From our Colorado Capitol News Alliance partners at CPR News: Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has reduced the state prison sentence of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk convicted of tampering with election equipment, making her eligible for parole on June 1, 2026.
“She committed a crime. It did not interfere with any election, did not have to do with ballot counting, but it was illegal access to the computer room,” Polis said in an interview with CPR Friday morning from the governor’s office.
“She thought she was trying to back up the software before it was updated. She did it illegally. There's no question about it. And she deserves to go to prison. And I think this is a more appropriate, even harsh, frankly sentence for that crime.”
Polis’ decision stands to be deeply unpopular among Democrats and election officials in the state, and puts the governor directly at odds with his own party. But he said he has remained focused on the facts of the case.
Read more of Bente Birkeland's reporting at rmpbs.org
Photo by Hart Van Denburg
#colorado #tinapeters #jaredpolis #election
Elli Jane scrambled to maintain care for her client, a nonverbal teenager who uses a wheelchair, after the state cut funding for Community Connector, a Medicaid-funded program meant to help people with disabilities develop skills and integrate into their community.
Colorado cut Community Connector’s hours by half — from 520 to 260 hours per person annually — as part of a Medicaid spending cut approved by the state’s Joint Budget Committee in an effort to address a $1.5 billion shortfall.
Jane’s pay for providing the service decreased from $25 to $20 per hour, she said.
The funding cut comes amid broader efforts to reduce Medicaid costs in the fiscal year 2026–27 budget. On April 29, the state Senate passed the state budget for that period, which reduces Medicaid spending to help close the budget deficit.
Read the complete story at rmpbs.org/news
Reporting by Priya Shahi
#communityconnector #coloradomedicaid #medicaid
Located in the Four Corners region, Cortez grew from an ambitious irrigation project that brought water from the Dolores River into the Montezuma Valley to support farming and ranching. oday, Cortez serves as a gateway to the Four Corners region, with its proximity to Mesa Verde National Park and the Trail of the Ancients Scenic Byway.
Photos courtesy of Montezuma Heritage Museum.
Reporting by Ziyi Xu
Nearly 30 farmers from southern Colorado gathered at Milberger Farms in Pueblo Thursday night to attend Colorado State University’s drought workshop. The workshop taught farmers how to make a drought plan and provided recommendations on where to get hay and when they should sell their cows.
Read the complete story at rmpbs.org/news
Reporting by Chelsea Casabona
#drought #colorado
Sakura Square is the last remaining block of Denver’s Japantown, and its community leaders are worried it won’t last much longer.
The Sakura Foundation applied for a loan from the Denver Downtown Development Authority in October 2025. Board member Charles Ozaki said the foundation applied for a loan of about $30 million. DDDA, a voter-approved body that uses money from incremental taxes to fund projects and economic development in the area, said it is still reviewing the foundation’s application and could not confirm an expected timeline for when it will make a decision about the funding.
If it receives the loan, the foundation’s board would use the money to address the structural needs of the deteriorating building, located at 1255 19th St. in downtown Denver. The Tri-State Buddhist Temple was built in 1947 and the commercial building, which houses businesses like Pacific Mercantile Company, Sakura House and Puppet Theater, was built in the early 1970s.
The board hopes to use the funds to help build a new facility — potentially a mixed-use, high-rise project that retains the area’s Japanese cultural tradition — to significantly increase the longevity of the block.
Several members of the board, like Ozaki, grew up in the community around Sakura Square, back when it was a thriving Japantown with hundreds of Japanese-owned businesses. Denver’s Japantown stretched from lower downtown north into Five Points. The foundation wants to preserve what is left of the cultural district.
“We're trying to take forward and create that legacy and heritage for my grandkids who come down here now because they know what's down here,” said Joni Sakaguchi, board president of the Sakura Foundation. “It's a sense of place, and we've lost it except for this block.”
Read more at rmpbs.org/news
Reporting by Carly Rose
Early morning makes for the perfect time to see one of the most significant and dangerous mammals in North America — moose. About 20 miles south of the Wyoming border, a few Colorado Parks and Wildlife employees recently conducted the final helicopter ride in a three-year survey to better understand the moose population in the North Park area of Colorado.
“This is probably the densest area of moose in the state,” said Ellen Brandell, a wildlife researcher with CPW and leader of the study.
Brandell, along with other CPW employees, took off from the small Walden-Jackson County Airport the morning of May 4, armed with recent GPS data and a telemetry device to find the moose Brandell helped collar three years ago.
The study required Brandell to take this aerial survey of moose and their calves three times a year for three years. They started with 70 collared moose, and the goal is to understand the survival rates of moose calves in their first year of life, which will help CPW better understand the moose population in North Park and how much hunting to allow.
Read more about the moose in North Park and the town of Walden that relies on them at rmpbs.org.
Reporting by Amanda Horvath
#moose #mooseviewingcapital #coloradowildlife
Join Rocky Mountain PBS in conversation with Michael Bennet, Scott Bottoms, Barbara Kirkmeyer and Phil Weiser for “Women Decide: The Colorado Governor’s Forum” on Sunday, June 7, at 7 p.m., in partnership with The Women’s Foundation of Colorado and the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
Learn more and register for free at the link in bio.
Where there's a will, there's a way at the Colorado People's Center, a new community space in Five Points offering free classes and workshops. The space is fully volunteer-run and funded, meaning a group of 70 volunteers are splitting the monthly rent.
“We put the mission first, we put our values first,” said Bruno Tapia Garcia, executive director of Colorado People's Center. “We'll never take funding from a group that is outside of our values, which is why it’s so ideal to just pitch in as a community for the rent.”
The 6,000-square foot space houses offices and multi-use spaces, as well as free clinics, classes and workshops. The center also features a craft closet full of donated art supplies, a lending library, and a children’s playroom that functions as a free daycare during Colorado People’s Center events.
“The barrier for some people to participate in things is often lack of childcare,” Tapia Garcia said. “We want to make it as accessible as possible for people to come here.”
ESL classes are also slated as future programming, as well as free concerts. Local muralist Leo Tanguma is currently showing one of his murals, on display until July. You can find a list of current programming and class schedules at .
Read more on the Colorado People's Center at rmpbs.org/news
Reporting by Sarah Shoen
#coloradopeoplescenter
Bear Smart Durango, a nonprofit focused on reducing human-bear conflict, screened 14 short films highlighting how communities across North America are addressing bear conflicts and solutions. About 180 people attended the sold-out festival.
Reporting by Ziyi Xu
#bearfilmfestival
SugaBear and La Molly sat down with Andrea Kramer, senior producer and reporter at @rmpbs , to talk about Careless: Colorado’s Childcare Struggle, her latest documentary exploring the challenges many Colorado families face when it comes to childcare access and affordability.
You can stream the documentary on the RMPBS+.
Listen to the FULL interview on our website! (LINK IN BIO)
#coloradofamilies #childcarecrisis #rmpbs #documentaryfilm #denvermedia
Mettje Swift has been making banner art for almost 50 years. Starting in 1978, she has created cross-street banners, indoor installations and other fabric-based works using translucent nylon.
“Banners are as old as people,” said Swift, founder of Banner Art Studio in Del Norte. “They’ve always been used to make a statement about who you are, what your aspirations are, and where you want to be.”
She began with sewing and theater stagecraft in college before learning the border appliqué technique that shapes her work. She hand-cuts and sews each piece together using a layering technique similar to stained glass, allowing light to pass through. The lightweight material also moves with the wind, adding movement to the piece (but not too much movement, like the doomed “Valley Curtain” piece from the artist Christo in 1972).
Swift’s process is labor-intensive. Each project begins with conversations about what a client wants to express, followed by large-scale pattern-making, hand-cutting each nylon piece with a heated tool and sewing the panels together one by one.
A single cross-street banner, which costs between $6,000 and $7,000, can take up to six weeks to complete in her studio.
Read more about Swift at rmpbs.org/news
Produced by Ziyi Xu
#bannerart
Today, Colorado Parks and Wildlife released an annual report about the status of gray wolves in the state. Three years ago, CPW transferred and released its first set of wolves from other states. This all stemming from a 2020 statewide ballot initiative which narrowly passed. Most of the votes for reintroduction came from counties where the wolves would not be living.
You can learn more about the history of wolves in Colorado before they were eradicated, how the ballot initiative came to be, and how the first year of reintroduction went for wolves in an Heartland Emmy award winning documentary called Colorado Experience: Return of the Wolf. You can watch that on RMPBS+ or our YouTube.
#coloradowolves
