Homeowners association fees for people living in condominiums or other multi-unit dwellings have been increasing year after year — doubling one year only to go up again the next — and the effect is crushing. The fees make housing unaffordable, pushing out existing owners and renters, but the fees also cause property values to decline as would-be buyers balk at outrageous monthly fees on top of high housing prices.

Fees increase for many reasons, but according to recent reporting by The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi, some of the biggest increases are a result spikes in property insurance premiums.

So profound is the problem in Colorado that in 2024, lawmakers gave the Colorado insurance commissioner two years and $329,863 to study the issue and report on their findings this January.

Now is the time for Colorado lawmakers to step up and help keep existing multi-unit housing affordable. Insurance releif will also assist single-family homes in subdivisions where HOAs have a hard time insuring community buildings and recreation centers.

We fear that since 2024, matters have only gotten worse for Coloradans living in multi-family units that share insurance coverage using an HOA. The extreme example is Broomfield, where condominium owners are now paying a premium for their property insurance because of the threat of wildfire — made apparent by the 2021 Marshall Fire fire that tore through Boulder County. The Denver Post’s Aldo Svaldi found some communities where HOA fees have doubled — or more — in response. And condominium housing values have plummetted 12% in a single year.

When the report is released this month, Colorado’s leaders need to take a long, hard look at how we can protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs and the subsequent increase in HOA fees. In theory, living in a condominium should protect people from skyrocketing insurance costs. If 50 people live under the same roof, sharing that cost burden of insuring that roof should be a fraction of the impact to individual homeowners. But because of complexities in the market, that is not the case.

“What we are seeing in the market over the past 12 months is that the premium increases seem to be stabilizing, but they are stabilizing at a place that’s really high,” said Michael Conway, Colorado’s insurance commissioner. “It is imperative to try to find ways to bring more affordability into the market. There isn’t an easy button. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

Conway said that the single biggest driver of homeowner’s insurance premium increases is hail damage claims. If you have ever seen roofers going door to door after a minor hail storm in Colorado, you might have an idea what is driving the claims and the costs.

In addition to the excess and sometimes dubious roof claims in Colorado, the condominiums are uniquely burdened by a shortage of companies offering insurance policies to multi-unit dwellings, especially in large complexes that require multi-million dollar policies with complex terms.

These units are insured through the surplus lines market — an insurance marketplace that exists largely unregulated for unique or high-risk properties. The nature of the market means that policies are not reviewed or approved by the Department of Insurance. The lack of standard language and other regulation also makes it more likely that HOAs will suffer surprises about what is and is not covered by these complex agreements. Instead the system relies on licensed agents to broker the deals and take a commission.

Colorado lawmakers need to take a long, hard look at the market for insurance for complex and hard-to-insure units. We are not suggesting that Colorado establish a state-owned insurance company for such units or even that it step up regulation. That ship has sailed.

But Colorado could play the role of a broker, providing free services to residents who live in HOA communities to help them navigate these systems, shop for options and perhaps qualify for Colorado’s new insurance of last resort.

That is just one of many ideas that lawmakers should investigate after the report is released this month.

Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie, who was an author on the legislation requiring the study, said she is open to any and all suggestions.

“I’m eager to get my hands on the report in the next week or two and see what direction it might take us,” McCluskie told The Denver Post. “We should open every door and explore every option.”

McCluskie said residents in her mountain town communities are suffering from the insurance prices and are struggling to keep units insured and affordable.

Colorado lawmakers have a responsibility in 2026 to make this a top priority. The report will guide the way, but not if it sits on a shelf after it is released. There are ways to help HOAs navigate these systems and to create a fair field of competition for insurers, if only we can find the political will to make it happen.

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Arizona and California’s chief water negotiators are coming for Colorado in a blistering public pressure campaign aimed at getting upper basin states to capitulate.

In an interview with the L.A. Times, the negotiator for California accused the upper basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico of clinging to “their most aggressive and rigid dreamland legal positions.”

In an op-ed for The Denver Post, Arizona’s negotiator suggested failing to come to the table with cuts could “let slip the dogs of war.”

This over-the-top hyperbole from both men illustrates just how poorly conversations to save the Colorado River are going behind closed doors. The federal government has given the seven states that rely on the Colorado River a deadline of Nov. 11 to commit to a general compromise on water use. Obviously, a consensus agreement would be far better than the Trump administration’s Department of Natural Resources implementing its own plan.

But when it comes to protecting Colorado’s interests, we will fire back with our own hyperbole — almost everyone is hurting from water restrictions during what has been deemed a “mega drought.” California and Arizona are overdue to share in that pain.

“When you see years that are like 2020 to 2021 where (Colorado) took an over 1 million acre foot reduction, that’s not a compensated reduction. No one delivered a check and kudos,” Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado River Commissioner and our state’s negotiator, told The Denver Post editorial board in an interview this week. “We did them because Mother Nature demanded them … Part of the issue is that no shortages were taken in the lower basin until 2022; meanwhile, during the period of these guidelines, we take shortages all the time.”

Some things are non-negotiable as the states work to divvy up the water that flows down the Colorado River every year. For example, Native American tribes should face smaller cuts than other users. The U.S. government forced indigenous peoples onto often inhospitable tracts of land, and now we must make good on promised water rights and water delivery. Tribal nations must be protected. In Arizona, almost half of the water flowing through the Central Arizona Project canal goes to Native American Tribes, meaning that Phoenix and its suburbs are going to face the lion’s share of the state’s cuts.

The other non-negotiable is that Colorado will not further curtail its use of the Colorado River without major concessions from California and Arizona.

Colorado’s water use is based on a prior appropriations system, which means that every year, some junior water rights holders do not get their full allotment because there isn’t enough snowpack. Lower basin states, meanwhile, have failed to adjust their use to compensate for the drought, draining the reserves in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The upper basin states use less water than what is allotted to them in the compact, while the lower basin states use more.

We fear that for too long, water managers up and down the river have been reluctant to implement the extreme measures needed. Because the harsh truth is that municipalities can only do so much. The vast majority of the water drawn from the Colorado River goes to agriculture and commercial interests, especially golf courses, industrial and data centers, oil and gas operations, and the Imperial Valley in California. These users are the ones who will be hit the hardest by coming reductions.

Denver Water users (who get most of their drinking water from snow melt that otherwise would flow into the Colorado River) have curtailed our use by 36% since 2000 despite a boom in population growth. Today, Denver Water users consume an average of 119 gallons per capita per day. Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District customers, which serves Los Angeles, use an average of 114 gallons per capita per day.

In Phoenix, residential users consume about 92 gallons per capita per day. In Las Vegas, the water use is 89 gallons per person per day, and a substantial amount of the city’s water is recycled, meaning it doesn’t come from the Colorado River.

While LA and Denver receive similar amounts of rainfall every year, Phoenix and Las Vegas are two of the driest cities in the country. If they can reduce their use so low, so can every other city in this nation.

Deserts like Phoenix and St. George, where less than an inch of rain falls every year and the high temperatures in summer often top 110 degrees, may have to follow Las Vegas and put a moratorium on golf courses unless they find a sustainable water alternative. And no, groundwater is not sustainable.

Farmers in the Imperial Valley, who faced cuts beginning in 2020 that led to some fields being left fallow, will have to reconsider their crops, invest in water-saving irrigation systems, and possibly reduce their yield. Everyone will pay for these changes at the grocery store, whether it is the increased price of meat as the price of alfalfa hay skyrockets, or the increased price of water-hungry produce like almonds and pistachios.

A compromise between states rather than a unilateral decision by the Department of the Interior, followed by a protracted legal battle, will reduce how drastic cuts are. Using less water today could start the recharge of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both of which are nearing dead pool status and are around 30% full.

Coloradans have always been ready to do our part to save the river, but we will not further cut our use to support reckless downstream users.

Everyone can pull together — municipalities preventing unsustainable growth and development, aesthetic or non-functional turf grass must be strictly limited and our agricultural communities must be supported as they transition to water efficient irrigation systems and less water-intensive crops.

This is an emergency, and Colorado’s water negotiators are right to stand firm defending Colorado.

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Coloradans are getting crushed between hospital profits, insurance company profits and rising uncompensated care. These three insatiable drains on our health care system have broken medicine and made the cost of care for middle-class Americans who aren’t on Medicaid or Medicare unbearable.

Not all of the responsibility for this failed system falls on hospitals, but Colorado’s non-profit health care providers are uniquely positioned to be able to help during this difficult time if they embrace the charitable nature of their business.

According to The Denver Post’s award-winning health reporter Meg Wingerter, most Colorado hospitals saw a profit in 2024. But the most profitable hospitals tried to argue that their profits were untouchable because the money came not from patient care but from returns on investments — we assume that means the trusts and foundations that help support the hospital saw impressive investment gains that were reinvested into the market rather than realized and withdrawn.

UCHealth — a network of non-profit hospitals and clinics across the state affiliated with the University of Colorado — reported a $1.2 billion profit. HCA Health One, the state’s only for-profit hospital network, reported $616.8 million in profit, and CommonSpirit Health reported $22.2 million.

A spokesman for UCHealth said most of the profit came from returns on investments in the stock market, rather than from the 4% return on investment it makes from patient care and hospital operations. However, given that UCHealth is a tax-exempt system required to spend money on charitable activities, we do not think it’s unreasonable for the system to be expected to return some of that profit to its patients in the form of out-of-pocket discounts before deductibles are met.

Most hospitals already write off a huge amount of uncompensated care, and that charitable gift to the poor who are truly unable to pay and have no insurance counts toward their required charitable activities.

But we also know that hospitals like UCHealth are not spending as much of their revenue proportionally on charity care as other organizations. UCHealth does deserve credit for serving the most number of Medicaid patients and having the highest uncompensated care. But when compared to the system’s size of operations, the distinction for taking on “the largest proportion of charity care costs within the state” rests with Denver Health. Colorado’s annual report on charitable care notes that Denver Health “has the largest value for charity care costs with $88.1 million. This is three-fold more than the next largest figure of UC Health University of Colorado Hospital’s of $24 million.”

Meanwhile, Allan Baumgarten, a researcher who compiles data annually about health care in a handful of states, reported that HMOs in Colorado reported a combined net profit of $89.1 million. Yes, that seems paltry compared to the hospital profits, but remember that health insurance doesn’t actually produce anything; it is a middleman, pass-through business operation designed solely to reduce the risk of those it insures.

Ironically, HMOs are covering less and less risk. The high deductible plan ensures that unless an illness or injury requires thousands of dollars in care during a single calendar year, the insurer won’t have to cover any of the costs. And, the deductible resets Jan. 1 every year, meaning that patients can nearly meet their deductible — of say $5,000 — only to have it reset in the new year. A patient could spend $10,000 before their insurance company picks up a dime of the cost for their care.

Meanwhile, non-profit organizations are clearly misunderstanding their mission.

Obviously, we want UCHealth’s investments to grow, and not all of the gains should be realized in a single year. The hospital system is also aggressively growing and purchasing other clinics and hospitals around the state. Given the quality of care we know UCHealth provides, that is great news.

But hospitals need to be much more transparent about how much of their profits are being poured into growth and increased profitability, and how much is going to actual charitable work, like reductions in costs for low-income and middle-class patients who face crippling deductibles.

Yes, USHealth is a teaching hospital, and we know that much of its charitable work goes toward preparing the next generation of doctors and nurses. There is a shortage of health care providers in America, so we are not suggesting this work stop.

But a balance is needed when the hospital system reports $1.2 billion in profit in a single year.

Greater transparency from the state-affiliated system, and from all the nonprofit hospitals enjoying tax-exempt status, would go a long way to alleviate the bad taste patients have in their mouth when their care is completed and the bill arrives.

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Denver is at a fragile turning point, and this week we learned that the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce has seen unsustainable turnover in the last year, losing 28 of its roughly 60 employees – half its staff — since the summer of 2024.

We are concerned.

Two reporters with the non-profit, online news agency Denverite interviewed 18 people close to the Chamber about the exodus and found a troubling and recurring complaint about a “toxic culture” fostered by the Chamber’s CEO and president J.J. Ament.

That is not five people raising concerns, or even 10, but out of 25 people successfully contacted by the reporters at Denverite, 18 expressed concern. The other seven individuals described their time at the Chamber as positive or neutral. Several people were so adamant about their experiences that they bravely used their names to back stories about the bad behavior of one of the most powerful men in Denver’s business community.

And on top of that, Ament’s control at the chamber is so poor that changes to the renowned training program – Leadership Denver – led to three of 50 members of the foundation resigning in protest to what Paul Lhevine described in a letter to the Chamber as changes that do not “honor the mission we have been fulfilling for decades.” Lhevine was not one of the individuals interviewed for the Denverite story.

Finally, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade cut ties with the Chamber over what China Califf, the leader of the Small Business Development Center, described as concerns over the negative culture at the Chamber. Shortly after Califf resigned, the Small Business Development Center was moved from the Chamber to Red Rocks Community College.

That is a lot of smoke coming from the Chamber at a time when this city needs steady leadership that inspires confidence, not controversy.

The chair of the Chamber’s board says he is happy with Ament’s tenure. Mowa Haile told Denverite that the problem is a controversial but necessary restructuring of the organization, not Ament’s leadership or demeanor. Ament began requiring a 5-day in-person work week, and the Chamber’s vice-president for customer experience, Cayti Stein, said that change is what drove off a number of employees.

“The Board has confidence that the direction charted by J.J. and the leadership team best serves our members and the entire Metro Denver business community, as evidenced by the significant growth in membership over the past four years,” Haile wrote in response to questions from Denverite.

We can certainly imagine employees being disappointed about a return-to-office policy, but half of the Chamber’s staff left in the course of 15 months, Denverite found. Many Americans would be skeptical that, in this economy, so many people would be willing to leave a stable job over having to return to the office, no matter how difficult the commute or their personal circumstances.

More credible are employee stories about Ament’s abrasive leadership style, stories that Ament denies, calling himself a collaborative leader. The stories included allegations of: telling an employee who was later demoted and fired for insubordination that he didn’t care for her at a holiday party, threatening to fire employees in front of their peers, and an employee who said the organization failed to adequately address an incident where she was exposed to a nude photograph of a male colleague.

The city’s Chamber of Commerce is far more than just a marketing tool for local businesses, and now more than ever, Colorado needs the heart of downtown to thrive. The Chamber owns and rents the building it occupies. Like other landlords in downtown, it is struggling to break even despite growth in membership, relying on its foundation and other external organizations to balance the books.

While membership is certainly an important measure of the Chamber’s success – after all, those members pay the dues that keep the Chamber running – we are confident that the Chamber can find a leader who will support businesses and drive investment in the Chamber without driving off half of the staff.

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In August 2024, the Office of the State Auditor deemed the Regional Transportation District to be in good financial standing. “State audit finds RTD’s financial health stronger than many of its peers,” an RTD news release headline declared. “RTD met all financial health ratios with no warning indicators,” the former board chairman, Erik Davidson, told state lawmakers at the time. “Health ratios” were good, “cost efficiency metrics” were strong, and RTD declared itself “good stewards of taxpayers’ money.”

After such effusive declarations of financial stability, leave it to RTD to be in complete crisis barely a year later. 

Despite a record high budget of $1.5 billion, RTD is facing a mind-boggling deficit somewhere between $100 million and $400 million, and is considering dreaded service cuts. 

Such a sudden and staggering deficit might leave you wondering, how could a public agency stumble from the picture of financial health to sounding the klaxon and planning to cut service? Apparently, higher-than-anticipated maintenance and repair costs and falling sales tax revenues (which fund 70% of RTD’s spending). 

RTD director and general manager Debra Johnson compared the agency’s apparently unexpected infrastructure maintenance needs to that of an old house. 

“This is par for the course. If you lived in a home for 30 years, do you think you wouldn’t have to make some repairs?” Johnson told The Denver Post. 

But as any homeowner knows — and as lawmakers rightfully pointed out — you don’t just sit idly by and watch your house deteriorate for 30 years, then suddenly start rushing around trying to fix everything. Upkeep is an ongoing process that you budget for each and every year. 

A year ago, when the agency was not-so-humbly proclaiming itself a good steward of taxpayer dollars, was there really no forward thinking? No anticipation of hard times? It’s not like sales tax revenues were soaring last year — they were, in fact, declining, following a trend that has continued since 2022. 

Sadly, it seems apparent that we shouldn’t expect common sense to reign at RTD. After all, it’s been more than 20 years since Boulder County citizens voted for FasTracks — and we’re still waiting on our train. 

Which brings us to the crux of this issue. RTD has always been something of a shambolic agency, so their new budget woes aren’t really surprising. But a few line items in the budget have raised some serious questions.

For starters, while RTD is in a budget crunch, the agency is still sitting on about $1 billion in reserves. And a year ago, it had $1.12 billion in reserves. Reserves are important — especially now as the agency faces a deficit. But for an agency with a $1.5 billion budget, $1 billion in reserves feels like a lot of money to just be sitting on — especially for a taxpayer-funded agency responsible for providing services to the citizens of the Front Range. 

For context, the City of Denver, which has a slightly larger budget of $1.66 billion, only has $180 million in reserves. The state of Colorado, with a budget of $47.9 billion, has just $2.1 billion in reserves. So while the state of Colorado sits on 4% in reserves, RTD has 66% squirreled away. 

And here’s the rub, RTD estimates that the cost of completing the construction of Northwest Rail Peak Service — which would provide train service from Denver to Boulder and on to Longmont — would be approximately $650 million. Even adding on finishing the North Metro corridor, which would run from Denver to Thornton, would push the total cost to around $1 billion. 

Of course, even though RTD has an excessively high ratio of reserves compared to its budget, we don’t want to imply that the agency should spend every last penny on finishing the northern portion of FasTracks. That would be irresponsible. (And impossible, as some of the reserve funds are dedicated to other expenditures.)

But the implication here should be clear. From the outside, it sure looks like RTD should have been able to make a lot more progress on the promises it made to Boulder County voters. 

Especially once we add on the fact that RTD is planning to borrow $539 million to buy new diesel buses, a move that totally throws the agency’s supposed commitment to Colorado’s climate goals out the window. 

Sure, sales tax revenue is falling and ridership has never really recovered to pre-pandemic levels. But an agency with $1 billion in reserves shouldn’t be considering cutting services a year after being in complete financial health — unless something is seriously wrong in management. 

If RTD does start cutting services, things are likely to only get worse for the agency. While primarily funded through sales tax, if ridership declines due to cuts and people can no longer rely on buses and trains, that will not only hit the agency’s bottom line, it will also harm support for the agency when it comes to other sources of funding. 

If people can’t ride public transit, why would they vote to fund it? 

In the past, we have advocated on behalf of fully funding RTD because we believe in the mission of the agency. And it is true that we must do our part to ensure RTD is financially situated to meet our needs. But it is getting harder and harder to trust an agency that keeps failing to live up to its promises. 

This is all the more frustrating when you consider how imperative RTD is to our efforts to lower emissions and meet Colorado’s aspirational climate goals. As we negotiate our way toward a future of limited carbon emissions, RTD must be a daily commuting option for as many people as possible. This means we need increased ridership, expanded services and investments in new technologies. 

Instead, we have half a billion spent on new diesel buses, reneging on promises of train services and potential cuts to services. 

Next year, six seats on RTD’s board, including those representing Boulder and Longmont, will be up for election. And as it looks now, that board is in dire need of a shake-up to reinvigorate leadership and actually see to it that our transit agency meets the needs of our communities. 

We do not want service cuts. We do not need diesel buses. We want the Northwest Rail Service FasTracks promised. And we need fully funded, fully functioning mass transit for all — and we need it today. We can’t afford to wait. 

—Gary Garrison for the Camera Editorial Board

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Colorado’s high school coaches and athletic directors are clamoring for updated rules to make it easier for student athletes to transfer schools. The need for reform, they told Denver Post reporter Kyle Newman, can be found in the sad stories of teenagers who were forced to miss playing time in their varsity sport because their family’s move was deemed sports motivated and not “bona fide.”

The examples in Newman’s excellent investigation, however, only drive home for us the importance of another prohibition in Colorado high school sports — the ban on recruiting athletes.

Eaglecrest basketball coach Jarris Krapcha highlighted the problem for Newman, speaking out against the proposal that the Colorado High School Athletics Association (CHSAA) adopt a one-time free transfer for student athletes:

“The recruiting piece — the pre-enrollment contact piece — is something that CHSAA cannot police simply because they don’t have the manpower, and it’s already happening rampantly,” Krapcha said. “If you allow a one-time free transfer, it’s going to be open season on recruiting other players from other schools.”

In other words, recruiting is already happening. Coaches are — against clear policies spelled out in the bylaws of CHSAA — talking to students and their parents about enrolling with their school.

Student transfers would not be a problem if coaches were not recruiting. We want Colorado students to have choice when it comes to their education, and thankfully, our public schools no longer confine students to schools based on their zip codes. Yes, a student or his parents could be motivated to transfer or move based on athletic success of a school or promises from an athletic director, but there are a whole host of good reasons a student could transfer: to escape bullying, to access advanced coursework, or for a shorter commute.

The thought of varsity athletes who chose for healthy reasons to switch schools (absent unhealthy recruitment) being punished by a half-year loss of playing time is unpleasant to say the least.

But we know that coaches are recruiting. The top athletes in the state are not hopping from power-house program to power-house program without assurances of playing time and position, or at the very least, conversations about coaching style and practice schedules.

“I can say that violations do occur, they have always occurred, and they continue to occur today. We have unfortunately had violations this fall that have been addressed and penalized,” wrote CHSAA’s Mike Krueger in response to questions from The Denver Post editorial board about student transfers and recruitment.

“Hundreds of thousands of students, families and coaches in Colorado participate the right way, for the right reasons,” he concluded. “Our responsibility is to protect the fairness and integrity of the experience for them. It takes all of us to act with integrity, and that responsibility will not only continue, but in this day and age it will be more pronounced.”

Keeping high school athletics focused on what is most important for students — growth and development — rather than what is most important for coaches and athletic directors — winning at all costs — is critical at this moment. Many college sports, especially football and basketball, feel more like professional sports every day, and the term “student-athlete” is becoming an oxymoron even for sports that once avoided the corruption of professionalization.

So what is the solution to this intractable problem?

We urge CHSAA’s Legislative Council, a body with representatives from every league across the state, to consider shifting the focus of enforcement from the actions of students’ parents and the punishment of students to scrutiny of the behavior of coaches, athletic directors, school administrators and team boosters. Until coaches are suspended for an entire season for recruiting a student to transfer from another school, the bad behavior will continue. Until athletic directors face consequences for conversations that are clearly prohibited by CHSAA, players will continue to get recruited.

Krueger points out, correctly, that recruitment is hard to police, and he notes that CHSAA has and does impose penalties when coaches are caught cheating.

But policing recruiting can’t be any more difficult than trying to determine if a child switched schools because of his or her parents’ divorce or because he or she really wants to play for a team likely to compete in the state championship.

CHSAA’s bylaws currently emphasize analysis of the behavior of parents and de-emphasize the behavior of coaches. For example, the bylines define “broken-home” but do not actually define “recruiting.” Coaches are encouraged to forward email inquiries about their sports program to the school’s administration, but are not required to do so. Likewise, parents who don’t have the money to make a bona fide move and, say, buy a house right next door to Cherry Creek High School are asked to instead demonstrate a hardship that forced their child to switch schools so that the student can play varsity sports uninterrupted. But coaches aren’t told in the bylaws what they risk when promising an athlete that they can start at quarterback if they move schools.

The focus in the bylaws feels all wrong.

CHSAA should keep its prohibition on sports-motivated transfers, but refocus its enforcement on coaches rather than parents and students.

That could look like requiring a coach to sign a legally-binding affidavit swearing that no one associated with the team engaged in the recruitment of a newly transferred student in order for that student to play without a waiting period. Then, when text messages about playing time and access to college recruiters emerge, there will be no crocodile tears when the coach gets banned from coaching for CHSAA schools.

We all want Colorado’s high school students to get the education they deserve at the school of their choice. And we all want to protect high school athletics from the corrupting influences of recruitment.

The road forward is for CHSAA to stick to its guns on student transfers, but to switch the focus from students to coaches.

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Matthew Silverstone, at the young age of 18, has sacrificed more for Colorado than most can imagine.

The teen first warned his fellow students at Evergreen High School that there was a shooter on campus, then he confronted the shooter on the street outside the high school. Silverstone was shot twice.

He spent a month in a Lakewood hospital fighting for his life and then recovering from the wounds that almost killed him. He was released from the hospital Tuesday in what his family called a miracle, and we call a blessing.

“Matthew has never given up. He can now speak. In fact, he is happy to tell you, ‘I’m still alive!’ He can walk with assistance,” his family said in a news release. “His friends will tell you his sense of humor is back. He has exceeded everyone’s expectations in his recovery.”

Silverstone was both brave and selfless on Sept. 10, and it sounds like he continues to shine through his recovery, giving everyone hope in these dark times.

Silverstone is not alone in his distinction as a true Colorado hero.

Another student who was shot at Evergreen High School last month confronted the shooter. At the age of 14, the victim’s family has understandably chosen to remain anonymous and keep out of the public eye. We wish to respect their privacy while also highlighting the incredible act.

Both students remind us of Kendrick Castillo, who was killed defending his classmates inside a Highlands Ranch school in 2019. Castillo was joined by other classmates — Brendan Bialy and Joshua Jones — as they lunged at a shooter, saving others. Bialy was not hurt, but Jones was shot twice.

We are torn between celebrating these incredible acts and crying for the state of our country. Mass shootings have been occurring in Colorado schools since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. How is it that students are still the ones confronting these assailants and not our trained adult professionals in law enforcement? Every school in this state needs an armed officer on campus at all times.

We should not be asking our kids to save themselves. More must be done to protect students who attend school hoping to grow and learn, and far too often in the past decade have found themselves trying to survive the horrors of mass shootings and the trauma that follows.

Nine minutes passed between when the shooting began inside Evergreen High School and when Silverstone was shot at the corner of Buffalo Park Road and Olive Road at the far end of the high school’s campus. Having an officer on the campus could have resulted in a different outcome.

Expressing gratitude to these kids for their acts of heroism is not enough. We can name a street for Silverstone (and should, just as we created Castillo Way). We can cry for their pain and suffering, and rejoice at their perseverance and determination.

But adults in Colorado must now act to ensure that no other child in this state is forced to fight an armed assailant for their lives and the lives of their friends and teachers.

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Updated 2:10 p.m. Oct. 17, 2025: Due to an editor’s error, this article previously misreported details about the shooting of Matthew Silverstone. 

Nebraska understandably wants to finally tap into a water right it has held on the South Platte River for almost a century.

Coloradans understandably are worried the plan will cut into the amount of water they can pull during the winter to save up for their crops in the spring.

Now the matter will go to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Colorado officials have violated the long-standing water-sharing compact for the South Platte River or whether Nebraska’s complaint is much ado about hoping to evade actually having to construct a billion-dollar canal to claim their water.

Fortunately, the 1923 South Platte River compact is abundantly clear and written in language that is difficult to interpret any other way. And also, fortunately, farmers relying on the South Platte River were not born yesterday.

Nebraska can build a canal that begins south of Ovid and travels east through Colorado to Perkins County to pull water during the winter months — roughly October to April — to store water to be used by Nebraska farmers during the spring growing season.

The canal — after taking into consideration upstream and downstream senior water rights — can take 500 cubic feet of water per second from the flow of the lower section of the South Platte during the winter.

So, Nebraska is entitled to the water, clearly, but only if it builds a canal.

And that is, of course, the rub.

Building a canal is going to be expensive. Nebraska lawmakers appropriated $628 million to get the project started.

But the state found landowners in Colorado unwilling to sell. An obvious development given that the canal could limit how much water the very farmers who own the land could pull from the river during the winter to store for spring.

Would you sell cheap?

Nebraska is expressly guaranteed the right to use eminent domain — the government’s power to take land against the owner’s will — to purchase land or egress for the canal. But the problem is land in Colorado is not cheap, and Colorado law demands that when eminent domain is used, a person is not only compensated for fair market value but also gets damages for the taking.

For example, a new interstate running next to a house is going to dramatically devalue that property. Colorado law requires a city or state to compensate the individual for the property taken, but also for the damages to their house. Could landowners convince a court that the taking of their land for a canal also included the taking of water from the river that they otherwise could use for crops? Maybe.

Notifying Colorado landowners of their rights and helping them organize to protect their own interests is most certainly not interfering unlawfully with Nebraska’s plan. Nebraska’s attorney general included this quote from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser:

“We don’t believe there’s ever been a case in American history where one state has sought to exercise the power of eminent domain in another state. That is going to raise some significant legal issues. We are preparing for them. We’re prepared to engage on the ground to let people know what rights they have.”

That quote only proves that Weiser is doing his job protecting Coloradans and informing them of their legal rights.

Nebraska may need to bring a lot more money to the project than was originally proposed, but that is not Colorado’s fault.

As for the other claim in Nebraska’s lawsuit, that Colorado has routinely been violating the compact by not sending enough water downriver during the irrigation system, we are skeptical. The initial claim from Nebraska was scant on details about how much water is being shorted to Nebraska users.

Colorado’s response, filed this week by Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser, makes it abundantly clear that the state takes meeting the compact’s obligations seriously.

“Nebraska itself has not concluded whether Colorado is impermissibly reducing flows during the irrigation season, and there are other forums to explore Nebraska’s speculation on the efficacy of Colorado’s augmentation plans,” the state’s Supreme Court brief reads.

That is, if Colorado’s plan to offset or “augment” the negative impacts of pervasive groundwater pumping along the South Platte River is failing to deliver the required water downstream, the state is happy to address it, but first, Nebraska must bring evidence and bring it to the water managers in charge of enforcing the state’s prior appropriations system.

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Under no circumstances should the City of Denver bail out the bad investments made into risky bonds at the old Gates Rubber Co. redevelopment site.

The land at South Broadway and Interstate 25 could soon become a soccer stadium for Denver’s new women’s team, but those plans could leave investors who banked on getting repaid by property tax revenue high and dry because the city will buy the land from the former developer, rendering property taxes on a big chunk of the land zero.

Joe Landen, the managing director of a Denver-based investment firm, said in an interview with BusinessDen reporter Justin Wingerter, that it will “be remembered” if the city allows the bond investments to fail at the old Gates site, which is formally known as the Broadway Station Metropolitan District. We can only hope so.

Landen tried to equate the investment his firm made into the project to investments in municipal bonds. The difference between the two is laughable. The municipal bonds Denver will sell if voters approve a billion-dollar bond issue in Tuesday’s election are backed by the city, a major metropolitan city already fully developed and rated AAA quality by all three major bond rating agencies.

The bonds Landen’s firm invested in were issued by a developer who was given taxing authority through a metropolitan district and the promise of lucrative tax breaks through the city’s redevelopment authority. The bet investors made was not on whether Denver would succeed, but on whether the developer controlling the quasi-governmental authority, the bond money and the tax rates was trustworthy. In the case of the Gates Factory, the plans for redevelopment failed spectacularly, but not before the developer spent millions of dollars from investors on infrastructure and remediation.

Our response to Landen’s plea now for a bailout from the City of Denver is simple — absolutely not.

Metropolitan district bonds are extremely risky, and the investors in the Broadway Station metropolitan district should be used to set an example for the entire state. These bonds are nowhere close to the secure investment of city bonds, and investors should be very wary of entering into these deals with developers.

So yes, Landen, we hope you and other investors have a very long memory and that you tell all your friends in the bond market industry the risks of investing in metro districts. Perhaps the drying up of the bond market will be enough to save future taxpayers from the rampant abuse at the hands of many developers.

We can think of several housing projects going on right now in the metro area that could teeter and fail with an economic downturn and a housing crisis — including Sterling Ranch and Aurora Highlands. The bondholders whom developers convinced to invest in their property taxation scheme will be the ones left on the hook, instead of the developer, who can walk away from the project with very little personal investment in the infrastructure.

We’ve wondered for years how long it would take for investors to realize that these bonds are not safe-secure municipal bonds guaranteed by city officials. Mayor Mike Johnston has an opportunity here to let the harsh reality of developer-granted taxing authority hit investors hard in the face, and he shouldn’t hesitate to take it.

Colorado’s local elected officials have, for decades, ignored warnings that giving developers unlimited taxation authority and allowing them to market their bonds as tax-assured investments similar to a municipal bond is a looming financial disaster on par with the Big Short of 2008. Instead, elected officials have handed taxing authority to every developer who asks, with few restrictions or protections for investors or future taxpayers. Denver is preparing to do it again with the Denver Broncos stadium redevelopment plan for Burnham Yard.

Now, it appears the only solution to the problem is for investors to stop putting their money in these schemes because they fear a default on the bonds.

We applaud Mayor Mike Johnston for refusing to bail out the developer of the old Gates Rubber Factory and the investors who treated a risky project led by a developer like a safe municipal bond.

We tried but couldn’t muster much sympathy for Landen and the others who knowingly gambled on the Gates Rubber Factory redevelopment, putting their faith in metropolitan districts.

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Federal immigration officials are out of control, and America’s third branch of government needs to rein in the gross abuse of power on display in Colorado and across the nation.

Gregory Davies, a high-level federal official overseeing deportation arrests in Colorado, told a judge last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not have a warrant to arrest Fernando Jaramillo-Solano. But the agents arrested Jaramillo-Solano anyway after mistakenly pulling the Durango man over while he was on his way to drop off his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children at school. ICE officials detained all three, and they spent weeks in Durango before they were shipped to Dilley, Texas.

This is no simple mistake that is easily rectified.

ICE is causing real harm to contributing members of our community  — teachers, nurses, mothers and fathers. And children are traumatized in the wake of these unjustified detainments.

President Donald Trump has upended the mission at ICE, a part of Homeland Security that was once dedicated to keeping Americans safe by deporting criminals. The president has said he plans to deport the more than 13 million people who live in the United States without legal immigration status, regardless of whether they have committed other crimes. But he has gone farther than that, and his agents are now detaining people who do have legal status. The intent is clear — push out immigrants even who are doing everything right.

Trump’s intent is that the people his agents wrongfully detain will either self-deport becasue conditions are so poor in the federal facilities or that if a judge orders their release, they will be silenced by their fear of reprisal, after all, they were detained once; who can protect these individuals from being detained again?

But Trump has calculated wrong. These brave victims of Trump’s mass deportation policy are speaking out, and have filed a lawsuit together to try and prevent ICE from terrorizing people.

Caroline Dias Goncalves, the 19-year-old college student who was detained in Grand Junction and held for almost three weeks in a detention center in Aurora because a sheriff’s deputy thought her perfect English was broken by an accent, testified that her detainment has dramatically affected her life.

She lost her driver’s license, moved back home and has reduced her course load at the University of Utah.

To Davies she might be “collateral” damage, but to us she is an injured kid trying to rebuild her life. Her arrest was completely unnecessary and likely illegal. If people like Davies don’t step up to make sure that ICE agents are doing their jobs – targeting and arresting criminals for deportation – then who will?

The answer of course is that the judicial branch must act as a strong check on the abuses of the executive branch.

Trump’s immigration enforcement squad cannot just smash and grab Coloradans because they suspect someone might be here illegally. And if these agents do, there must be legal consequences for them and their bosses, no matter how high the orders have come from.

Gonclaves was lucky. She was released.

Jaramillo-Solano and his children are still detained in Texas with no end to their nightmare in sight, despite the fact that a federal official just testified to a judge that their arrest was a mistake.

Meanwhile, a Douglas County teacher who was detained with her family by ICE under similarly questionable circumstances is also in the same Texas facility.

Marina Ortiz, who teaches fifth grade at the Global Village Academy, went for a routine check-in with ICE officials and she and her family never came home. The principal of the school says that Ortiz had work authorization to work legally in the United States. She said the school is working with immigration attorneys to see if Ortiz can be released from detention.

The sad truth is that unless the courts step up, these abuses will likely continue, and thousands of people like Ortiz and Jaramillo-Solano will never get home.

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