Denver city officials are opening three additional severe weather shelters this week as the first snow of the season falls in the city and temperatures dip below freezing.
The Stone Creek shelter at 4595 Quebec St., formerly the Best Western Hotel, and city facilities at 2601 W. Seventh Ave. and 375 S. Zuni St. will be open from 1 p.m. Monday to 11 a.m. Thursday, according to a city news release.
People needing shelter can walk up to the shelters directly, and people with pets should go to the Stone Creek shelter, city officials said.
The Denver Animal Shelter also offers a Safe Haven Program, which provides two to four weeks of shelter for pets of families experiencing homelessness during severe weather events, city officials said.
Denver officials said the city’s regular access points are also expanding their capacity for the cold weather, including:
Lawrence Street Community Center, 2222 Lawrence St., for individual men
Samaritan House, 2301 Lawrence St., for individual women
Urban Peak, 1630 S. Acoma St, for 15-to 20-year-olds
Families in need of shelter should call the Connection Center at 303-295-3366, city officials said in the release.
Colorado’s reinsurance program will save people who buy their health insurance on the individual market an estimated $493 million next year, compared to how much premiums would have risen without it, according to the Polis administration.
Statewide, premiums on the individual market will rise by an average of 5.6%, while they will increase about 7.1% for small-group plans.
Reinsurance is a backstop that limits how much insurance companies have to pay out for the relatively small number of people who have highly expensive medical needs each year. Since they aren’t on the hook to pay out as much, the companies charge lower premiums, which in turn means the federal government doesn’t have to spend as much on tax credits to people buying insurance on the marketplace. Colorado got permission from the federal government to use those federal savings to further lower monthly premiums.
A news release from Gov. Jared Polis’ office estimated that premiums in 2025 will be about 24% lower than they would have been without a reinsurance program. The amount any customer would save depends on where they live, their age and how many people in their family need coverage.
A 40-year-old buying individual coverage would have an average savings of $1,500 over the course of a year. People living on the Western Slope would save more, while the change was smaller near the Front Range.
Open enrollment on the marketplace begins Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 15.
For the first time, Coloradans have a clear picture of where they can go for sometimes-controversial health services such as abortion, gender-affirming care or medical aid-in-dying.
In much of the state, though, the answer is “nowhere close.”
Hospitals are required to disclose data about restrictions on 66 services related to reproductive, gender-affirming and end-of-life care to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment under a law passed in 2023. Starting this month, they also must provide copies of their disclosure forms to patients ahead of their appointments.
Only three Colorado counties — Denver, Douglas and Weld — have unrestricted access in at least one hospital to three services from the list that The Denver Post sampled.
Access to gender-affirming surgery was especially limited; only 13 of Colorado’s 64 counties have a hospital without non-medical restrictions on a double mastectomy, also known as “top surgery,” for gender affirmation. (Eighteen counties have no hospital within their borders, and the rest either don’t offer mastectomies to anyone or restricted who could receive one.)
Nor was access to the other sampled services much broader.
Thirteen Colorado counties have a hospital that would assist with a request for medical aid-in-dying without religious or other non-medical limitations, and 15 have one that would provide comprehensive treatment for a miscarriage, which can include drugs and procedures used in induced abortions.
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Facilities that restrict the services they offer aren’t likely to make changes because of the law — particularly since many of the restrictions stem from religious beliefs — but at least patients will know what to expect when they go for care, said Dr. Patricia Gabow, a former CEO of Denver Health who has written about the intersection of religion and health care.
Of course, transparency only does so much for people who live in a county where the only hospitals are Catholic-owned, Gabow said. Catholic hospitals, which include those owned by CommonSpirit Health and some belonging to Intermountain Health, generally don’t offer contraception, sterilization, gender-affirming care, medical aid-in-dying or abortion.
“People who live in Durango, I don’t know what they’re supposed to do,” she said.
Mercy Hospital in that city follows Catholic ethical and religious directives for health care, and the closest hospital that offers comprehensive reproductive services or assistance with medical aid-in-dying is in Del Norte, about two and a half hours away.
Catholic doctrine requires health care providers to “respect all stages of life,” and not participate in procedures such as medical aid-in-dying or sterilization without a medical reason, said Lindsay Radford, spokeswoman for CommonSpirit Health, which owns Mercy.
The system’s hospitals work with patients and their families to provide appropriate pain and symptom relief as they near death, she said.
“We respect and honor the physician-patient relationship, and medical decisions are made by a patient and their doctor. Patients who seek care at a CommonSpirit Health hospital or clinic are fully informed of all treatment options, including those we do not perform,” she said in a statement.
Geographic and political differences
Generally, access to potentially controversial services was greater in more areas with larger populations, though with significant exceptions.
Both of Jefferson County’s hospitals, St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood and Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge, won’t allow measures to end a pregnancy if a fetus still has a heartbeat.
The state’s form conflates “threatened” and “completed” miscarriages, said Sara Quale, spokeswoman for Intermountain Health, which owns Lutheran Hospital. The hospital doesn’t restrict care once a fetus has died, but if it still has a heartbeat, doctors attempt to treat whatever is causing the miscarriage, she said. The most common cause of miscarriages is a problem with a fetus’s chromosomes, which doesn’t allow it to survive and has no treatment.
In contrast, people in rural Prowers County on the Eastern Plains can get comprehensive miscarriage treatment without driving elsewhere. So can residents of Rio Grande County.
Local politics also don’t necessarily match up with access.
The three counties that had at least one hospital offering unrestricted access to the three sampled services were deep-blue Denver and thoroughly red Weld and Douglas.
While their residents might differ on many issues, Weld and Douglas counties shared one common characteristic with Denver: They’re home to at least one hospital owned by a secular system, such as UCHealth, Denver Health or HCA HealthOne.
At least 22 hospitals in Colorado have religious restrictions on care options: 17 owned or formerly owned by Catholic organizations, and five affiliated with the Adventist faith. In some cases, when a hospital changes hands, provisions of the deal require the new owner to honor the seller’s religious and ethical rules, even if the buyer is secular.
Some secular organizations also listed certain services as restricted.
UCHealth generally doesn’t serve patients under 15, while Denver Health doesn’t provide abortions under certain circumstances because of concerns about losing federal funding, spokesman Dane Roper said.
The seven HealthOne hospitals also had non-religious restrictions, but didn’t specify their nature. Banner Health didn’t respond to inquiries about service limitations at its five Colorado hospitals.
Informed decision-making
So far, Colorado is the only state that requires hospitals to directly tell patients when they don’t offer services for religious or other non-medical reasons, said Alison Gill, vice president of legal and policy with American Atheists, which supported the law as it went through the legislature.
That provision will be important not only for Coloradans seeking care, but for people traveling to the state because of its welcoming policies around reproductive and gender-affirming care, she said.
“We are encouraging other states to enact similar provisions because it is essential to provide patients with information about service availability so that they can make informed decisions about their health care,” she said.
The law has some limitations, said Gabow, formerly of Denver Health. For example, an outpatient gynecology office owned by a religious health system doesn’t have to give patients the disclosure form, and insurers don’t have to include hospitals offering care without limitations in their networks, she said.
Colorado’s law won’t inherently increase access to health care, but it may prevent surprises for patients who don’t know to look up the closest hospital’s religious affiliation or don’t realize it could affect them, said Dr. Sam Doernberg, a physician researcher at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Doernberg wrote a study that found 132 counties nationwide had “religious monopolies” in their hospital markets as of 2020. The vast majority involved Catholic hospitals, and 11 involved Adventist hospitals. The study didn’t include counties that don’t have a hospital and are adjacent to a monopoly county, so the actual number where people don’t have the full range of choices may be higher, he said.
While no states have tried them yet, researchers do have a few ideas to more directly increase access to care while still respecting the religious rights of organizations that own hospitals, Doernberg said.
For example, they could directly fund public health departments so they can provide more reproductive services in areas where the dominant health system limits options, or they could require that insurance companies don’t charge patients an out-of-network rate if none of the in-network hospitals offer gender-affirming care, for example, he said.
“There are other possible solutions that are not currently being pursued,” he said.
City officials did not say when or where the beetles were found or how many trees were impacted and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Ash trees infested by the beetles can be identified through “D-shaped” exit holes, splitting bark and “S-shaped” tunnels under the bark, city Forestry Supervisor Luke Killoran said in a statement.
Other signs include thinning tree canopy, abnormal shoots of growth, smaller leaves and lots of woodpecker activity.
In Colorado, the bugs were first found in Boulder County in 2013 and have since been confirmed in Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield and Larimer counties. Arvada’s first beetle was discovered in 2020.
Residents may be able to protect healthy trees through preventative insecticide treatments but should make sure to use a certified arborist licensed by the Colorado Department of Agriculture as a commercial pesticide applicator.
The suspect in Thursday’s fatal hostage situation and shootout at Broomfield’s Arista Flats apartment complex and the woman he held hostage lived in the same apartment, property managers said.
In an email to residents, Arista Flats management said the hostage and gunman lived together, but the relationship between the two is still unknown.
“As you likely know, there was a domestic violence incident in our community early in the morning of Sept. 12, 2024, that involved a male resident firing shots inside and outside of a unit and injuring a female resident who resided in the same unit,” management wrote in the email. “The incident ended after a short stand-off with law enforcement and the resident was taken into custody.”
The hours-long standoff with police at the Arista Flats complex ended with the death of the woman hostage and police taking a seriously injured gunman into custody.
Police did not specify who shot the woman, but said Thursday at least one Broomfield officer fired his weapon at the suspect.
Police have not publically identified the gunman and the woman he’d held hostage, but Broomfield Police Department spokeswoman Rachel Haslett said criminal charges against the 34-year-old suspect “are forthcoming.”
Residents who were evacuated from Arista Flats during Thursday’s hostage situation and investigation can return home Friday, police said.
The number of residents evacuated from the apartment complex was not available Friday.
Officers set up a ladder at the scene of a shooting and hostage situation at Broomfield apartment complex Arista Flats in Broomfield, Colorado on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The south stairwell in building 15 of Arista Flats — 11332 Central Court — remains closed for the investigation, police said. Residents can use any other entrance.
Wisconsin health officials initiated a recall of eggs following an outbreak of salmonella infections among 65 people in nine states — including Colorado — that originated on a Wisconsin farm.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement Friday that among those infected by salmonella are 42 people in Wisconsin, where the eggs are believed to have been sold.
“The eggs were distributed in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan through retail stores and food service distributors,” the department said. “The recall includes all egg types such as conventional cage-free, organic, and non-GMO, carton sizes, and expiration dates in containers labeled with ‘Milo’s Poultry Farms’ or ‘Tony’s Fresh Market.’”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a statement on its website that 65 people in nine states were infected by a strain of salmonella, with 24 hospitalizations and no deaths as of Friday. The states include Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Utah and California, the agency said.
One case has been reported in Colorado to date, according to the CDC.
The egg recall was undertaken by Milo’s Poultry Farms LLC of Bonduel, Wisconsin, the CDC said.
“Anyone who purchased the recalled eggs is advised to not eat them or cook with them and to throw them away. Restaurants should not sell or serve recalled eggs,” the Wisconsin health department said.
The department advised anyone who ate the eggs and is experiencing symptoms to contact a health care provider. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and vomiting lasting for several days, the statement said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in July announced new measures to limit salmonella in poultry products. The proposed directive included requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella levels under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six particularly sickening forms of the bacteria, three found in turkey and three in chicken.
Bacteria exceeding the proposed standard and identification of any of the strains would prevent poultry sales and leave the products subject to recall.
The CDC estimates salmonella causes 1.35 million infections annually, most through food, and about 420 deaths. The Agriculture Department estimates there are 125,000 infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year.
Colorado has three years to lower ground-level ozone pollution to meet federal standards, and this summer’s hazy skies — caused by oil and gas drilling, heavy vehicle traffic and wildfire smoke — are putting the state in a hole as it’s already logged more dirty air days than in all of 2023.
“Our state has taken a lot of steps to improve air quality, but you can see it in the skies, you can see it in the air, that we still have work to do,” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.
Two months into the 2024 summer ozone season, the Front Range already has recorded more high ozone days than the entire summer of 2023. As of Monday, which is the most recent data available, ozone levels had exceeded federal air quality standards on 28 days. At the same point in 2023, there had been 27 high-ozone days.
The summer ozone season runs from June 1 to Aug. 31. However, the region encompassing metro Denver and the northern Front Range this year recorded its first high ozone day in May, and in some years ozone pollution exceeds federal standards into mid-September.
The first benchmark is to lower average ozone pollution to a 2008 standard of 75 parts per billion. The northern Front Range is in what’s called “severe non-attainment” for that number, meaning motorists must use a more expensive blend of gasoline during the summer and more businesses must apply for federal permits that regulate how much pollution they spill into the air.
The second benchmark requires the region to lower its average ozone pollution to a 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion, considered the most acceptable level of air pollution for human health. In July, the EPA downgraded the northern Front Range to be in serious violation of that standard as the region’s ozone level now sits at 81 parts per billion. The state must now submit to the EPA a new plan for lowering emissions.
Colorado needs to meet both EPA benchmarks by 2027, or it will be downgraded again and face more federal regulation.
Of the 28 days the state has recorded high ozone pollution levels, 17 exceeded the 2008 standard of 70 parts per billion, according to data compiled by the Regional Air Quality Council, an organization that advises the state on how to reduce air pollution.
That’s bad news for the region after state air regulators predicted Colorado would be able to meet that standard by the 2027 deadline. The EPA calculates average ozone pollution levels on a three-year average, so this summer’s bad numbers will drag down the final grade.
“It’s not a good first year to have,” said Mike Silverstein, the air quality council’s executive director.
Smoke from wildfires near and far
Ground-level ozone pollution forms on hot summer days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides react in the sunlight. Those compounds and gases are released by oil and gas wells and refineries, automobiles on the road, fumes from paint and other industrial chemicals, and gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.
It forms a smog that can cause the skies to become brown or hazy, and it is harmful to people, especially those with lung and heart disease, the elderly and children. Ground-level ozone is different than the ozone in the atmosphere that protects Earth from the sun’s powerful rays.
Wildfire smoke blowing from Canada and the Pacific Northwest did not help Colorado’s pollution levels in July, and then multiple fires erupted along the Front Range over the past week, creating homegrown pollution from fine particulate matter such as smoke, soot and ash. Ultimately, though, the heavy smoke days could be wiped from the calculations from 2024, but that decision will be made at a later date.
Still, June also saw multiple high ozone days, and air quality experts say much of the pollution originates at home in Colorado and cannot be blamed on outside influences.
The out-of-state wildfire smoke sent ozone levels skyrocketing the week of July 21 to 27, Silverstein said, but it’s not the reason the numbers are high. The week prior saw ozone levels above federal standards, too, and wildfire smoke had not drifted into the region.
“Pull the wildfires out and we would probably still have had high ozone,” he said.
Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, also warned that wildfires should not be used as an excuse for the region’s air pollution.
“While the wildfires are out of our control, there is a whole bunch of air pollution we can control,” he said. “I don’t want to let that cover up the ugliness that existed here in the first place.”
Nichols blames oil and gas drilling for the region’s smog. The state is not doing enough to regulate the industry, he said.
“We actually need to recognize we are at a point where oil and gas needs to stop drilling on high ozone days,” Nichols said. “Just like we’re told to stay home on high ozone days, business as usual needs to stop. I don’t think we’ve clamped down on them and in many respects they are getting a free pass to pollute.”
One proposal would require drilling companies to eliminate emissions from pneumatic actuating devices, equipment driven by pressurized gas to open and close valves in pipelines, Silverstein said. Oil companies already are required to make 50% of those devices emission-free, and the federal government also is requiring them to be 100% emission-free by 2035. But Colorado’s proposal would accelerate the timeline, he said.
The second proposal would tell companies to stop performing blowdowns, which is when workers vent fumes from pipelines before beginning maintenance to clear explosive gases, when an ozone alert is issued, Silverstein said.
“There are thousands of these very small events, but these small events add up to significant activity,” he said.
Gabby Richmond, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the industry supports the new regulations. She said operators also were electrifying operations where possible and voluntarily delaying operational activities on high ozone days.
“Our industry values clean air, and we are committed to pioneering innovative solutions that protect our environment and make Colorado a great place to live,” Richmond said in a statement. “As a part of this commitment, we have significantly reduced ozone-causing emissions by over 50% through technology, regulatory initiatives and voluntary measures — all in the spirit of being good neighbors in the communities where we live and work.”
“Knock down emissions where we can”
Meanwhile, people who live in metro Denver and the northern Front Range are asked to do their part, too.
When the state health department issues an ozone action alert — which is a forecast for high pollution levels — people are asked to limit driving as much as possible. They also are asked to avoid using gas-powered lawn and garden equipment until later in the day when the sun starts dropping behind the mountains and temperatures fall.
It would be easy to blame Colorado’s ozone pollution on its geography, global climate change that is raising temperatures, and pollution blowing from other countries and states, Silverstein said. But Colorado has a responsibility to do its part.
“We have 4 million people and a big oil and gas field and lots of industrial activity and all of the things related to human activity all in one concentrated location with a great mountain backdrop, but it comes with a bit of a price,” he said. “So it’s up to us to find the strategies to knock down emissions where we can.”
As wildfires burned thousands of acres across the Front Range on Wednesday, some residents heeded early morning calls to leave while others opted to stay put on land that already required extra self-sufficiency.
At the Dakota Ridge High School, the evacuation site for the Quarry fire burning near Deer Creek Canyon in Jefferson County, John Banks coughed in the parking lot as smoke from the fire threatening his neighborhood hung heavily in the air.
Banks and his wife, Diane, fled the fire early Wednesday after a 1:30 a.m. phone call ordered them to evacuate.
The couple slept in their car overnight with their rescue cat, Mea, and the few items they scooped from their home after the evacuation call: medications, some clothes, John’s oxygen tanks and cancer medications, and Mea’s food and litter.
They left everything else behind in the home where they’ve lived for 34 years.
“These are just things,” said Banks, 78.
He paused, emotion creeping into his voice.
“If you lose things, you still have your friends, your family.”
The couple found a hotel to stay in for the next night and planned to spend Wednesday going to pre-scheduled doctor appointments.
“Life throws spitballs at you,” John Banks said. “But you keep going.”
When the couple arrived at the evacuation center at Dakota Ridge High School at 3 a.m. Wednesday, they were one of the first people to arrive.
By 9 a.m., dozens of cars were parked at the school — some of the nearly 600 households ordered to evacuate from the Quarry fire. A few evacuees took time to walk their dogs. In the next lot over, a Denver Fire Department crew suited up to respond to the fire.
Elden Coombs, 85, sat with his neighbors in the parking lot waiting for news. He moved to the Homewood Park neighborhood in 1969 and has lived through two other fires, a blizzard and two floods.
Quarry fire evacuee Elden Coombs waits in the shade at the evacuation center at Dakota Ridge High School in Jefferson County on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Coombs had to evacuate from the Homewood Park area. (Photo by Andy Cross/ The Denver Post)
He left his home after getting the evacuation call at about 2 a.m. He grabbed some clothes, important documents and his medicine and fled.
“I haven’t been to bed,” he said. “I just hope they get the fire under control.”
At the frontlines of the Stone Canyon fire north of Lyons, Boulder County sheriff’s Sgt. Cody Sears patrolled the still-unburned areas where flames were flaring and spreading.
“So far, so good. We’ll see what the winds do,” Sears said as he rolled out around 11 a.m. Wednesday
He went first to an area where flames had taken a run to the northeast, threatening evacuated houses a couple of miles north of Lyons, then headed to terrain straddling Boulder and Larimer counties, a few miles south of the Alexander Mountain Fire — where residents apparently had elected to stay, hunkering down on their land.
Through smoke on Dakota Ridge Road, Sears spotted two horses: one brown, one white. He radioed county animal control crews, alerting them to a possible rescue. He was uneasy. “This fire is still really active,” he said.
But he and fellow officers, reaching homes there, found residents well in control.
At a front door in the area, Carmen Roberts, 50, came to the door and told him she and her family had stayed through the night. They had water tanks, heavy equipment, and were ready to evacuate with their horses if the flames came too close, she said.
Boulder County sheriff’s Sgt. Cody Sears talks to Carmen Roberts about her decision to remain in her home and not evacuate despite the incoming Stone Canyon fire near Lyons on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Photo by Zachary Spindler-Krage/The Denver Post)
“We’ve have been here over 30 years. We’ve been through these things several times,” Roberts said. “We have everything packed, out by the door. We are going to go if we need to.”
They’d slept a bit through the night. “When it happens over and over and over, the stress is less,” she said.
Yet fire perils seem to be increasing along Colorado’s Front Range, Roberts acknowledged. The problem is more and more people moving in, she said. “Fire is worse now because it affects more people. It is threatening more homes because there are more homes around.”
Near the top of Stone Canyon, business owner Matthew Lee, too, had spent the night on his property — 80 acres where he’d grazed cattle this spring before moving them away about three weeks ago, leaving the grass short enough to ease his worries.
The fire was burning within a quarter mile of his metal-roofed house.
He’d parked down the hill and, leaning on the back of his truck, looked upward. On Tuesday night, power went out at 10:30 p.m. and his cellphone went dead, said Lee, 55.
Early Wednesday, he told Sears, flames crested over the ridge. Slurry bombers dropped red fire retardant on that terrain as he watched.
He had declined to evacuate — like other self-reliant residents in the foothills north of Lyons. He lauded Colorado’s approach of aggressive fire suppression, dousing flames before fires can run their natural course.
“The most I have seen,” he said. “Yesterday, it was an air show. That’s good.”
Colorado’s senators and a congressman are demanding answers from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs leadership over a series of troubling reports about its Aurora hospital.
Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both Democrats, and Rep. Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat, sent a letter to VA leadership on Monday requesting an accounting of patient safety issues, further explanation over its current pause in surgeries due to a mysterious residue on its medical equipment, and steps the hospital has taken to address pervasive cultural problems among its staff.
“As problems persist within the (Eastern Colorado hospital system), we are increasingly concerned about the quality of care Colorado veterans receive, a lack of adherence to the required medical and employee procedures, and how recent leadership changes have impeded the system’s effectiveness,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter comes on the heels of two scathing reports from the VA’s Office of Inspector General, which investigates departmental waste, fraud and abuse.
The probes, released June 24, found Aurora’s Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center paused surgeries for more than a year in 2022 and 2023 because the hospital didn’t have the staff to care for those patients after their procedures. They never told the federal VA as required, the investigation found.
The second inspector general report said the Aurora VA suffered from poor organizational health, citing widespread fear among staff that promoted disenfranchisement. Doctors stopped performing high-risk procedures, one staffer said, for fear of punishment if something went wrong.
The investigation mirrored The Denver Post’s reporting since last fall, which found the toxic workplace and culture of fear had permeated a wide swath of departments, leading to high turnover, especially among senior leadership positions. The Post also found that the head of the hospital’s prosthetics department was instructing employees to cancel veterans’ orders to clear a large backlog. The VA later confirmed The Post’s reporting.
Bennet, Hickenlooper and Crow, in their letter, asked the VA to respond to a series of questions, including detailed queries about the mysterious residue that has halted hundreds of surgeries since April. The Post first reported in May that the hospital was rescheduling or referring to community hospitals all surgeries that rely on reusable equipment.
The elected officials also asked the VA about staffing shortages at the hospital network, along with reports that many veterans in the system have been waiting months for their first face-to-face appointment with a provider.
“We share the goal of providing veterans across the country with timely, quality and consistent health care,” the letter states. “The continuous appointment delays and ongoing quality issues at (the hospital) undermine this objective.”
Denver voters will be asked in November to consider increasing the city’s sales tax to raise $70 million a year to help stabilize Denver Health, the region’s financially ailing safety-net hospital.
The Denver City Council voted 12-1 without discussion Monday to send the .34% sales-tax increase — which would add 34 cents to a $100 purchase — to the ballot. The city’s current sales tax is 8.81% and, if this measure is approved by voters, it will increase to 9.15%.
Councilman Kevin Flynn, who represents District 2, cast the only dissenting vote. He previously had expressed concern about “burdening Denver taxpayers” with tax increases.
Mayor Mike Johnston is considering asking the council to place a second sales-tax increase — one that would raise money for affordable housing — on the November ballot, administration officials told The Denver Post earlier this month.
If voters OK the Denver Health tax increase, the health system could only use the money to expand or maintain medical care in the following categories:
Emergency and trauma care
Primary care
Mental health care
Addiction treatment and recovery services
Pediatric care
There would be a cap on the administrative costs that could be drawn from the fund, as well.
The system lost about $35 million in 2022, CEO Donna Lynne told a council subcommittee at a meeting earlier this month. The hospital earned a $17 million profit in 2023, though that wasn’t enough to tackle the maintenance that it deferred in recent years, officials said.
Lynne also told council members that Denver Health could make it through the first quarter of 2025, but if it doesn’t receive additional revenue by then, it would have to make significant cuts. She didn’t specify what services those cuts might affect, but said the system has already instituted a hiring freeze, deferred maintenance, cut travel expenses and limited the circumstances where its insurance will cover anti-obesity drugs such as Wegovy.
Denver Health provided about $140 million in uncompensated care in 2023, and the hospital’s projections show it expects to spend $124 million in 2025, according to the bill approved by the council.
The city contributed about $31 million toward offsetting those costs, and the state legislature voted to make one-time payments of $5 million to assist the system last year and again in the most recent session.
The ballot question would forbid the city from reducing its contribution in response to the sales tax.
A plane crashed into a Steamboat Springs mobile home park on Monday afternoon, starting a fire involving at least two homes, according to Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue.
A Cessna 421 crashed into the West Acres mobile home park, 2990 W. Acres Drive, at 4:23 p.m., engulfing two homes and several outbuildings, Steamboat Springs police said on Facebook.
All mobile home residents have been accounted for, but information about how many passengers were inside the Cessna was not immediately available.
The mobile home park is just south of the single-runway Steamboat Springs Airport, which is also known as Bob Adams Field.
Colorado Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera was hospitalized Wednesday night due to an infection, state officials announced.
“Lt. Gov. Primavera is one of the strongest and toughest people I know and we are glad she is taking extra caution and getting the care she deserves,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement Thursday. “I was not surprised when I learned that she plans to continue working today.”
Information about what led to the infection and hospitalization was not available Thursday.
Primavera — a lifelong Coloradan and longtime Broomfield resident — is currently serving her second term as Colorado’s 50th lieutenant governor.
In her role, Primavera leads six programs: the Office of Saving People Money on Health Care, the Office of eHealth Innovation, the Colorado Disability Funding Committee and Disability Policy, the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, Serve Colorado and Aerospace and Defense.
The body of a 3-year-old boy with special needs who was reported missing Saturday morning from Rocky Ford was found in a canal, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Officials searched the Catlin irrigation canal, which runs directly behind the child’s home, on foot. Amari’s body was found in the canal several miles downstream from his home around 5 p.m. Sunday, according to an update.
Hans Von Ohain and Nora Bass (Photo via lawsuit filed by MLG Attorneys at Law)
Tesla’s advanced Autopilot driving system malfunctioned and caused one of the electric car maker’s Colorado employees to drive off the road and die in a fiery crash, a newly filed wrongful death lawsuit alleges.
The widow of Hans Von Ohain says her husband was driving back from golfing in Evergreen with a friend on May 16, 2022, when the Autopilot system “unexpectedly caused the 2021 Tesla Model 3 to sharply veer to the right, leading it off the pavement” on Upper Bear Creek Road.
The 33-year-old Von Ohain, who was intoxicated, fought to regain control of the vehicle, “but, to his surprise and horror,” the car drove off the road and into a tree, where it burst into flames, according to the 16-page complaint filed May 3 in Clear Creek County District Court.
The Colorado State Patrol said in its 403-page crash report that the car’s condition after the crash made it impossible to access data to determine whether the self-driving feature was engaged at the time.
But the passenger in the car, Erik Rossiter, who suffered injuries in the crash, told investigators that Von Ohain was using the autonomous drive feature on the trip home, according to the CSP’s final report.
“It was uncomfortable,” he told troopers. “The car would swerve off toward the side of the road periodically and bring itself back.”
The vehicle was traveling 41 mph at the time of the crash, just above the 40 mph speed limit, according to the CSP report.
Von Ohain also used the self-driving feature on the way to the golf course, Rossiter said — a trip he called “a bit nerve-wracking.”
An autopsy report showed the driver’s blood-alcohol level at three times the legal limit. His widow, Nora Bass, told the Washington Post in February that she had been unable to find an attorney to take the case due to his intoxication.
“Regardless of how drunk Hans was, (Tesla CEO Elon) Musk has claimed that this car can drive itself and is essentially better than a human,” Bass told the newspaper. “We were sold a false sense of security.”
Efforts by The Denver Post to reach Bass or her attorney were unsuccessful.
If Von Ohain was, in fact, using the Full Self-Driving feature, it would make his death the first known fatality involving Tesla’s most advanced driver-assistance technology, the Washington Post reported.
Bass and her attorneys allege Tesla knowingly released the self-driving system in vehicles when it was just a prototype and unready for consumers.
Tesla did not respond to messages from The Post seeking comment. Von Ohain worked for the Texas-based carmaker as a recruiter.
Federal regulators have logged more than 900 crashes in Teslas since they began requiring automakers to report accidents in 2021 involving driver-assistance systems, the Washington Post found. At least 40 resulted in serious or fatal injuries.
Tesla’s Autopilot system has been highly controversial and subject to intense scrutiny from authorities and consumers.
In December, the company issued a recall for nearly all of its 2 million U.S. cars aimed at improving driver attention.
Two years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the Tesla Autopilot’s features may not have sufficient guardrails to “prevent driver misuse.” The federal probe came after a series of Teslas using the system had run into parked emergency vehicles.
Reuters on Wednesday reported U.S. prosecutors are looking into whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading consumers and investors about the technology’s capabilities.
In a letter posted online, campus leaders said a group of donors came forward with a “nonpartisan humanitarian solution to restore order to the Quad by removing the encampment.”
An Instagram page for the encampment described it as a “community-liberated zone” in solidarity with Gaza and listed demands similar to those made by Auraria organizers, including transparency about the private college’s endowment, divestment from weapons companies and canceling summer study abroad trips in Israel.
Colorado is experiencing an alarming spike in syphilis among newborns, leading the state to issue a public health order Thursday aimed at curbing the disease’s spread through wider testing.
In 2023, 50 infants in Colorado were born with syphilis, up from only seven in 2018. So far this year, the state is halfway to last year’s total, with five infected babies who were stillborn and two who died in their first months of life, state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said.
“We’ve already had 25 cases so far this year, putting us on track to have maybe 100 cases,” she said at a news conference, addressing what Gov. Jared Polis’s office called a “growing epidemic.”
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection that sometimes causes no symptoms in adults, though the bacteria can eventually damage the heart and brain if a person doesn’t receive treatment. But roughly two out of five babies born to infected mothers will be stillborn or die in infancy, and those who survive are at risk of intellectual disability, bone deformities and other lifelong health problems, Herlihy said.
The new public health order from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment requires all health care providers to offer syphilis testing at least three times to pregnant patients: in the first trimester, in the third trimester and at birth.
Nearly all insurance plans cover the testing, and people without insurance can receive it for free at public health clinics or by ordering a home test kit.
“We hope to save many babies from death and suffering,” Polis said at the news conference.
On Thursday, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a recommendation that all pregnant patients receive testing three times. Previously, it only recommended more than one test if a patient had certain risk factors for getting infected while pregnant.
“The cases of congenital syphilis are definitely climbing, and they’ve been climbing over the last 10 years. And it’s completely preventable… It’s unacceptable,” said Dr. Laura Riley, who chairs the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine and helped with the guidance. “We need to be able to do better diagnostics and treatment.”
The Colorado order also requires offering tests to prisoners who are pregnant, and to people who have experienced a stillbirth after 20 weeks of pregnancy, when spontaneous miscarriages are rare. While it would be too late for that particular fetus after a stillbirth, antibiotic treatment would protect the mother, her sex partners and any future pregnancies.
Patients and prisoners aren’t required to undergo testing if they don’t want to, but their providers have to give them the option, said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the state health department. State law already required that providers offer everyone syphilis testing in the first trimester.
Last year, 3,266 people in Colorado received a syphilis diagnosis, which was a 5% increase over the previous year and more than three times the number diagnosed in 2018. Most of the diagnoses are still in men, because the bacteria became entrenched in the community of gay and bisexual men. About one-third are in women, though, and diagnoses have risen faster among women than among men.
Nationwide, syphilis diagnoses reached their highest rate since at least 1950 in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases peaked in the 1940s, before antibiotics became widely available, and fell throughout the 20th century.
People of color and those who lack access to reliable health care, such as the homeless population, have been hit disproportionately hard in the resurgence over the last few years.
Earlier this year, the state health department asked for $8 million over four years to fund an opt-out syphilis screening program at two hospital emergency departments in Denver and Pueblo County, which both have a significant share of new infections.
The department also proposed to distribute rapid tests to organizations that work with at-risk people; to fund delivering treatment to some people in their homes; and to build up a stockpile of the antibiotics used to treat syphilis. Most antibiotics are cheap, but the best option for syphilis, Bicillin, is relatively expensive and in short supply, so providers don’t always opt to stock it.
The state and the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment already run a small pilot program to bring treatment to people in their homes. Jails in Pueblo, El Paso and Jefferson counties also have started screening female prisoners and offering treatment to anyone who tests positive.
Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero said about one-quarter of the 634 people his department has screened so far tested positive, and seven were pregnant at the time of their positive test. The Pueblo County jail has a partnership with the local health department to follow up if someone returns to the community before completing treatment, he said.
“Without a doubt, this program saves lives,” Lucero said.
The biggest driver of the increase in congenital syphilis seems to be that mothers aren’t getting early prenatal care, which could identify and cure the infection, Herlihy said. The mothers of babies born affected this year have higher rates of previous incarceration, untreated addiction and homelessness than the general population, she said.
“The risk factors we’re seeing are really driving the actions we’re taking,” she said.
The Biden administration on Wednesday finalized strict limits on certain so-called “forever chemicals” in drinking water that will require utilities to reduce them to the lowest level they can be reliably measured. Officials say this will reduce exposure for 100 million people and help prevent thousands of illnesses, including cancers.
The rule is the first national drinking water limit on toxic PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are widespread and long-lasting in the environment.
Health advocates praised the Environmental Protection Agency for not backing away from tough limits the agency proposed last year. But water utilities took issue with the rule, saying treatment systems are expensive to install and that customers will end up paying more for water.
Water providers are entering a new era with significant additional health standards that the EPA says will make tap water safer for millions of consumers — a Biden administration priority. The agency has also proposed forcing utilities to remove dangerous lead pipes.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the rule is the most important action the EPA has ever taken on PFAS.
“The result is a comprehensive and life-changing rule, one that will improve the health and vitality of so many communities across our country,” said Regan.
PFAS chemicals are hazardous because they don’t degrade in the environment and are linked to health issues such as low birth weight and liver disease, along with certain cancers. The EPA estimates the rule will cost about $1.5 billion to implement each year, but doing so will prevent nearly 10,000 deaths over decades and significantly reduce serious illnesses.
They’ve been used in everyday products including nonstick pans, firefighting foam and waterproof clothing. Although some of the most common types are phased out in the U.S., others remain. Water providers will now be forced to remove contamination put in the environment by other industries.
“It’s that accumulation that’s the problem,” said Scott Belcher, a North Carolina State University professor who researches PFAS toxicity. “Even tiny, tiny, tiny amounts each time you take a drink of water over your lifetime is going to keep adding up, leading to the health effects.”
PFAS is a broad family of chemical substances, and the new rule sets strict limits on two common types — called PFOA and PFOS — at 4 parts per trillion. Three other types that include GenEx Chemicals that are a major problem in North Carolina are limited to 10 parts per trillion. Water providers will have to test for these PFAS chemicals and tell the public when levels are too high. Combinations of some PFAS types will be limited, too.
Regan will announce the rule in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Wednesday.
Environmental and health advocates praised the rule, but said PFAS manufacturers knew decades ago the substances were dangerous yet hid or downplayed the evidence. Limits should have come sooner, they argue.
“Reducing PFAS in our drinking water is the most cost effective way to reduce our exposure,” said Scott Faber, a food and water expert at Environmental Working Group. “It’s much more challenging to reduce other exposures such as PFAS in food or clothing or carpets.”
Over the last year, EPA has periodically released batches of utility test results for PFAS in drinking water. Roughly 16% of utilities found at least one of the two strictly limited PFAS chemicals at or above the new limits. These utilities serve tens of millions of people. The Biden administration, however, expects about 6-10% of water systems to exceed the new limits.
Water providers will generally have three years to do testing. If those test exceed the limits, they’ll have two more years to install treatment systems, according to EPA officials.
Some funds are available to help utilities. Manufacturer 3M recently agreed to pay more than $10 billion to drinking water providers to settle PFAS litigation. And the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes billions to combat the substance. But utilities say more will be needed.
For some communities, tests results were a surprise. Last June, a utility outside Philadelphia that serves nearly 9,000 people learned that one of its wells had a PFOA level of 235 parts per trillion, among the highest results in the country at the time.
“I mean, obviously, it was a shock,” said Joseph Hastings, director of the joint public works department for the Collegeville and Trappe boroughs, whose job includes solving problems presented by new regulations.
The well was quickly yanked offline, but Hastings still doesn’t know the contamination source. Several other wells were above the EPA’s new limits, but lower than those the state of Pennsylvania set earlier. Now, Hastings says installing treatment systems could be a multi-million dollar endeavor, a major expense for a small customer base.
The new regulation is “going to throw public confidence in drinking water into chaos,” said Mike McGill, president of WaterPIO, a water industry communications firm.
The American Water Works Association, an industry group, says it supports the development of PFAS limits in drinking water, but argues the EPA’s rule has big problems.
The agency underestimated its high cost, which can’t be justified for communities with low levels of PFAS, and it’ll raise customer water bills, the association said. Plus, there aren’t enough experts and workers — and supplies of filtration material are limited.
Work in some places has started. The company Veolia operates utilities serving about 2.3 million people across six eastern states and manages water systems for millions more. Veolia built PFAS treatment for small water systems that serve about 150,000 people. The company expects, however, that roughly 50 more sites will need treatment — and it’s working to scale up efforts to reduce PFAS in larger communities it serves.
Such efforts followed dramatic shifts in EPA’s health guidance for PFAS in recent years as more research into its health harms emerged. Less than a decade ago, EPA issued a health advisory that PFOA and PFOS levels combined shouldn’t exceed 70 parts per trillion. Now, the agency says no amount is safe.
Public alarm has increased, too. In Minnesota, for example, Amara’s Law aims to stop avoidable PFAS use. It’s been nearly a year since the law’s namesake, Amara Strande, died from a rare cancer her family blames on PFAS contamination by 3M near her high school in Oakdale, although a connection between PFAS and her cancer can’t be proven. Biden administration officials say communities shouldn’t suffer like Oakdale. 3M says it extends its deepest condolences to Amara’s friends and family.
Losing Amara pushed the family towards activism. They’ve testified multiple times in favor of PFAS restrictions.
“Four parts per trillion, we couldn’t ask for a better standard,” Amara’s sister Nora said. “It’s a very ambitious goal, but anything higher than that is endangering lives.”
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Associated Press data journalist Camille Fassett in San Francisco and reporter Matthew Daly in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
GOTHIC — Four miles from the nearest plowed road high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a 73-year-old man with a billowing gray beard and two replaced hips trudged through his front yard to measure fresh snow that fell during one mid-March day.
Billy Barr first began recording snow and weather data more than 50 years ago as a freshly minted Rutgers University environmental science graduate in Gothic, near part of the Colorado River’s headwaters.
Bored and looking to keep busy, he had rigged rudimentary equipment and each day had jotted the inches of fresh snow, just as he had logged gas station brands as a child on family road trips.
Unpaid but driven by compulsive curiosity and a preference for spending more than half the year on skis rather than on foot, Barr stayed here and kept measuring snowfall day after day, winter after winter.
His faithful measurements revealed something he never expected long ago: snow is arriving later and disappearing earlier as the world warms. That’s a concerning sign for millions of people in the drought-stricken Southwest who rely on mountain snowpack to slowly melt throughout spring and summer to provide a steady stream of water for cities, agriculture and ecosystems.
“Snow is a physical form of a water reservoir, and if there’s not enough of it, it’s gone,” Barr said.
So-called “citizen scientists” have long played roles in making observations about plants and counting wildlife to help researchers better understand the environment.
Barr is modest about his own contributions, although the once-handwritten snow data published on his website has informed numerous scientific papers and helped calibrate aerial snow sensing tools. And with each passing year, his data continues to grow.
“Anybody could do it,” said the self-deprecating bachelor with a softened Jersey accent. “Being socially inept made me so I could do it for 50 years, but anyone can sit there and watch something like that.”
Two winters ago, Barr’s legs started buckling with frustrating frequency as he’d ski mellow loops through spruce trees looking for animal tracks — another data point he collects. He feared it might be his last year in Gothic, a former mining town turned into a research facility owned by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, where he worked full time for decades and is now a part-time accountant.
“I was running out of time to live here,” he said. “That’s why I went through the hip replacements to prolong it.”
Two hip replacement surgeries provided an extended lease on high-altitude living. Barr cross-country skied more this past December than he did the entire previous winter.
“Unless something else goes wrong, which it will, but unless it’s severe, I think I can last out here a while longer,” he said.
A lot could go wrong. As Barr sat on a bench beside at the research lab on an unseasonably warm March day, a heavy slab of snow slid off the roof and launched the bench forward, nearly causing him to fall.
Not all risks are avoidable, but some are. If the ski track is too icy, he’ll walk parallel in untracked snow to get better footing. He grows produce in a greenhouse attached to his home, and most of his non-perishable goods — stocked the previous autumn — are organic. He wears a mask when he’s around others indoors.
“I can’t get a respiratory disease at this altitude,” he said.
For Barr, longevity means more time for the quiet mountain lifestyle he enjoys from his rustic two-room house heated by passive solar and a wood stove. He uses a composting toilet and relies on solar panels to heat water, do laundry and enable his nightly movie viewing.
When he eventually retires from the mountains, Barr hopes to continue most of his long-running weather collection remotely.
He has been testing remote tools for five years, trying to calibrate them to his dated but reliable techniques. He figures it will take a few more years of testing before he’ll trust the new tools and, even then, fears equipment failure.
For now, he measures snow in his tried and true way:
Around 4 p.m., he hikes uphill from his home to a flat, square board painted white, and sticks a metal ruler into accumulated snow to measure its depth. Next he pushes a clear canister upside down into the snow, uses a sheet of metal to scrape off the rest of the snow, then slides the sheet under the canister to help flip it over. He weighs the snow, subtracting the canister’s weight, which lets him calculate the water content.
So far, manual measuring remains the best method, scientists say. Automated snow measurements introduce a degree of uncertainty such as how wind spreads snow unevenly across the landscape, explained Ben Pritchett, senior forecaster at the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
“Nothing replaces observing snow in person to understand how it’s changing,” Pritchett said.
But Barr’s data collection has always been unpaid volunteer work — and that complicates any succession plan when he eventually leaves his home in Gothic.
“If environmental science were funded like the way we fund cancer research or other efforts, we would absolutely continue that research and data collection,” said Ian Billick, executive director for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. “It would be super valuable.”
The lab has winter caretakers who could ski the half mile (.8 kilometer) to Barr’s home to manually measure new snow at the same site with his same method, but someone would still need to foot the bill for their time.
Barr is well aware that his humble weather station is just a snapshot of the Colorado River basin, and that satellites, lasers and computer models can now calculate how much snow falls basin-wide and predict resulting runoff. Yet local scientists say some of those models wouldn’t be as precise without his work.
Ian Breckheimer, an ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, measures snow from space using satellites. Given the distance, Breckheimer needed on-the-ground data to calibrate his model.
“Billy’s data provides that ground truth,” Breckheimer said. “We know that his data is right. So that means that we can compare all the things that we think we can see to the things that we know are right.”
Between measuring the snow and noting animal sightings, Barr created a body of work that no one asked him to assemble and that hasn’t brought him a dime.
Although it’s helped inspire scientists who work with the nearby mountainside lab, Barr said he started measuring snowfall out of a simple desire to relate to the world around him. He felt out of place in the city and choked by social expectations.
“I didn’t fit into anything and it doesn’t make me a miscreant,” he said. “You have to look for what will work for you. And sometimes that means trying different things and going different places.”
Just as he engineered a lifestyle that bucks societal norms, Barr hopes the high-tech water forecasting tools scientists have today will lead to unconventional solutions for rationing the dwindling resource.
“It could lead to things like, well, we really can’t have green lawns in the middle of Arizona anymore, because that’s not a good use of the limited water resource,” Barr said. “And water is more precious than gold.”
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
A former Aurora police officer is set to go on trial for his actions in the 2021 arrest of a Black man, including repeatedly hitting the man with a gun after he swatted his hands at the officer’s weapon, according to body camera footage and court documents.
The violent arrest has put the former officer, John Haubert, on trial facing assault and other charges with opening statements expected Tuesday.
The trial follows the convictions last year of a police officer and two paramedics from the city’s fire department in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, who was put in a neckhold by police before being injected with the sedative ketamine by paramedics.
Haubert’s lawyer, Reid Elkus, did not immediately respond to a request for comment to the allegations but said at a a recent court hearing that there was a rush by police to investigate and charge Haubert.
His arrest of Kyle Vinson in July 2021 renewed anger about misconduct by the city’s police department. The department’s then-chief, Vanessa Wilson, who had vowed to try to restore trust, announced Haubert’s arrest four days later, calling the handling of Vinson’s arrest a “very despicable act.”
Haubert also held his hand around Vinson’s neck for about 39 seconds, according to Haubert’s arrest affidavit, which referred to Haubert as “strangling” Vinson.
Vinson was taken to a hospital for welts and a cut on his head that required six stitches, police said.
Vinson was with two other men sitting under some trees when police responded to a report of trespassing in a parking lot. Two of the men got away from police, but Vinson was ordered to get on his stomach and put his hands out. He complied but repeatedly protested, saying he had not done anything wrong and police did not have a warrant. Police said there was a warrant for his arrest for a probation violation.
In 2021, Vinson told The Associated Press he was a homeless Army veteran who was trying to take a break from the midday heat when police approached. When the arrest turned violent, he said he thought about never being able to see his brother or his friends, ride his bicycle or eat again.
Vinson said he tried to comply with the officers’ orders as best he could and control his emotions so he would not be killed, noting the deaths of George Floyd and McClain.
“If someone was even not compliant just a little bit, they could have lost their life,” he said.
Another former officer, Francine Martinez, was found guilty of failing to intervene to stop Haubert, a misdemeanor crime created by state lawmakers as part of a police reform law passed shortly after the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. She was sentenced to six months of house arrest.
The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender has acknowledged personal data may have been stolen during a ransomware attack that crippled the statewide agency in early February — but won’t say much else about the ongoing effort to restore its systems after the hack.
Files “were copied without permission” during the cyberattack, which was discovered on Feb. 9, and those files may have included names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical information and health insurance information, the agency said in a statement Friday.
Officials from the public defender’s office are still investigating whose personal data may have been stolen, and whether the personal data of attorneys or their clients was compromised, they said. A statement on the agency’s website urges “individuals” to remain vigilant against identity theft and fraud.
It’s been more than a month since public defenders across the state were locked out of their computers and files in the ransomware attack and hundreds of court hearings were delayed over the next week because public defenders couldn’t do their jobs.
Officials this week refused to answer questions from The Denver Post about what particular parts of the agency’s systems remain inoperable. In a ransomware attack, hackers use malware to hold an organization’s data hostage then demand a payment in cryptocurrency in order for organizations to regain access to that data.
The public defender’s office also would not disclose the amount of ransom demanded or whether a ransom was paid. A statement on the agency’s website says the office has “made progress in returning to full operations.”
Heavily redacted emails and text messages released to The Post by the Governor’s Office of Information Technology this week in response to an open records request mention the cyberattack recovery law firm Mullen Coughlin. Chief Deputy Public Defender Zak Brown would not confirm whether the public defender’s office is working with the firm.
“We have provided all the information we are able to at this time,” he said in an email.
A message left with the Pennsylvania-based law firm was not returned Wednesday.
The Governor’s Office of Information Technology redacted more than half of the text messages exchanged between members of its office and Colorado Public Defender Megan Ring between Feb. 9 and 23 on the grounds the messages were exempt from the state’s open records law. The office cited exemptions around attorney-client privilege, deliberative process, security arrangements and law enforcement investigations.
“OIT withholds these documents on the grounds that their release would result in substantial injury to the public because it would limit OIT’s ability to engage in honest and frank discussion of cybersecurity issues and provide uninhibited opinions to state agencies, thereby impeding OIT in the performance of its duties,” Chief Information Security Officer Jill Fraser wrote in an affidavit provided with the open records materials.
