Colorado's legislature confronted the cost of bureaucratic absurdity — and killed a bill in committee — in a week that quietly reshaped who gets access to justice.
A foster care survivor told Colorado lawmakers it would cost her $4,000 to read her own child welfare records. The Senate Judiciary Committee moved to fix that — and exposed a deeper crack in how the state handles parole along the way.
The House Appropriations Committee moved four bills in under an hour — but it was Rep. Woodrow's personal reckoning with antisemitic terror that stopped the room cold.
Rep. Woodrow's hometown synagogue had just been attacked. He told his Colorado colleagues about it — personally, specifically, and before the committee moved on to four spending bills it passed without debate.
Inside a brutal Joint Budget Committee hearing where lawmakers discovered that 13,000 children are frozen off child care assistance, the state's financial plan relies on waiting lists shrinking by attrition, and a $91 million federal funding threat could hit as soon as January 30th.
Colorado's child care agency came to the Joint Budget Committee with a five-year financial plan. Lawmakers discovered it was a plan to serve fewer and fewer children until the waiting lists solved themselves.