Scott Franz
Reporter, Capitol CoverageScott Franz is a government watchdog reporter and photographer from Steamboat Springs. He spent the last seven years covering politics and government for the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a daily newspaper in northwest Colorado. His reporting in Steamboat stopped a police station from being built in a city park, saved a historic barn from being destroyed and helped a small town pastor quickly find a kidney donor. His favorite workday in Steamboat was Tuesday, when he could spend many of his mornings skiing untracked powder and his evenings covering city council meetings. Scott received his journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an outdoorsman who spends at least 20 nights a year in a tent. He spoke his first word, 'outside', as a toddler in Edmonds, Washington. Scott visits the Great Sand Dunes, his favorite Colorado backpacking destination, twice a year. Scott's reporting is part of Capitol Coverage, a collaborative public policy reporting project, providing news and analysis to communities across Colorado for more than a decade. Fifteen public radio stations participate in Capitol Coverage from throughout Colorado.
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Democrats who control the state legislature are increasingly using a survey they fill out in secret to help determine whether bills live or die. The results are kept from the public, raising questions about transparency and potential violations of the state’s sunshine law. -
Sen. Kevin Priola blasted his Republican colleagues for what he called their indifference toward the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and refusing to take action on climate change.
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A bipartisan committee on Monday voted to begin drafting 10 bills ahead of their next legislative session. They include proposals to buy remote cameras and invest millions to create a statewide team of wildfire investigators. The same bills died last spring.
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Colorado’s trails, campgrounds and parks are getting more crowded. But surveys show the droves of visitors are overwhelmingly white and wealthy. A new initiative launching this summer hopes to change that.
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Republicans chose Heidi Ganahl as their candidate to challenge Jared Polis in the governor’s race. Ganahl defeated former Parker Mayor George Lopez in the primary.
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Abortion rights advocates have been bracing for the ruling for months. Democrats in the state legislature passed a law this year aiming to stop cities and towns from trying to pass any restrictions themselves.
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There are people running for higher office in Colorado this month that are making unfounded voter fraud allegations a central theme of their campaigns. And that has some of the state’s top election workers worried.
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Service organizations in Colorado and beyond say they are ready to help residents who are grieving after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
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Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, says the new law will put the state’s voting equipment under permanent video surveillance and lock it behind doors that can only be opened with keycards.
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It is still unclear whether the draft opinion, published Monday night by Politico, will be the court’s final decision. But officials in Colorado swiftly reacted to the leak and vowed to protect the state’s unrestricted access to the procedure.
