The Denver Post Opinion

We are paying for all those personal-injury ads. Support tort reform. As a Colorado resident and owner of an independent construction business, I urge Colorado’s congressional delegation to support the BUILD America 250 Act and its bipartisan Fong-Gillen Amendment. I depend on my vehicle to reach job sites, meet clients, pick up materials, and transport tools and equipment. Driving is essential to my business, so rising auto insurance rates affect both my livelihood and the prices I must charge

When I was 18 and first worked as a river guide, I assumed I had to be as tough — or even tougher — than the guys I worked with. It was the early 2000s, when few women were guiding. Though I loved being on the river, I often felt isolated, thinking I had to work harder than anyone else to be taken seriously. I believed that in part because I didn’t know the stories of women who had come before me. Little by little, I began to hear about Georgie White, the first female guide on the Colorado

E-bikes are very different from e-motos Many people, including journalists, make the mistake of lumping all two-wheeled electric-powered vehicles into the “e-bike” category. E-bikes have pedals, and many of them don’t go unless the rider is pedaling. E-motos often do not have pedals; they have a throttle and typically produce far more power than an e-bike. The kids wheeling up and down streets, tearing up the Highline Canal (among other areas), and causing the spike in serious

Would you elect a politician who could only read at a middle school level? If voters expect their representatives to demonstrate at least high school level literacy, shouldn’t they expect the same of themselves? Yet, this November, Colorado voters will consider amending the Colorado constitution to require ballot questions be written “at no more than an eighth-grade reading level.” Initiative 234 may seem simple but the intent of this measure isn’t so plain. Colorado law already requires ballot

I read Sunday’s account of the Public Utilities Commission hearing and found myself agreeing with the people quoted in it. Deborah Jones of Lakewood told the commissioners that data center operators must pay their own way for every single thing. No deals, no loopholes, no secret contracts. She is right. The Sierra Club is right that a contract nobody outside the room can read stops being a rule and becomes an exception waiting to be granted. The 91% of Coloradans who told Conservation Colo

A handful of major developments in the past 12 months, including some small failures and some big gambles, give us hope that downtown Denver will rise to its former glory. Alterra Mountain Company is moving its headquarters to a city-owned building (formerly owned by The Denver Post’s parent company) that has struggled to rent its office space. The 16th Street rebuild is complete, and free buses are running seamlessly again from Civic Center to Union Station. The University of Colorado Denver bo

American health care at times seems to be living proof of the adage that it is possible for two competing ideas to be simultaneously true. Among the paradoxes inherent in our unique health care system is the observation that American health care is the best in the world, and also the most complicated and costly. Nowhere but in America, with our still somewhat-free market medical system, will you find the swiftness of access, quality of care, or level of innovation in medical treatment that we ar

Had Donald Trump been president in 1973, when Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into federal law, the Gunnison sage-grouse would be extinct. Close to 90% of all Gunnison sage-grouse remaining on the planet are in the Gunnison River Basin of west-central Colorado. The rest are in Utah. They’ve been extirpated from Arizona and New Mexico. The species is critically endangered, in fact, if not by official decree. It is protected by the Act as just “threatened” because the Interior Depa

Renaming Lake Ontario will lead to shame Re: “Trump mulls renaming Lake Ontario,” August 26 news story I believe the acronym HOMES is still being used with school kids, for memorizing the names of the Great Lakes. If Trump goes through with his plan to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, I suppose school kids can learn SHAME, instead. That would be a pretty accurate reflection of Trump’s vindictiveness. Nancy Litwack-Strong, Lakewood Really? The president started, and promptly lost,

The Denver Post’s reporting on the youth sports industrial complex named something thousands of Colorado families already know in their gut: the local community youth sports system is disappearing, and what replaced it has a price tag most households can’t handle. The civic spirit and generosity we see from businesses willing to transform their facilities – and lose money and operating time – so that kids have a place to play sports is heartwarming and sad at the same time. Without t

We must save Denver’s trees during this drought Re: “Denver Water considers banning lawn watering as drought continues,” August 26 news story. I’m very concerned about the condition of Denver’s street trees. Driving on Spear Blvd. towards University Blvd., Washington Street, and almost every street along the way, you see large dead or dying trees. The high temperatures do have something to do with the stress these trees are exhibiting; however, they need to be deep root watered even if tot

It might surprise some to know I don’t eat meat every day. Beans are cheaper, and I have a ready supply of eggs from my hens. More importantly, I’m working to eliminate from my diet meat from industrial farms where animals live short lives caged in crowded, sunless concrete and steel. A few times a week, I reach into the deep freezer for locally sourced beef, fish, or game meat. I’m grateful for the nourishment deer, elk, antelope, and wild fowl provide and for the hunter friends who donate the

The NFL had the decency to do what the Broncos wouldn’t. Roger Goodell placed Jonathon Cooper on the commissioner’s exempt list on Sunday. Hopefully, he closed the door when doing the Broncos’ dirty work. The team chose to support Cooper as he faced a felony assault charge for strangulation, along with three other lesser charges connected to a pair of domestic violence-related arrests in June. I argued that the Broncos should have released him because of the details in the af

Colorado’s attorney general had to sue to protect airwaves Re: “State should stay out of legal challenge to Nexstar-Tegna merger,” August 22 guest commentary. I was baffled when I read Robin Rossenfeld’s op-ed in Saturday’s Post. The argument that she made for allowing the Nexstar-Tegna merger seemed absurd. “Predictable rules matter,” she wrote. But, as I’ve followed this dispute, the predictable rules have been openly violated. The Federal Communications Commission has long-standing rule

As both a lawyer and someone who has spent years advising businesses, I have witnessed firsthand how much predictable rules matter. Colorado’s legal and business communities both depend on confidence that established processes will be followed. Courts rely on consistent legal standards to ensure fairness, and businesses rely on those same principles to make investments, hire employees, and plan for the future. As a former assistant attorney general in Colorado, I have enormous respect for