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Courtesy of Northeastern Junior College Colorado lawmakers and college officials hope a name change will help reverse years of sharply declining enrollment at two rural campuses, and in turn, also help support the towns they serve. The change, requiring legislation, would remove the “junior” from Otero and Trinidad State junior colleges. The bill would leave Northeastern Junior College as the last remaining higher education institution bearing the name in the state — and one of the few left in the country. Its enrollment has declined 48% in a decade, but community backlash over the prop...

Posted by Jan Wondra | May 11, 2021 Statehouse Bills Moving through Committees Could Impact the State’s Housing, Water, Transportation, as well as Public Safety The hyper-busy 2021 legislative session is rolling along at a pace that can make it hard for the general public to keep up, let alone read the dozens of bills passing through committees prior to reaching the floor of the Colorado General Assembly. The activity is partly the result of the COVID-shortened 2020 legislative session. Four bills have come before committees during the first half of this week that could have both statewide ...

State lawmakers plan to put an additional $20 million into the Colorado Water Plan under a bipartisan measure that won preliminary approval in the Colorado House on Wednesday. That money comes on top of whatever revenue the state earns from sports betting, which voters approved in Proposition DD in 2019. The money would go to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, a division of the Department of Natural Resources that provides grants for water projects across the state. “It’s going to require at least $100 million a year for us to satisfy the needs that have been outlined in that pl...

April 10, 2021, 1:35 pm State Senate President Leroy Garcia, a Pueblo Democrat, on Friday introduced a Front Range high-speed passenger rail bill that has been one of his top priorities since becoming a state lawmaker. While the bill is aimed squarely at facilitating passenger rail along the state’s populous Front Range from the Wyoming border in the north to Trinidad in the south — where 80% of the state’s population resides — it’s worth noting that it would connect through Garcia’s hometown of Pueblo, which is also the southern terminus of the inactive 220-mile Tennessee ...

Senate President Leroy Garcia hailed the introduction of bipartisan legislation to create, manage and maintain a passenger rail line from the New Mexico to Wyoming border with stops up the Front Range. “Front Range rail has been a top priority of mine since coming to the legislature,” the Democrat from Pueblo said in a statement. “For too long Colorado’s transportation system has been underfunded and overburdened, leading to crumbling roads and horrible traffic congestion." The state's move joins promising recent news from Amtrak, which listed service from Pueblo to Cheyenne, in its 1...