POLS 304@CSU Fall 2019

              This past year the Colorado General Assembly made a big move to help decrease Coloradoans waste. The 2019 Regular Session passed a bill called the Front Range Waste Diversion Enterprise Grant Program or SB19-192. This bill was signed by Governor Polis in May of 2019. The bill created a new waste diversion grant program that will affect the Front Range communities. These communities include the counties of Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Douglas, Elbert, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer, Pueblo, Teller, and Weld and the cities and counties of Broomfield and Denver. Essentially this new law will create a fee for landfill usage. The fee will take effect in January of 2020 and there will be a board of 13-members that will oversee the grant program. The law creates the “front range waste diversion enterprise” and the enterprise gets to place a fee and collect a user fee on every load of landfill waste in the communiti...

Climate change is the crisis of our generation, and it has effects on nearly every aspect of life around the world. One of the most pressing short-term effects in Colorado is the strain placed on dams from the change in storm intensity over time. With almost 2000 state-regulated dams in Colorado, and around a quarter in areas that would cause loss of life if they failed, the Colorado state government is holding inspections on every dam over the next year. With these inspections, the state government will be able to decide how to minimize the risk of dam failure for the future. Further bills appropriating the funds to maintain and reinforce these dams are almost certain to pass, but they are not without opposition from state legislators who deny the existence of climate change. Fortunately, a dam failure hasn't happened in several decades, but that will not last forever in an era of increasingly erratic storm patterns. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, th...

Due to the prevalence of mass shootings in the United States, many states have adapted gun legislation to target the issue. Colorado is no exception. The House Bill 1177 or more commonly known as “the red flag bill” was passed this previous legislative session (Aguilar). The bill allows the court to seize firearms from individuals who are deemed a threat to themselves or to others (Aguilar). This considerable gun legislation is significant for Democrats who have advocated for gun control for years. More importantly, the passing of this bill may once again demonstrate which party has been gaining momentum in Colorado these past few years. Colorado’s legislature has generally sided to the left in recent times (Strayer 141). This is a significant shift from the more Republican leaning legislature that Colorado was previously used to (Strayer 141). Furthermore, Colorado’s House Bill 1177 is in no way addressing the issue in a very unique way. Figure 1 below demonstrates nationwide...

On November 5 th , 2019, one of the two measures placed on the ballot in Colorado was Proposition DD, giving the electorate a referendum on the legality of sports betting within the state; it also would impose a tax upon the net revenue of those establishments accepting such bets, the majority of which would provide funding for the Colorado Water Plan and the remainder of which would be used to regulate sports betting and provide services for gambling addiction. Since 1992, gambling on the outcome of most sporting events had been outlawed nationally under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, though with the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association , this Act was deemed unconstitutional, and state legislatures became free to legislate regarding sports betting and its legality. Proposition DD was put to a public ballot under the provisions of the TABOR amendment to the Colorado Constitution, a ‘Taxpayer Bill of Rights’ ...

House Bill 19-1090, or HB 19-1090 is regarding publicly licensed marijuana companies. This bill, introduced to the House in January of 2019, was signed into law in May of the same year. Essentially what this bill does is improve investment flexibility in marijuana related businesses (CO General Assembly, 2019). Prior to this bill, ownership in a marijuana based company was limited to only private companies with fifteen or less owners (Rodriguez et al. 2019).  Owners of these companies were also required to pass background checks enforced by the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division (Rodriguez et al. 2019). What this bill does is repeals multiple provisions such as requiring investors to go through a background check, prohibiting publicly traded corporations from having a marijuana license, and limits on the amount of out of state direct beneficial owners to 15 people, to name a few.  This bill went through quite the process in the Colorado General Assembly in order to be...

Colten Dudley Prof. Hitt POLS 304 Dec. 4, 2019 When one thinks of the state Colorado, gambling and sports rarely come to mind first, that is unless the sport is skiing. The state has very few casinos and is a history of sports teams that fall into the bounds of mediocre to the brink-of-greatness. That being said, Colorado does suffer from a lack of water availability, and thus, for some reason, these two elements came together to foster Proposition DD, a measure voted on in the 2019 Colorado Ballot. This measure asked voters 5 to legalize (and subsequently, tax) sports betting. The tax and fee revenue from sports betting is intended to pay for the regulation of sports betting and provide a funding source for the Colorado Water Plan and other water-related obligations. This measure, while making very little logical sense to many, won on the ballot, but not by a very large margin. As seen from this chart, provided by TheDenverChannel.com, proposition DD barely won in Colo...

V aping has become the new trend across America as a transformation from cigarettes to electronic e-cigarettes. E-cigs are battery operated, heating container that consists of the liquid nicotine. Taxation on vaping and increased taxation on other nicotine products is a priority for Governor Polis. On May 1, Governor Polis won approval in the state House and was given a hearing in the Senate all in the same day. June 20, the Legislative Counsel Staff Non-partisan Services for Colorado's Legislature, published a memorandum discussing the issues related to electronic nicotine devices. This memorandum gives us an overview of the Colorado laws and regulations on E-cigarettes. The Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS), usage is constantly monitored by the national and state level. In the Colorado state survey of 2017, 26% of high school students reported the current use of e-cigs, which put Colorado at the highest usage of nicotine in the nation. The most commo...