News

In 2016, drugs of various types killed 912 people in Colorado, nearly 300 more than the 627 who died in auto accidents here. Moreover, preliminary numbers from 2017 suggest that the total will rise for that year to 959, fueled largely by heroin and opioid overdoses in Denver and the Colorado Springs area, each of which suffered well over 100 fatalities each the previous year, and a startling number of casualties in some of the state’s least populous areas.

On March 14, the Denver Post announced the impending layoffs of thirty newsroom employees, or approximately one-third of the staff. Later this afternoon, the paper will issue a final list of those who’ll be leaving. But a preliminary roster assembled by the Denver Newspaper Guild and provided to Westword by Kieran Nicholson, the newsroom unit’s guild chair, suggests that the total number of people losing their jobs won’t be quite as high as previously expected.

The tax increase would raise $45 million annually to fund services in Denver.

More than twenty years after the U.S. Supreme Court overwhelmingly rejected Colorado’s Amendment 2, which would have banned state and local governments from implementing laws prohibiting discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation, legislators this session tried to resurrect similar language in the so-called “Live and Let Live Act.”

If Denver accepts a city newspaper that mistakes the Phillies field for our own, what else should we expect?

Representative Leslie Herod, a Democrat from Denver, will spearhead a ballot initiative that would use a sales-tax increase to fund existing mental-health and substance-abuse treatment services in Denver, like suicide-prevention programs, alternatives to jail, and some housing services.