money toward roads.
Penry acknowledged that it would be easy for Republicans to “make political hay” by denouncing majority Democrats for backing fee increases to pay for roads but he said there is a need for more transportation dollars.
“There are also real needs out there that responsible leadership requires us to solve,” he said.
In addition to car registration fees, Colorado drivers pay a tax based on the value of their cars each year. The tax gradually declines as the car ages and drops to a flat fee of $3 after 10 years.
Under the current measure (Senate Bill 244), drivers of cars currently 10 years and older would be exempted from the $75 a year payment but cars that hit the 10 year mark in the future would have to pay a $72 fee in addition to the $3 ownership tax payment.
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Colorado resolution compares Indians’ deaths to Holocaust
DENVER (AP) — The Colorado Legislature passed a resolution today comparing the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world.
The nonbinding measure passed 22-12 in the Senate and 59-4 in the House after some lawmakers protested that it unfairly condemned all Europeans for injustices against Indians.
The resolution says Europeans intentionally caused many American Indian deaths and that early American settlers often treated Indians with “cruelty and inhumanity.”
It specifically mentions the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation in 1838 and the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in Colorado. It also refers to deaths due to disease that were intensified by forced migrations, food deprivation and enslavement by Europeans. Senate Joint Resolution 31 was approved after the recent passage of annual resolutions backing Holocaust Awareness Week and remembering the deaths of Armenians in modern day Turkey from 1915 to 1923.
Sponsor Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said a resolution in honor of American Indians was long overdue.
“Colleagues, this resolution is a recognition that up 120 million indigenous people have died as a result of European migration to what is now the United States of America,” said Williams, a Comanche Indian.
Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, said the resolution painted all Europeans with a broad brush. He recalled how his grandfather traveled unarmed around New Mexico in the early 1900s and how he later invited lawmaker Manuel Lujan to stay with his family because he had been the target of racist death threats.
“There’s no way I can vote for this resolution,” McElhany said.
Sen. Paula Sandoval, D-Denver, said the resolution wasn’t meant to blame all Europeans. She compared it to the language about Germans that lawmakers used when they spoke Tuesday in support of a Holocaust resolution.
Members of a group of American Indians who came to the Capitol to watch the vote said they wanted recognition of what happened to their ancestors.
“It’s nothing personal to the people of today but we have to recognize the past,” said Theresa Gutierrez, who works with American Indian students at the University of Colorado in Denver.
A resolution formally apologizing to American Indians for centuries of government mistreatment was passed by the U.S. Senate in February but has not cleared the House.
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Proposal would ease ban on guns in national parks
WASHINGTON (AP) — Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed new regulations today that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon in some national parks and wildlife refuges.
The new rules would allow someone to carry a loaded weapon in a park or wildlife refuge only if the person has a permit for a concealed weapon and the state where the park or refuge is located allows guns in parks, Kempthorne said.
Colorado State Parks spokeswoman Clare Sinacori said Colorado allows concealed weapons in state parks, as long as a person has a valid concealed weapon permit and valid photo ID.
Kempthorne’s proposal would overturn a 25-year-old regulation that has restricted loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges. The regulations require that guns be unloaded and placed somewhere that is not easily accessible, such as in a car trunk.
“The safety and protection of park and refuge visitors remains a top priority for the Department of the Interior,” Kempthorne said in a statement.
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No new information in infant death case
Authorities today were withholding the details surrounding the death of a male infant reported Tuesday to the Grand Junction Police Department.
An autopsy was performed on the infant Wednesday, but new information won’t be released until additional testing has been completed, according to the Mesa County Coroner’s Office.
The baby was found dead at 868 Grand Vista Way after authorities responded to an emergency call at about 9:40 a.m.
Grand Junction Police Officer Cory Tomps said Wednesday there is neither a warrant out, nor an arrest, in the case.
The North Grand Junction home is owned by Christopher and Stacy Hite, according to the Mesa County Assessor’s Office.
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Penry questions judgment of parole board nominee
One of Gov. Bill Ritter’s nominees to the state’s parole board came under fire today as one local lawmaker questioned the judgment of the former Denver County court judge.
Sen. Josh Penry, D-Grand Junction, pressed parole board nominee Celeste C de Baca to explain why the Colorado Commission on Judicial Performance recommended that she not be retained at the polls in 1996.
“Judge C de Baca has established a serious pattern of inappropriate demeanor, lack of courtesy and lack of compassion,” the commission reported in its voter-information booklet.
“Tell us why we shouldn’t be concerned about that,” Penry said, noting a parole board exercises judgment similar to those made by a judge.
C de Baca replied that the voters disagreed with the commission’s admittedly “rare” recommendation and kept her on the bench.
She added that her decision-making abilities were never at issue.
Penry, however, noted that she refused to allow a reporter to attend a parole revocation hearing she held last year.
“There was a dust-up as recently as last year where you had refused to allow public admission into a public hearing. … Can you explain that instance?” Penry said.
C de Baca replied that the parolee, who had “mental health issues,” asked her to bar the media from the hearing.
Penry, who voted against C de Baca’s confirmation, said his questions about judgment were pertinent given the recent increase in parolees released ahead of their mandatory release dates.
According to Colorado Department of Colorado statistics, the number of prisoners released on discretionary parole from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2007 spiked from 2,813 to 5,069.
Penry said such a “significant” spike in parole releases made him especially cautious about the Senate Judiciary Committee’s role in vetting parole board nominees.
Penry and Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley, voted against C de Baca’s confirmation.
Nonetheless, C de Baca and her two peers at the hearing, Pueblo resident Becky Lucero and Denver resident Rebecca Oakes, passed out of the committee for the full Senate to consider.
— Mike Saccone
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Larimer County reopens woman’s 2004 child abuse case
Larimer County reopened a case against a Clifton woman accused of child abuse after her then-2-month-old infant was brought the hospital last year who had suffered a fractured skull, broken leg, bruises and broken ribs.
Colorado Head Public Defender Steve Colvin postponed a plea hearing today for Erin DeSpain, 24, because of a pending Larimer County case that involved DeSpain’s first child. He said both cases could be resolved under one plea agreement.
In 2004, while living in Fort Collins, DeSpain took her first child, then 2 months old, to the emergency room with a skull fracture and a broken rib, injuries that DeSpain said occurred when she stepped in a hole and slipped while carrying the baby in a car seat, according to the arrest affidavit. DeSpain said the baby fell onto the pavement, the affidavit said.
“That’s what I think happened; (the baby) landed on the pavement,” DeSpain told investigators. “Apparently (the baby) had … one rib fractured which I still to this day cannot figure out what happened.”
No charges were filed at that time, but DeSpain — who described having “baby blues” after the incident — attended eight months of parenting classes and saw a psychiatrist to give her “coping skills,” the affidavit said.
On May 17, DeSpain brought her second child, also 2 months old, to St. Mary’s Hospital after feeling the child’s back and hearing a cracking noise and “felt something move on (her baby’s) back” when she was changing the infant’s diaper, the affidavit said.
Doctors at the hospital said the baby had multiple broken ribs and found evidence that the injuries occurred on different dates, the affidavit said.
DeSpain previously pleaded not guilty in the Mesa County case, but withdrew the plea April 2. She is set to enter a plea May 28.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Tammy Eret said Larimer County might not file any additional charges against DeSpain, but the reopened case may affect possible sentencing outcomes.
DeSpain was charged with five felony counts of child abuse for incidents between March and May 2007.
“I’m glad they finally opened it back up because I thought it was child abuse when I read it,” Eret said about the injuries of DeSpain’s first child outlined in the arrest affidavit.
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Burrrr, it’s spring
Although temperatures have been reaching into the mid 70s in recent days it is still a month and a half until the official start of summer and Mother Nature is letting Grand Valley residents know that in a big way.
“We will get the cold front in here by 4 or 6 o’clock this afternoon,” said Joe Ramey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s just a normal cold outbreak of weather. It is unusual, but not freakish.”
The cold front is anticipated to deliver a high of just 50 degrees Thursday.
As the clouds roll in and the sunshine fades overnight temperatures could plunge below freezing overnight Thursday into Friday morning.
The weather service is advising anyone with swamp coolers already connected to drain water lines and those with fruit trees or fragile plants beginning to bloom to take precautions.
“Thirty-one (degrees) we don’t care, 26 and we are going to have problems,” said Bruce Talbott, manager of Talbott Farms.
Orchard growers will look to have fans active and possibly irrigation systems.
The energy given off by ice freezing will keep the fruit from being damaged, Talbott said.
“You will end up with two or three inches of ice on the ground anywhere we are doing that,” he said.
The Grand Mesa could have a fresh slathering of 6-inches to a foot of snow by Thursday.
“The nice thing about having the cooling temperatures in the spring is it slows the spring snow melt and you don’t get the big (blast) of spring snow melt,” said Connie Clementson, district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.
The cool down is welcomed on the mesa.
“The Grand Mesa is not the Grand Valley we are at 10,000 feet,” she said. “This (weather) is more representative of what we have been seeing historically on the Grand Mesa.”
Further up into the mountains anticipate deeper accumulations, especially around the Steamboat area.
Wind is also swirling in the area.
The weather service has issued a Red Flag Warning — meaning winds gusting to 40 mph, combined with low humidity could create hazardous fire conditions — today through 7 p.m. tonight.
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Two ATV riders hurt
Two people riding one all terrain vehicle were injured late Tuesday near Sled Hill in Whitewater, according to the Colorado State Patrol.
The accident happened around 8 p.m.
The two riders were taken to Community Hospital.
The ATV ‘s driver was released, but the passenger was transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital, troopers said.
Permalink | | Categories: Breaking_News
Budget-process overhaul bid dies
A proposal to open up Colorado’s budgeting process to more legislative oversight, beyond the six-member Joint Budget Committee, died in a tie vote this morning.
House Concurrent Resolution 1011 would have changed Colorado’s budget process from an annual endeavor to a biennial effort. The constitutional amendment also would have allowed more state lawmakers a seat at the table in determining where tax dollars go.
State Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said his proposal would have improved the budget process, including making the process less partisan by building the budget in non-election years.
“Hopefully depoliticizing it,” Gardner added.
Previous budget cycles during election years have been chock full of arguably partisan amendments, including one measure in 2006 to bar sex change operations for prison inmates.
No tax dollars — then or now — have ever been spent for that purpose.
That amendment, which the Joint Budget Committee members opposed, led to a series of attack ads leveled at Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction.
Gardner’s arguments, however, failed to sway a majority of his colleagues on the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee who deadlocked in a 5-5 vote.
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