The Spot: Lingering state confusion about federal eviction moratorium, and rehashing secession effort

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I was sit­ting at my desk Tues­day after­noon, stream­ing the governor’s press con­fer­ence on COVID-19, when I saw a Bloomberg arti­cle: White House Says CDC Will Halt Evic­tions Using Quar­an­tine Rules.

Whoa! That was major. Evic­tions have been able to resume here since mid­sum­mer, and a promise from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to sus­pend them almost entire­ly would be game-chang­ing for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple who, mod­el­ing shows, could face evic­tion in Col­orado by the end of the year. It’d affect land­lords, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the governor’s new­ly formed state task force on hous­ing inse­cu­ri­ty, among others.

It was a bomb­shell. But was it true? 

Did the CDC, a pub­lic health agency, real­ly have the author­i­ty to uni­lat­er­al­ly alter hous­ing laws all over the coun­try? Were there notable loop­holes I was missing?

I imme­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the governor’s office, state law­mak­ers, the Divi­sion of Hous­ing, Col­orado courts, evic­tion defense attor­neys and the apart­ment indus­try, and they were all review­ing the order. By the end of Tues­day, none of these peo­ple were able to affir­ma­tive­ly state that evic­tions would in fact be halt­ed in Colorado.

The thing is, if you review the order, it’s actu­al­ly not that com­pli­cat­ed. It makes an argu­ment for evic­tion as a pub­lic health con­cern, and it lays out the cir­cum­stances under which one would or would not be pro­tect­ed from evic­tion — the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple are pro­tect­ed — between now and the end of year. The White House said Trump sup­port­ed the order.

So why do Col­orado offi­cials seem so baffled?

I think it’s pret­ty sim­ple: The Democ­rats in charge here don’t trust Trump to do what he says he’ll do. There have been so many lies, so much mixed mes­sag­ing, so many ini­tia­tives struck down by fed­er­al judges over the past few years that we’re now at the point where a fed­er­al agency issues a nation­wide order, backed by White House offi­cials, and the peo­ple who run Col­orado can’t even con­firm that, yes, it’s a real thing that will be imple­ment­ed here.

Here’s part of what Conor Cahill, spokesman for Gov. Jared Polis, told me Tues­day: “Our admin­is­tra­tion is cur­rent­ly review­ing this recent fed­er­al action to see if it will real­ly help Col­oradans or is just emp­ty words.” 

I asked again on Wednes­day. “We are still review­ing,” Cahill said.

It’s now been near­ly two full days since the order dropped, and I still haven’t heard any­thing con­crete from the governor’s office, or any arm of state gov­ern­ment. Mean­while, the order is set to go into effect Fri­day, and many, many thou­sands of Col­oradans stand to be impacted. 

Else­where in this week’s Spot, we’ve got Justin Wingert­er won­der­ing where Cory Gard­ner real­ly stands (or, at least, where he real­ly stood) on east­ern Col­orado seced­ing from the state, and Con­rad Swan­son writ­ing on a Den­ver bal­lot mea­sure you should be pay­ing atten­tion to.

More Col­orado pol­i­tics news

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Top Line

Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, at ...
Repub­li­can U.S. Sen. Cory Gard­ner, at left, is being chal­lenged by Demo­c­ra­t­ic for­mer Col­orado Gov. John Hick­en­loop­er in the Nov. 3 gen­er­al election.

The Den­ver Post, Denver7 and Col­orado Pub­lic Radio have got­ten U.S. Sen. Cory Gard­ner and Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger John Hick­en­loop­er to agree on some­thing in their bit­ter­ly con­test­ed race: a debate. It’s the first — and pos­si­bly only — debate that will be held in Den­ver and the sec­ond debate total. Pre­vi­ous­ly, a Pueblo Chief­tain invi­ta­tion was the only one both cam­paigns had accept­ed. The media part­ners also held the only live, in-per­son debate in the U.S. Sen­ate pri­ma­ry. More details on the upcom­ing debate can be found here.

#COSen 2020 • By Justin Wingerter

An unusual attack line

One of Sen. Cory Gardner’s more unortho­dox crit­i­cisms of his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent made anoth­er appear­ance last week.

“I think a lot of the silent major­i­ty that peo­ple may talk about is off the I‑25 cor­ri­dor,” Gard­ner told CBS4. “It’s the East­ern Plains, it’s the West­ern Slope. It’s (the) 20% of coun­ties in Col­orado who tried to secede under John Hick­en­loop­er because he called rur­al Col­oradans ‘back­wards.’”

Gard­ner, who lives and votes in one of the 11 coun­ties that con­sid­ered seced­ing in 2013, has invoked that quixot­ic attempt at cre­at­ing a new state on sev­er­al occa­sions this year — and blamed Hick­en­loop­er for the fact that it happened.

“Remem­ber what hap­pened in rur­al Col­orado,” Gard­ner said dur­ing a vir­tu­al event in late May. “You had a whole bunch of coun­ties that tried to secede under his lead­er­ship and what he did.”

On June 30, the night Hick­en­loop­er won the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, Gard­ner told Col­orado Pol­i­tics, “He needs to explain why 20% of the state tried to secede when he was governor.”

The rea­son had more to do with gun and ener­gy poli­cies than Hickenlooper’s “back­ward” remark, which occurred four years before at a Matthew Shep­ard Foun­da­tion gala. Hick­en­loop­er, then Denver’s may­or, was describ­ing homo­pho­bia in rur­al areas and com­par­ing it to Denver’s vibrant LGBT community.

“Col­orado and Wyoming are very sim­i­lar,” Hick­en­loop­er said then. “We have some of the same, you know, back­wards think­ing in the kind of rur­al West­ern areas you see in, you know, Mon­tana, Wyoming, Col­orado, New Mexico.”

Gardner’s Yuma Coun­ty vot­ed to secede but Gard­ner has nev­er said how he vot­ed. He was a con­gress­man at the time and claimed that it would be inap­pro­pri­ate to com­ment on state issues. When asked this week whether Gard­ner vot­ed to secede, his cam­paign did not respond.

Dur­ing an appear­ance on KHOW in Feb­ru­ary, after Gard­ner said “near­ly 20% of Col­orado tried to secede when John Hick­en­loop­er was gov­er­nor,” for­mer state Sen. Greg Bro­phy of Yuma Coun­ty told Gard­ner that he, Bro­phy, vot­ed to secede. Gard­ner laughed hearti­ly but didn’t vol­un­teer how he voted.

More fed­er­al elec­tion news

  • Gardner’s lat­est ad is about a din­er kept open by the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram, which he, and near­ly every oth­er sen­a­tor, vot­ed to cre­ate.
  • In the 3rd Dis­trict, Diane Mitsch Bush will receive help from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee and Emily’s List, the two groups announced sep­a­rate­ly Monday.
  • Her Repub­li­can oppo­nent, Lau­ren Boe­bert, con­tin­ued an in-per­son cam­paign tour with a stop in Hotchkiss on Sat­ur­day, the Mon­trose Dai­ly Press reports.
  • Boe­bert has backed out of this month’s Club 20 forum — Mitsch Bush pre­vi­ous­ly did — because of a dis­agree­ment over the for­mat, Col­orado Pol­i­tics reports.

Mile High Politics • By Conrad Swanson

The Denver Internet Initiative walks softly but carries a big stick

The Den­ver Inter­net Ini­tia­tive isn’t tak­ing any chances in its sup­port for a bal­lot mea­sure in Novem­ber that would allow Den­ver to enter the inter­net provider busi­ness

The mea­sure will ask vot­ers to allow Den­ver to opt out of a 2005 state law restrict­ing gov­ern­ments from using tax dol­lars to build broad­band net­works. Because such a move effec­tive­ly enables cities to com­pete direct­ly with pri­vate providers like Com­cast and Cen­tu­ry Link, those com­pa­nies have large­ly opposed these types of bal­lot mea­sures across the state.

Pro­po­nents’ aim is to give Den­ver addi­tion­al avenues to expand access to high-speed inter­net, which is a neces­si­ty in this day and age, said City Coun­cil­man Paul Kash­mann, who pro­posed the mea­sure. Those avenues could range from giv­ing the city addi­tion­al lever­age when nego­ti­at­ing with pri­vate com­pa­nies to the cre­ation of a munic­i­pal inter­net service.

So far, pri­vate inter­net providers haven’t orga­nized oppo­si­tion to the mea­sure on Denver’s bal­lot, though they’re clear­ly not in favor of the move. But the Den­ver Inter­net Ini­tia­tive is but­ton­ing up sup­port through­out the city any­way, Co-Chair Spencer McCul­lough said.

Den­ver May­or Michael Han­cock, all 13 City Coun­cil mem­bers, Col­orado Attor­ney Gen­er­al Phil Weis­er and state rep­re­sen­ta­tives Ser­e­na Gon­za­les-Gutier­rez, Emi­ly Siro­ta and Steven Woodrow endorsed the mea­sure this week, McCul­lough said. 

“These endorse­ments show Com­cast that we have a unit­ed front, and they’re not going to have any allies in the elect­ed space,” McCul­lough said. 

Already more than 100 Col­orado cities have opt­ed out of the law, gen­er­al­ly with wide mar­gins. In 2017, 19 cities opt­ed out with aver­age sup­port of about 83%, though not with­out oppo­si­tion from inter­net providers.

Some cities that have opt­ed out — Fort Collins and Long­mont, for exam­ple — have launched their own munic­i­pal inter­net com­pa­nies in direct com­pe­ti­tion with pri­vate providers. City offi­cials there sing the prais­es of the munic­i­pal ser­vice, which has expand­ed cov­er­age for peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly lacked access to high-speed inter­net or were forced to set­tle for the sin­gle, expen­sive com­pa­ny that offered them coverage. 

Should Den­ver go that route — which city offi­cials haven’t said they want to do — it could cost an esti­mat­ed $1 bil­lion and take years to com­plete.

But just opt­ing out and giv­ing Den­ver the option to build a munic­i­pal net­work gives city offi­cials more bar­gain­ing pow­er over pri­vate com­pa­nies, McCul­lough said. If they refuse to expand cov­er­age, increase speeds or low­er costs, the city has options. 

More Den­ver and sub­ur­ban polit­i­cal news

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