Roaring Fork and Colorado River valley voters will decide next month on who should represent them at the state capitol. House District 57 covers all of Garfield and Pitkin counties, the portion of Eagle County in the Roaring Fork Valley, and the I-70 corridor to Dotsero.
Elizabeth Velasco (D-Glenwood Springs) was elected to the seat in 2022. She faces a challenge from Caleb Waller, a Silt Republican. Both Waller and Velasco sat down with Aspen Public Radio to discuss some of the biggest issues this election season.
Environment and climate change
Velasco has made climate action and resilience a key part of her agenda. She said a big part of that is decreasing reliance on oil and gas, and looking to renewable energy.
“I voted on the standards for hydrogen energy that are now the federal standards,” she said. “We created standards for geothermal energy. We created a study to look at small nuclear reactors.” (Velasco did vote to postpone that study bill, alongside both Democrats and Republicans on the committee,).
Waller agreed with an “all of the above” approach to energy, including oil and gas — but he worries about one-size-fits-all climate policies that come from populous Front Range cities.
“I am going to strive very hard to make sure that Western Colorado voters feel like they have a voice and that they're listened to when it comes to these energy policies that we're talking about,” he said.
Waller is a supporter of oil and gas. Velasco sponsored legislation last year to increase oil and gas production fees, with the revenue going towards public transportation districts — including RFTA — across the state.
The candidates agree that bigger, hotter, and more severe wildfires are an urgent consequence of human-caused climate change.
Velasco has served as vice chair of the interim Wildfire Matters committee for two years, and has sponsored bills relating to language access in emergencies, forestry programs, and prescribed burn funds.
And she said she wants to do more to support first responders.
“This year, we're also going to be looking at sustainable funding for our fire districts because as we are making these reductions on property taxes, that puts a strain on our basic services,” she said.
Waller said he’s been having a lot of wildfire-related conversations as part of his campaign.
“As I've talked to other conservative representatives in the House, as well as Democrats, the biggest thing that I hear them saying over and over again—and which I 100% agree with—has to do with forest management,” he said. “How can we manage these forests effectively and make sure that we don't end up with just, basically, fire bombs waiting to happen?”
Immigration and support for new arrivals
Carbondale was one Colorado community that struggled to respond when new immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, came to the state, escaping political turmoil in their home country.
Waller said he’d heard concerns from constituents about the new arrivals—and the treatment they may or not be getting from the government.
“There's a high concern within voters that these individuals are getting a lot of free handouts without having to contribute to the tax base to warrant that,” he said. “They're like, ‘are all of these immigrants just coming in here, taking advantage of the resources that we've worked really hard to build? And then what's next?’”
Waller also said he was worried about a finite lack of resources for people in a community, like healthcare, and said he worried that new arrivals would overwhelm those services.
“Until you're a tax contributing member of society, those benefits shouldn't be available to you,” he said. “I'm interested in protecting the rights of the Hispanic citizens and the Venezuelans and all those that are in the area that have been here for the past 30 years. Your visa status doesn't mean anything to me. What means something to me is, are you contributing? Are you a part of society?”
Here in the valley, Velasco was one of the first leaders from the community to respond to the new arrivals, who had been sleeping under the bridge, working closely with local Latine advocacy group Voces Unidas and the town of Carbondale.
“I do think I am proud of the response, you know, from Voces Unidas, from Carbondale, and I believe we could have done much better,” she said. “I think that there's still a lot of opportunities for us to continue that partnership and collaboration and make sure that everyone is safe and that we can all thrive here.”
Velasco herself is originally from Mexico, and is a naturalized citizen. She said it took her over 20 years to become a citizen, and she’s seen firsthand how hard immigrant communities work in the Roaring Fork Valley to keep the economy going, and to support their own families.
To that end, she worked on legislation to provide support to towns and organizations like Carbondale and Voces Unidas.
“This session, we created a grant program for nonprofits that were supporting new arrivals,” she said. “It did have guidelines, because we know that when people are able to receive a warm welcome, then they're able to be productive faster. So, you know, this is a win for the state, a win for businesses and families.”
She said she and other lawmakers worked with law enforcement to remove the two-year residency requirement for undocumented people to get drivers’ licenses. Velasco and scholars who study immigration believe this helps with the costs of insurance, and creates safer roads, along with the benefits of helping new immigrants get to jobs.
Firearms and gun control
Colorado has been the site of several high-profile mass shootings throughout the years, including Columbine High School in 1999, and more recent incidents like the Boulder King Soopers shooting in 2021 and the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs in 2022.
As a result, gun control is a perennial topic of debate at the state capitol.
Waller said he believes that Colorado’s issues with mass shootings are connected to mental health.
“I'm 33 and I know a lot of young guys my age — they're hopeless. They feel like they can't afford housing. Young girls, as well. They can't afford to live here,” he said. “And when you live in that state of mind, it's really easy for you to fall to a place where you just don't care anymore. And then ultimately, tragically, it leads to really just depressed societies that ultimately leads to, you know, active shooters and gun violence and things.”
He said he disagreed with a bill Velasco sponsored this year on storage requirements for firearms in cars, and other gun control measures introduced at the capitol, like a ban on assault weapons.
“I personally believe that sometimes these bills that are being pushed only restrict law abiding citizens,” he said. “They don't actually go after gun crime and the actual people that are going to do the crime. And that's the part where I struggle sometimes with some of these gun bill pushes, because they create greater restrictions on law abiding citizens that are responsible gun owners.”
Velasco said she’s committed to gun control measures to keep her community, especially kids, safe.
“My first year as a legislator, we had hundreds of kids come to the Capitol, as young as 11, to tell us that we needed to address this issue, that they have drills about mass shooters, about dangerous people coming into schools. There's issues with mental health, but that we must continue to address. But I am proud to vote yes on those policies. I will continue to support them.”
This session, she sponsored legislation that created safety requirements for storing firearms in a vehicle. She said part of that process was recognizing that guns for a variety of purposes, especially hunting, are part of Colorado’s culture.
“I am supportive of hunting and you know, the people that need to have these firearms for their jobs, for their safety and their livelihood,” she said. “So, I did work closely with those groups on the bill that I wrote. And they are exempted from a lot of these things, because if you are driving around on your ranch, it’s a different thing.”
Affordable housing
Colorado’s high cost of living has pushed many people out of their communities. In rural resort areas, like Aspen and the valley, people are pushed further and further away from where jobs are, and often commute long hours to work.
Velasco has worked on and voted for a variety of affordable housing initiatives at the state level.
Some of those initiatives include creating the middle-income housing authority, and looking at a real estate transfer tax to build affordable housing — something Aspen, Pitkin County, and Snowmass Village already do that she thinks could work as a solution statewide.
But Velasco said recently, she’s proud of the work she and fellow lawmakers have done to protect renters, like for-cause evictions.
“We know that not everyone is able to afford to buy a home right now and we want to continue to support them and work with them to be able to buy a home in the future,” she said. “We also had rent assistance funding that was added to the budget. And there's more proposals that I'm supporting like rent control, just lifting the prohibition so that each community can create their own programs and just have another tool in the toolbox.”
She said when she toured the district after the end of the legislative session, she was really encouraged to see that many municipalities were working on affordable housing projects or initiatives, from Aspen to Parachute.
“It was important for me to make sure that they know that I am here to support their grant applications, to help make connections with the right agencies,” she said. “And just kudos to DOLA (Department of Local Affairs), you know, for all the work that they do. But the state is an important partner for any project to be done in local communities. And we would not be able to have this infrastructure project without state dollars.”
Waller supports a more free-market approach to the affordable housing crisis, something he said has come up a lot in conversations with voters.
“I ask them this question: ‘what do you think can fix housing?’ And if they say to me, ‘I believe the government should do X,’ then I tell them, ‘you should vote for probably Velasco,’” he said. “But if you believe that the government should step out of the way and do less and give more freedom to the market, then vote for me.”
According to his website, Waller wants to work on construction defect litigation reform to encourage developers to build more affordable units.
He said he wants to avoid anything that forces a county or municipality to do something for affordable housing that they don’t want to do: Waller said local governments should be able to decide how or if they grow.
“The county commissioners (in) Garfield County have not opted in to this funding that's available for housing, right?” he said, referring to Proposition 123, which gives municipalities money for affordable housing — something Velasco has criticized the commissioners for doing. “And so that's kind of like a pressure put on the commissioners saying, ‘you need to take this.’ I'm going to sit there and say, ‘you know, what's best for your county. You know what's best for your municipality.”
(Editor's note: Garfield County commissioners voted on Monday, October 21 to opt into Proposition 123).
