This is Dan Caplis and welcome to today's online podcast edition of The Dan Caplis Show. Please be sure to give us a five star rating if you'd be so kind, and to subscribe, download and listen to the show every single day on your favorite podcast platform.
Welcome back to The Dan Caplis Show tonight. I'm Christy Burton Brown.
Happy to be with you all, and very happy to have our guest joining us, Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer Is. I call her one of the most powerful Republicans in our state Senate. If you want somebody to get done, you should definitely talk to Senator Kirkmeyer. So, Senator Kirkmeyer, welcome to the Dan Caplis Show tonight.
Oh thanks, Christy.
It's great to be hearing. Great to hear from you.
Yes, absolutely, I'm so glad you were able to come on. I'm sure you're quite busy with the legislature starting next Wednesday, but I also know you've already been busy on the Joint Budget Committee.
Yeah. Correct, We started pretty much right after the election. The governor has to present his budget to the Joint Budget Committee on November first, but we started right after that. The election was over. We started in we're or full time. We've had the last couple of weeks off sort of, but we'll be back full time again on Monday.
Yeah.
Absolutely, and that's because of your expertise on the budget committee. Is why I wanted to bring you on the show today because so many people are asking questions about the budget shortfall, and to my understanding, there's discrepancy too between the numbers of the shortfall. The Democrats, i think, are claiming a lower shortfall than the Republicans. But maybe you can shed some.
Light on that.
You know, it varies.
We just got another forecast the end of December, December twentieth. We you know, we have quarterly forecasts and so things change, you know, because we have more information as twitch to base the budget on. But their reality is it's not a shortfall. It's a structural deficit that we're in. So what that means is year over year over spending and you know for four years there with all of the federal funds that we received in so you know, we just keep overspending. They say it's going to be one
time funding. We're going to start a these programs just because of COVID and the next thing. You know, they're continuing them, and it's it's outrageous overspending. I mean, we are we are clearly on a disastrous course right now.
I mean sure sounds like it.
And are there particular programs you would say you could point out that where the Democrats are wanting to continue them even though they really were based on one time money.
There's things like in the let's see it's not a new department, but in the Behavior Health Administration that was pretty much started with, you know, federal funds, and we received billions of federal dollars because of COVID. So there's there's programs there. They're just they're just kind of spread out. It's like, for example, in the Department of Public Health and Environment, they've had a two hundred and seven percent increase in the number of fte that they have.
Oh my goodness, right, I mean, I think.
Just keep increasing. We have departments that while the state appropriation over the last six years and I'm talking general fund money here. So our state budget is about forty forty three billion dollar budget, but that includes general fund operating budgets budget dollars in that about it's about seventeen a little over seventeen billion. Right now, they're maybe closer to eighteen billion. And I'm just rounding off here. You know,
there's cash funds, there's federal funds. So I'm talking about that seventeen to eighteen billion dollars general fund operating budget. That's what you know, when we pay in income tax and we pay sales tax, that's what I'm talking about. That's where we're having this year over year outrageous spending. So over the course of the last six years we've had about our state appropriations has increased by eleven point
three percent. Yet we have departments like the Department of Agriculture and even though it's a very small department, fifty six percent increase in their general fund appropriations. And all the departments there are anywhere, you know, with the exception of corrections, actually, but all of the governor's departments are like, you know, twenty seven percent, thirty six percent, forty six percent, and it just keeps going on. You cannot have that
kind of overspending. And the governor came back with the budget of budget you know that he presented on November first, that just it wasn't even balanced. I mean, I don't sure what he says. He's on this disastrous course. You can say, we're anywhere from eight hundred million to one point three billion dollars, you know, in the hole, essentially, depending on what you're going to fund, what you're not going to fund. But the governor just keeps playing like
this show game. You know, I think we've all been watching football, so I like him to. He's in the fourth quarter of the game and he keeps doing three and outs and punning the ball. So he's punting right now, that's what he's doing. And he's got this show game going. He's moving cash runs around, you know, those are not
necessarily ongoing general fund money. And then he's trying to say we've got a balanced budget while he's cutting different programs that are critical core services to the state of Colorado. Quite frankly, we have to.
Fund right well exactly, we're talking now to Senator Barb Kirkmeyer here on the Dan Kapla show, and Senator, so you're saying it is a symptom of a giant overspending problem generally run by the Democrats and liberals and the legislature.
What do you think is going to happen like how how is.
The legislature, especially the Democrat majority, going to actually fix this problem.
Well, so the Legislature does write the budget, and it's up to the Joint Budget Committee to really present the budget to the General Assembly, to all of the you know, the one hundred members of the General Assembly. So it's going to be a long budget year, you know. I'm I'm that Joint Budget Committee and are four Democrats two Republicans. But quite frankly, this is the place where regardless if you're in the minority of the majority, you're kind of
on equal footing if you will. I mean, before any bills can come out of the Joint Budget Committee, it has to be every member of the Joint Budget Committee has to support it, you know. So I think it's going to be just like last year when Representative Taggert, who's Republican, out of Grand Junction and myself just said, look enough enough, we got to start cutting some things. We can't we can't go in We have to constitutionally
have a balanced budget, right. We don't get to be like the federal budget where you go into debt and keep doing continuing resolutions and you do all these other things.
We have to have a balanced budget. And so last year, last session, in the twenty fourth session, we were over a week late with presenting the budget to the General Assembly because it just took that long for myself and Representative Tagert to get our colleagues across the aisle to say, we're going to make some cuts and we're not going to fund everything, and we're going to have to do
some things differently. Unfortunately, we didn't make enough cuts, and after the budget was shined and approved, they still approved even more spending and we basically depleted our reserves, you know, which I mean by statute we have to have a fifteen percent reserve. We're at like thirteen point eight or seven or nine somewhere in.
There reserve now, So we don't even follow.
Our own law that we tasked for ourselves. So it's just it's going to be a long budget year and everybody, you know, they just need to understand we need to down to the business of governing, of really looking at the budget. It is up to the Joint Budget Committee, and we're going to have to make some substantial reductions. And this is not like during the COVID period. This is not you know, we're kind of in a self
imposed recession. But this isn't like during COVID where they thought, oh my god, we're going to have all these things where we have to cut we don't have enough money because you know, we're in like a type of recession with because of COVID. It's not like that. This is they just were overspending.
Right, And I think they're pitching it very much in the media as oh my goodness, we're gonna be able to fund key programs. But if I remember correctly, I believe the entire state budget has increased by nineteen billion dollars over the last ten years, and certainly at a much higher rate than our budgets do at home.
Yeah, I mean absolutely, But that has to do with federal funds. I mean that's why I was telling you. So really, when we're talking about what we're doing with the budget, it is that general fund operating portion of the budget, which is about eighteen billion dollars, and that has increased substantially. Like I said, it's increased by eleven point three percent over the last six years. Unfortunately, our spending has increased dramatically more.
Right exactly would you expect, And we have about a minute left before I have to let you go, do we or would you expect bills with fiscal notes to all just get shut down this session? Or do you think, despite the budget constraints, that Democrats are still going to try and slam through some pet bills that cost money.
I would tell yeah, I would tell all my colleagues in the Senate and in the House, all my colleagues down to Capitol, and I say this to the Senate Republicans all the time. Don't bring a bill forward with any kind of fiscal note on it because we can't afford it. Don't start a new program we can't afford it. We need to be looking to cut programs, cut spending.
So you know, and I actually had a republic who said, well, what if I can find where I can cut the spending, can I then bring this bill forward if it's you know, I've got this great idea. And I said no. I said, tell me where you want to cut the spending. I'll take that cut, and then don't bring your bill forward. So every Democrat, every Republican needs to understand we are in a structural deficit. It's the foundation. We are way
in over our heads. We have overspent for six years and now it's fine to pay the hyper We've got to cut spending. That means, you know, there are things that we have to fund, like education. The constitution requires a fund education. There are things like you know, provider rates across the board, think medicaid, thank the course of the poor, that we have to provide services to those
type of critical functions. We have twenty five counties in our state that are in a maternal health care district. That is not something we should be proud of, and we need to figure out how to fund those areas of the state to ensure that people have health care, you know, things of that nature that we just are going to have to other things who have fun Department of Corrections. I don't care how much you dislike the Department of Corrections if you're on the other side of
the aisle. We have to fund Department.
Of Corrections absolutely.
So you know there'll be things like that that we have to fund. And there's other things, other new program all those new offices that have been created over the last six years. I mean it's up in the forties or fifties of new offices I think that have been created under the police administration. They probably are gonna have to go away.
Yeah, no, they should go away, and I have to go to a break now.
But Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, thank you for explaining how we need to cut the state budget here on the Dan Capitola Show.
Thank you absolutely thanks for having me, and now.
Back to the Dan Kaplas Show podcast.
Colorado has at least three new driving related laws that came into effect this month. I'm pretty sure everyone has heard about the first one, which is that you can't have any handheld cell phone device whatsoever in your hands while you drive. There's been a lot of social media and news law enforcement attention on that one, and texting while driving has already been banned since two thousand and nine. But this actually bans you from using your phone at all.
So not for maps, not for making phone call in your hand. You have to have a device that enables you to use it without your hands, a hands free device. That is what you're allowed to use in Colorado from now on. It is a secondary violation, so they have to pull you over for something else, some other violation, but then you can definitely lose points on your license and get fines for using a handheld cell phone device
at all. Number two, gun owners must store their firearms in a locked container out of plane sight if you're leaving it in your car and you are not in your car, so it's sort of the catch twenty two on this one is if you leave your gun in your car and it gets stolen and you want to report it as a theft, which you obviously should do because if someone steals a gun, they are stealing and breaking into your car, they're probably a danger to the community.
You would have to admit that your gun was not in the container and not locked away. So anyway, that's an interesting scenario that could happen, but that's a new requirement. And then the third one relates to children in vehicles. The age at which you must keep your children in booster seats has been increased in Colorado. They now must be in booster seats until they're nine years old, and they have to be in rear facing seats until they're
two or over forty pounds. If they're either over the age of two or over forty pounds, you can forward face them. But along with that law is that now if you are eighteen or under, you must have a seat belt used to be sixteen or under in Colorado. So we have a lot of changes to driving laws in Colorado. So many things take effect in January. People often forget about them when they're signed the year before.
But most laws, that's not necessarily true about most laws.
I'd say a good portion of laws don't take effect immediately. Here in Colorado, the legislators are allowed to attach a health and safety clause, which they do to a lot of laws that have nothing to do with health or safety. And if they attach to that clause, the law can actually take effect immediately. But a good portion of laws actually do have to wait, often until the next year to take effect.
So there you go.
There are your new driving laws in Colorado. I want to play this clip from a Democrat Congressman Connolly talking about his reasons why CALFH. Pattel has no business being President Trump's FBI director.
I think some of them are fairly funny.
I did want to ask you a followup, quick follow up to that, if Cash Battel is made the director of the FBI, are you worried about some of the things that Donald Trump says and believes, the conspiracy theories that he follows and so on, perhaps tainting the work of the FBI. You're going to be a ranking member on the House over side committee, is that something you're going to be looking out for if cash Mittel becomes the director.
Absolutely, I think cash Battel has no business being the FBI directory is not qualified. He's already showing his hand right he wants to purge the FBI of people who are doing their jobs. Yeah, the FBI knocking door makes you very uncomfortable, But the FBI has to be relied upon to be the chief law enforcement agency of the federal government, and they're professionals, they're not partisans. And to inject partisan political leadership at the top of the FBI
is a very troubling development. And that's something we're certainly going to watch carefully and resist to the maximum possible extent.
Okay, I think that is funny that he's saying the reason he's not qualified to be the FBI directors because he was to purge the FBI of agents doing their jobs.
Uh, not whatsoever for the case.
He's actually trying to purge the FBI of people who are not doing their jobs, who are partisan and politically focused and aren't actually solving the major crimes going on in the United States today, but are focused on political enemies. So also very funny that he thinks the appointment of Cappital by President Trump is now suddenly injecting partisan politics at the head of the FBI, like who's been running them.
For the last several years.
So I think it's very funny when people have no basis to actually stop at President's appointment, but want to whine about it and make complaiants that are highly hypocritical, and they're basically just exposing what's been done in the FBI for many years. If you have thoughts, you can call in eight five five four zero five eight two five five. I'm Christy Burton Brown here on the Dan Kapla Show. In a few minutes, we're going to bring
in Michael Fields, who's the president of Advanced Colorado. He's going to join me for a couple segments on the show. Especially with the special not a special session. We had a special session last year, but the legislative session about to start on Wednesday at Advanced Colorado. We release a legislative policy agenda ahead of that.
We'll be really see on Monday, but Michael.
Will give you a preview of some of the issues on that agenda. It's basically issues that we think the legislature should be passing, should be dealing with, but if they don't, there's often a lot of opportunity to bring those issues to the ballot and let the people decide. We'll probably also cover some of the things that Jared Polis claims he wants to do for Colorado versus what he actually should be focusing on.
But before we.
Get into that, we have a few minutes before we have to hit the next break. And I'm not sure if you're aware of some of the new bylaw being proposed by the Colorado Republican Chairman. Dave Williams has been if you know, I used to be the Colorado State Republican Chairman or the first woman to be elected to that position in forty years, and really loved running the party for a couple of years. But now Dave Williams
has been over it. Unknown if he's going to run for another term or not in March that's when the party typically has its elections March or April of every off year. But he's proposing to pass six new by laws at the end of January. Since I got elected to the State Board of Education, I'll actually be a voting member again of this body. So I was reading
an analysis of the bylaws he's suggesting. One I particularly found was interesting, and it would be to actually pull people off the State Central Committee, to take away the vote of almost every single elected official who has a
vote on the state Central Committee. So every state representative, every state senator, all the congressmen, state Board of Education members have votes on the state Central Committee because represent your party at the state level A and you get to represent their policy as well and have a vote on their bylaws and on their leadership. Well, he wants to take that away and let every elected body pick
one representative. So basically all the state representatives would get one vote, all the state senators one vote, all the congressmen one vote. I'm never sure why you want to take votes away from people. I don't really care who they are, who they support. I'm not a fan of limiting participation and interaction with your own party, and so I think that's a very misguided amendment. Another one I actually found to be interesting was to put restrictions on
appeals processes. Basically, county parties can complain into the state party and say here's what's going on. You need to solve it right now. You have to hear it. As a state party. I heard a whole lot of controversies as chairman. He wants to give the executive team at the party the ability to say, that's a frivolous appeal. You can't make it, We're not going to hear it. On one hand, that sounds very attractive having been the
chairman before. But on the other hand, I think shutting off people's voices and not giving them recourse at this state level just isn't how we operate. If you believe in the constitution and in due process, you've got to let people bring their issues and hear them make their case and make a decision one.
Way or the other.
It's kind of your job if you run the state party. So that's my take on a couple of the bylaws proposals. Dave Williams is making. You're on the Dan Kapla show. I'm Christy Burton Brown. When we come back after the break, we're gonna have Michael Fields, president of Advanced Colorado, joining us and talking about the agenda that the state legislature should have here in Colorado.
And now back to the Dan Kaplas Show podcast.
Ills president of Advanced Colorado, where I also work, but we wanted to talk to you about the policy agenda that Advanced Colorado is setting out. We're gonna release it on Monday in full, so you can definitely check it out on Advancecolorado dot org on Monday podcast up where we talk through every piece of the agenda. But this is what we think the legislature should be dealing with. And Michael, some of the issues we focus on our economics.
Some are education, some are crime, and some are mental health. But I think one of the most important is affordability. We've talked about affordability issues on this show today and you Haul just came out with like a growth index rating. I didn't even know they had this, but in twenty twenty three, Colorado is number nine, good growth position, but
in twenty twenty four drop down to number forty. And the reason you Haul ranks this is it's the number of people using U haul trucks to get out of the state and move, yeah, to leave.
It's good to be on with you, Christy and happy New Year. I think this isn't that surprising if you've watched what's been happening the last few years here in Colorado, that people, you know, they vote with their feet if they don't want to be here for whatever reason, they leave. We know that housing costs are extremely high in the state.
We know that we're less safe than we were, and I think it's unfortunate, Like we have such a great state, you know, the best, if you know, one of the best, if not the best states in the country, and to see the direction that it's been going lately, I think everybody has noticed. This is even why the governor's coming out with we need to be one of the top ten safest states because we're not. Right now, we're third
most dangerous. Yeah, And so I think, you know, focusing in on those economic issues, those education issues, safety has been a big one why we ran ballot measures this last year and will continue to. But I think it's unfortunate when you look at states where people are leaving, it's usually because of the policies that are being passed to the legislature.
Right it's no longer workable for families, for communities, for small businesses, and people who want to have opportunities to succeed in a state it's becoming harder and harder to do that are basically just to afford life in Colorado and on affordability, I know, one of the items on our agenda that you know a whole lot better than I do is construction defects. How would solving that help housing affordability?
Yeah, so you know, costs for houses you grew just an enormous amount the last decade, but also after COVID, and so what this would do is just reform this system where kind of your starter house, which is a condo for a lot of people, there's laws, there are regulations right now that make it so difficult to build that. And you know, they've been talking about it for years.
They did some reforms a few years back, but nothing enough to say, you know what, We're going to have developers create and build more of these condos where people can get a starter home. Because you look at the average home in Colorado and in the metro area especially, you're talking six fifty seven hundred thousand dollars houses, condos can be a lot cheaper, get people in, get them some equity, and then they can move on to a
bigger house. But there is this is something that we've heard for a long time that there is just this opening this gap in the market, and reforming those laws would be a big way to lower and make really housing more affordable in the state.
Yeah, and while It's Colorado is a conservative organization and we push conservative policies, we also try and find bipartisan solutions, and I think construction defects is one of those things that could be solved on a bipartisan basis, like property taxes were last year, although of course some people had be pushed and forced to actually get that done.
But yeah, it did get done though, and I think, you know, that's what we're looking at is you know, that was another housing related thing, right, a cost of living thing. We were talking to seniors who were like, we don't know if we can stay in our house, we can't pay these bills. And so putting the pressure on the legislature to call special session to drop property taxes by one point six billion dollars was a big win.
But it's still unaffordable here in the stay across the board, and so we're looking at ways one to protect tabor, to make sure we're not raising taxes even higher. We need to get fees under control because they come out of our pocket too, and didn't do these reforms, whether it's business reforms or reforms to housing that need to get done to make Colorado you know a place where people want to be and stay and move to.
Well. Absolutely, And yeah, speaking of fees, one of my favorite parts of the agenda is repealings of delivery fee.
Is I get too many Amazon boxes delivered.
To my house and always paying the state twenty nine cents every time we do it? I think it's just, you know, another way the state likes to reach their hands into everything we do in our line and make sure they can get some money from it, which is unfortunate and.
Sins their way to get around Tabor.
Right, they're taking it out of our pockets, and they're saying we're going to do hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars in new fees and not have you have a vote on it.
And Taylor is more popular than ever.
You know.
It's one of those that we're always trying to defend because the legislature always wants more money.
We see what happens in these.
Other states California, Illinois, they raise taxes whenever they want. Well, legislatures said, we can do that with fees and the delivery fee, the ride share fee. I mean, they come up with new ones every year that take money out of our pockets, and so we have to fight back when it comes to that.
We do.
You're on the dan CAPLI share right now, Christy Burton Brown. I have Michael Field's president of Advanced Colorado as a guest, and I had Senator Barb Kirkmeyer on in the last segment. If you miss that, she shed light on the budget shortfall and she says it's not a shortfall, it's actually mismanagement by the liberals in charge who have been overspending for the last six years and now say they don't have the money for all their pet programs that they're
calling essential but aren't really the essential services. So if you miss that, you should definitely go back and listen. Think Michael, I'd like you to talk about safety and crime issues are always a big part of the Advanced Colorado, Moving Colorado Forward agenda and one of the biggest things I think that needs to be confronted in Colorado is fentanyl and a drug crisis.
Yeah, and it's a big issue.
If you talk to law enforcement, it is their number one I mean the growth of unfortunately the deaths of people on finance across the state too. I mean we've talked to law enforcement everywhere in the state. They all say the same thing. They say, it's the number one issue that needs to get addressed. And really, you know, this also stems from a few years ago they lowered the penalties on fentanyl. Then they realized they made a mistake and made it a little stricter, but it's still
not nearly where it needs to be. And so you know, we're pushing legislators, you guys need to come down on these drug dealers. You know, they need to come down on possession, how much you're having, because you know, if people have enough to kill two hundred people, this isn't for personal use. And so really working with law enforcement to say, look, if the legislature does it, great, but we're not holding our breath that they're going to do that.
And therefore, you know, let's go to the ballot and figure out a ballot measure that would pass.
But you know, it's on people's minds.
You've seen the stories here, kids getting into you know, adults that you know killed, you know.
In Commerce City, you remember that story.
Yeah, So this is happening all across the board, and it is tied in with the you know, failed immigration policies on the federal level, that this is flooding across our border coming up here. We don't have the penalties we need to do on it, and so I'm hoping that legislators pick it up.
But otherwise we're going to move forward with a ballot measure for twenty.
Six absolutely, and I think when we had some of those meetings with sheriffs and other law enforcement officers, one of the scariest pieces to me that I think a lot of parents would be concerned about as well, is that they're saying every single type of drug is being laced with fentanyl across Colorado.
Even if you're taking.
Marijuana, which is legal in the state, the drug dealers are lacing all of it with fentanyls. We also have to address not just oh, you're carrying pure fentanyl and selling it to people, but if any drug you're selling contains any amount of fentanyl, you're a drug dealer of fentanyl and you're threatening a lot of lives. I mean, if you look, I think there's been a four hundred and fifty percent increase in fent all drug overdose deaths in the last five years.
It's huge.
And the education piece of this, you know, people have kids, tell them like anything can have any of these drugs can have fentanyl in it, and it is in there and a lot of people are unaware of it. And so yeah, making sure if somebody is dealing any drug that has fentanyl in it can kill people, that they are you know, getting punished for it accordingly. And so I do think there needs to be more education in
our state. Given those numbers, the increase that we're seeing, you know, you've got to get the word out that you know, anything can have it in it, You need to know what you're taking and really cut down on these drug dealers. That's what law enforcement, das everybody is telling us we.
Need to do exactly.
And I think one thing the legislators should deal with themselves is when they slightly increase the penalties on fentanyl, they failed to increase them on cocaine, meth hero and the.
Date rape drug.
All these drugs that they had lowered penalties on years before, and they're seeing bad effects. Fentanyl was in the news, so that's the only one they actually raise the penalty on. And I think is the legislature is going to be responsible. They aren't just going to pay attention to the drug that's in the news at the time and the big ticket issue right now, but actually increase the penalty on
all these heavy duty drugs. I think they're all Schedule two drugs or Schedule one and definitely need to treat them like the danger they are in society.
Yeah, and I think you look at you know, the policies you can go back every time when police, you know, we're leaving the ranks because of these laws that were passed. Everything over the last four or five years has been you know, pro criminal almost right, like, you know, lowering penalties, making it harder on cops. We're trying to reverse that and say we're going to pass measures we passed too, We're going to pass more of them to fight back on this because our state is dropping in terms of
safety measures across the board. We need to fix that. That's the number one job of governments to keep people safe.
Exactly. You're on the Dan Caplai Show.
I'm Christy Burton Brown with Advanced President Michael Fields. We'll be back and we'll talk about education and mental health, pieces of what we think the legislature should pass in their policy agenda for twenty twenty five.
Keep it here on the Dankpla Show.
You're listening to the Dan Kaplis Show podcast.
Talking through the agenda we think the state legislature should have this year. But we've seen throughout Colorado history that when politicians fail to do something, when they won't pass the laws that people want. In Colorado, we have ballot measures as an option, so the people will often pass what the legislature won't. We covered crime and affordability issues of the last segments. If you're interested in those, go
back and listen. But education and mental health are another couple pieces of our policy agenda, and we talked about education. We're often talking about school choice. Michael, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think you know.
We had that measure this last year that we tried to pass putting school choice in the constitution. It got almost fifty percent, was forty nine point three percent. I'm very encouraged by that looking at you know, the attacks, the money that was spent against it. We still live in a state where people support school choice, and so we think that the legislature needs to make sure. I mean,
they were coming after charter schools last year. There is this push to make sure everybody is in a neighborhood school. And you know, that's fine if that's what you choose as a parent, but we need these other options too, and so we are very interested in making sure at the legislature at least the good school choice laws we
have now remain in place. But then also do we need to come back, you know, in the future and make sure this is in our constitution because we don't know who the next governor, who the next legislature is going to be, and people are stuck in some failing schools unfortunately, and you know, the options aren't there for them, people that don't have enough resources to send their kids elsewhere. So I think it is something that we're going to
continue to focus on. That's so important. I know, you just got elected to the state Board of Education, which is great, and you know, I do think school choice needs to remain a focus given you know, some of the pushback that's been happening at the legislature.
Right absolutely, and you know, Colorado has the second highest population of charter school students in the nation. We have parents who exercise open enrollment all the time, crossing district lines. Actually think fifty percent of the kids who go to neighborhood schools cross district life in Colorado. And there are threats at the legislature, specific individuals there who would love to create what they call the beginning of the end of charter schools and love to be I think on
the watch for bills like that. But absolutely, people in Colorado support school choice, to exercise it, and they want those options. It's something we can protect in the future in Kloros constitution, I think yeah.
And I think it's just important again constitutionally because the legislature, future legislators can change this at any point. And I think that was the biggest thing as we talked about our measure was but we already have school choice, Yeah, but they can change it tomorrow in any way that they want to. And so you know, we will continue to focus in on this. Give people opportunities, give families, parents the opportunity to send their kid and thinking long term, right, like,
this is the problem. You look in Colorado, we wouldn't imagine kind of politically what's happened over the last decade ACA a decade ago, and so looking at that, we don't know what the future holds.
Let's lock in the things that are important.
Let's protect Tabor, let's protect school choice, and look at those big things that really has made Colorado great for a long period of time. How do we lock those in knowing that there could be hostility coming from this current legislature and future ones.
Exactly. No, that's a great point.
And I think when we move into mental health, that's the other issue on our agenda. We can look at Douglas County as a great example of a county that's done community response teams. They pair a mental health professional with a law enforcement officer and actually go get people to help they need instead of throwing everyone in jail. He all the time, But it hasn't spread across the state quite as much as we'd like to see.
Yeah, and I think it's such an important issue, as we know impacts so many people. You know, for too long, we've had you know, children's suicide rates that are too high in the state. Now we're forty fifth in terms of adult mental health. We need to be doing more on this issue, and it's one that we want to focus in on. It does have bipartisan support to look at and issues like this, and you brought up those
community response teams. I think they're so important. They're in Douglas County, al Paso County, some of the most conservative areas are leading the effort on making sure that people are getting the resources that they need. And so what we want to do is spread the word, make sure that there's grant funding for this, because you know, law enforcement has to deal with keeping us safe and it's
a tougher and tougher job. We need professionals dealing with people in mental health crisis that aren't a threat at that point, right the law enforcement goes in make sure everything's okay, then we need to get people resources. And so this is one that we're very interested in, you know, for kids, for adults, and we should be leading the way on mental health and Colorado, not kind of at the back like we are right now, and it just
impacts so many people. So this is something you know, we put in our agenda we put it in last year. We want to continue to focus in on it, put more studies out and really spread the word of the things that are working in certain counties, right and bring those to other counties well.
And like Douglas County suicide rate is actually lower than the state rate since they implemented this program. So if something that's working, it's what should be implemented. And so many things aren't working. And Michael, we have about two minutes left. I'm talking to Michael Fields for Vance Colorado. I'd love to get your take on I think Jared Pols I'm going to go to his State of the State address next time actually.
On official imitations.
And so I'm now elected, but I've heard that what he wants to focus on is making government more efficient.
I'm guessing you have thoughts on that.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting he came out with this, and it's kind of how Governor pullis is. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors right that. Oh, everybody wants government to be more efficient. They want them to answer our calls quicker, to get through paperwork, quicker to make things, you know, put things online that's digital better, all that but the real problem in color, that's not why people are leaving the state, right, Like that that
needs to get fixed. You can always be more efficient, but policies, the policies that he's signing, the policies that are passing, are making us less safe, are making cost of living higher, All the things we just talked about are going on.
That's why people are leaving.
And so it you know, he puts this report out and the media covers it and he's like, oh, I'm so, you know, conservative on these issues or whatever, and he's not. And so I think we need to keep the focus on the big ticket items. So how do we make housing more affordable, how do we lower taxes, how do we make the states safer? And not the smoke and mirrors of him, you know, cutting up he cut up like two thousand sheets of payer and like that's great.
Like we should be doing that.
We should always make any government or company whatever more efficient.
That's a great thing.
But it is to distract from all the negative policies right that he is signing as they go to his desk. So we need to hold them accountable, keep our elected officials held accountable, hold the governor accountable, and really, as you mentioned, we're going to do that through ballot measures, and really it takes people contacting their elected officials, being engaged, showing up to the capital.
All that stuff is.
So important, you know, day in and day out to make sure that our state heads in the right direction, not the wrong direction exactly.
And the legislative session starting on Wednesday, if you didn't know that. And throughout this show today we've talked to newly elected state Representative Jarvis Caldwell about one of the most important bills this session, ending pr bonds for violent repeat criminals. And also to Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, who sits on the Joint Budget Committee, about how the state actually needs to tighten its belt and cut the budget because it is overspending.
It has been doing so for six years.
And now just hearing from Michael Field's President of Advance Colorado on how the people can do things true ballot measures if the legislature won't, but get involved, stay involved in the legislative session. Make sure to watch it starting on Wednesday. Thanks for tuning into the Dan Kaplis Show. Thanks Zach being our producer today. I'm Christy Burton Brown. You all have a great weekend. Thank you,