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I recent­ly received an email with the sub­ject line, “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Col­orado State Leg­is­la­tors Endorse Paid Leave.”

Fifty-eight of them (40 in the House, and 18 in the Sen­ate) were back­ing Propo­si­tion 118, a bal­lot mea­sure that pro­pos­es to pro­vide Col­orado work­ers with up to 12 weeks of paid fam­i­ly or med­ical leave — plus anoth­er four weeks on top of that, in some cases.

The fun­ny thing is, the Col­orado Democ­rats who have con­trolled the leg­is­la­ture for the past two years couldn’t coa­lesce around a bill to pro­vide paid leave statewide. What’s more, the var­i­ous stalled bill drafts that were so hot­ly con­test­ed in the leg­is­la­ture were most­ly much more mod­er­ate than the bal­lot mea­sure. Law­mak­ers couldn’t agree over poli­cies that would’ve pro­vid­ed eight weeks of leave through a pro­gram run through pri­vate insur­ance. Now the Democ­rats are almost uni­ver­sal­ly on board with a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that promis­es work­ers more time off and cuts out the pri­vate sec­tor in favor of a gov­ern­ment-run approach.

Weird.

But also not surprising.

The paid leave bills I’ve cov­ered over the past cou­ple years have been com­plex, and under­stand­ably so — this would be a real­ly big-deal pol­i­cy change. The more com­plex a bill, the more details for law­mak­ers, the gov­er­nor and lob­by­ists to hag­gle over. Two Demo­c­ra­t­ic spon­sors took their names off the bill as it evolved ear­li­er this year, feel­ing that efforts to mod­er­ate it to please Gov. Jared Polis and oth­ers went too far.

A bal­lot mea­sure, on the oth­er hand, says what it says, and law­mak­ers can’t change it at will. That means the var­i­ous Democ­rats who wavered on paid leave bills must, in the case of Prop 118, pick a side. No amend­ments, no lob­by­ists urg­ing rewrites, no task force to study the mat­ter fur­ther. Just a bal­lot with a yes-or-no choice.

Giv­en this choice, 18 peo­ple in the 35-mem­ber Sen­ate and 40 peo­ple in the 65-mem­ber House say they’re in. Polis is stay­ing neu­tral for now. And it’ll up to the peo­ple of Col­orado to decide if, on bal­ance, they want a pro­gres­sive ver­sion of paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave or not.

Also in this week’s Spot, don’t miss Con­rad Swan­son on a far-left Den­ver coun­cil­woman sid­ing with pro­test­ers, and Justin Wingert­er on the lat­est in Hick v. Gardner.

Oth­er state pol­i­tics news

• The gov­er­nor says Col­orado high school foot­ball can be played this fall. CHSAA says no thanks.
• Col­orado is mak­ing progress on a Front Range rail­way. Here’s what it will take to make it happen.
• Boom­ing Front Range cities take first steps to build $500 mil­lion dam and reser­voir near Holy Cross Wilderness.

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You can send tips, com­ments and ques­tions to me at aburness@denverpost.com or to the oth­er Post reporters below.

Top Line

More than three out of four claims made for unem­ploy­ment assis­tance under a pro­gram for self-employed work­ers and inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors since July 18 were found to be fraud­u­lent, the Col­orado Depart­ment of Labor and Employ­ment said Thursday.

#COSen 2020 • By Justin Wingerter

A final test for Gardner in Washington

Late Tues­day morn­ing, Lake­wood teacher Julia Johns sat in the cor­ner of a class­room and, behind a mask and face shield, spoke in a quiv­er­ing voice about how her stu­dents, some of them refugees, must eat meals on copy paper because the class­room lacks dis­in­fec­tant wipes.

Johns spoke at a vir­tu­al event for U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date John Hick­en­loop­er, along with a south­east Col­orado may­or, a Fort Collins small busi­ness own­er, a Pueblo mil­i­tary vet­er­an and anoth­er Den­ver-area teacher. The over­lap­ping mes­sage from each was that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is not doing enough.

Bal­lots will be mailed to Col­oradans, many of whom are strug­gling might­i­ly, in less than a month and between now and then Con­gress will seek an agree­ment on a fifth relief bill. It will be a final test for Sen. Cory Gard­ner — maybe the last thing vot­ers see him do in Wash­ing­ton before cast­ing their bal­lots in his re-elec­tion run.

“As Col­oradans strug­gle to make ends meet, keep their busi­ness­es open, and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies, they are look­ing for Con­gress to come togeth­er to help our coun­try through this pan­dem­ic,” Gard­ner said in a press release Tuesday.

The Sen­ate vot­ed Thurs­day on a Repub­li­can relief bill that fell short of the 60 votes it needs to pass. Democ­rats con­sid­ered it woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate when con­sid­er­ing the enor­mi­ty of the eco­nom­ic crisis.

“I can go down the list of things that aren’t in this skin­ny bill,” Hick­en­loop­er said, empha­siz­ing the adjec­tive. “Again, this is a cri­sis. We don’t have the time for drag­ging out the negotiations.”

Repub­li­cans quick­ly crit­i­cized Hickenlooper’s oppo­si­tion to the bill as proof he doesn’t care about get­ting relief to Col­oradans. Gard­ner vot­ed in favor of it Thurs­day, which will allow him to say he vot­ed to alle­vi­ate the eco­nom­ic bur­dens crush­ing Col­oradans and accuse Democ­rats of obstructionism.

Relat­ed: Con­gress returns as Col­oradans seek help with hous­ing and unemployment.

More fed­er­al elec­tion news

• Poll shows nar­row­est lead yet for Hick­en­loop­er in Sen­ate chal­lenge of Gardner.
• The 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion will have a major impact on oil and gas policy.
• Cory Gard­ner accus­es pub­lic health experts of politi­ciz­ing the pandemic.
• Col­orado Democ­rats accused Gard­ner of “jam­ming through … anti-choice judges” this week. But those nom­i­nees are also backed by Democ­rats, Nation­al Jour­nal reports.
• A new ad accus­es Gard­ner of dis­guis­ing his alco­holic drink pref­er­ences, Col­orado Pol­i­tics reports. The Post’s orig­i­nal sto­ry on the cham­pagne par­ty he attend­ed is here.
• The fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives at Club for Growth are attack­ing Diane Mitsch Bush, the 3rd Dis­trict Demo­c­rat, with what Politi­co reports is a $216,000 ad buy.

Mile High Politics • By Conrad Swanson

Candid camera: CdeBaca vs. the police

Every­one was doing what they were told to do in late August near the inter­sec­tion of 28th Street and Gle­n­arm Place. Sort of.

Police stood guard, city staffers swept through the home­less encamp­ment there, and peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness, well, moved.

But a group of pro­test­ers had some­thing to say about the sweep — a prac­tice has come under more intense scruti­ny dur­ing the pan­dem­ic — and Den­ver City Coun­cil­woman Can­di Cde­Ba­ca joined them.

Police body cam­era footage obtained by Denver7 offers some insight into the protest and the councilwoman’s actions as the scene heat­ed up. Here’s what the TV sta­tion found:

In the video, Cde­Ba­ca calls the offi­cers “dogs” and insults them.

“They don’t know s–, they do what they’re told. They’re f—ing guard dogs. They’re f—ing guard dogs. They’re just ani­mals like pit bulls, they’re f—ing guard dogs,” Cde­Ba­ca said dur­ing the incident.

These par­tic­u­lar dogs were sicced on the peo­ple by May­or Michael Han­cock, Cde­Ba­ca said.

Appar­ent­ly an officer’s body cam­era fell dur­ing the run-in, and Cde­Ba­ca told pro­test­ers to keep it.

“There might be footage on there that we need,” she said after pro­test­ers pre­sent­ed the cam­era to her, the video shows. “But I don’t know how to access it. We could give it to the attorney.”

Those actions appar­ent­ly rubbed the police union the wrong way. Pres­i­dent Nick Rodgers told Denver7 the attempt was “felony crim­i­nal tampering.”

It’s unclear whether Rodgers is cor­rect that attempt­ing to access video, which by and large might be con­sid­ered pub­lic any­way, is actu­al­ly a felony. There doesn’t appear to be a legit­i­mate push to file a crim­i­nal charge against Cde­Ba­ca, in any event.

And Cde­Ba­ca has said that her actions have been meant to hold police account­able. She told Denver7 that while she might have used harsh lan­guage, it was direct­ed at offi­cers per­form­ing a “mil­i­ta­rized sweep” while city res­i­dents suf­fered med­ical episodes.

The footage shouldn’t come as much of a sur­prise. While the vocab­u­lary might be more coarse than nor­mal, Cde­Ba­ca has nev­er been shy about her opin­ions about the may­or, police prac­tices or the sweeps through home­less encamp­ments in the city. She pro­posed a bal­lot mea­sure recent­ly abol­ish­ing the police depart­ment and replac­ing it with a “peace force,” though her col­leagues force­ful­ly shot down the idea.

It appears unlike­ly the cam­era footage will change much, if any­thing. Police will con­tin­ue to stand guard as staffers repeat the sweeps month after month, and Cde­Ba­ca and oth­ers will be there to speak out against the practice.

Relat­ed: How do cops spend their time? As Den­ver debates police fund­ing, these num­bers offer an inside look.

More Den­ver and sub­ur­ban pol­i­tics news

• RTD is weigh­ing more than 600 lay­offs to close its bud­get shortfall.
• Den­ver city attor­neys win a round in fight over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the city’s urban camp­ing ban.
• Many hope to take Denver’s shared streets pilot pro­gram a step fur­ther, adding to the trend that has already begun to tip Den­ver away from its reliance on cars.
• A Den­ver neigh­bor­hood tiff over yard signs is prob­a­bly just the begin­ning in an elec­tion sea­son filled with polar­iz­ing issues.
• Thornton’s may­or left half of city coun­cil in the dark about a tax­pay­er-fund­ed trip to D.C.