News

In the wake of mounting criticism over a state policy of keeping hospital death records secret, Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton recently proposed changes in the law that would make information about suspicious hospital deaths more accessible. But don’t count on any similar outpouring of candor concerning the medical care…

The City of Denver is losing money hand over fist at the former Stapleton International Airport. But it has paid a private publicist $20,000 to put a happy face on the dormant airfield. Working at a rate of $50 per hour–recently raised to $60–publicist Greta Gloven has sat in on…

Ann Bonnell stands in front of a rusted steel gate at the Denver Botanic Garden’s Chatfield Arboretum and stares at the No Trespassing sign. In front of her, acres of pristine Colorado prairie wash up to the base of the Dakota Hogback, a long chain of ridged slopes that run…

cartoon…

part 2 of 2 Strickland sits in the darkness at the Trinity Grille and shakes his head almost imperceptibly when asked about the Coelho scandal. “I’m not specifically familiar with those facts,” he says finally. “I don’t recall ever having heard of it before.” When pressed, he loses his newly…

part 1 of 2 Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tom Strickland has an image problem. And it seems he’s not above using a little fiction to help fix it. To win the Senate seat he’s running for in 1996, Strickland has to convince voters he’s not some slick 17th Street attorney…

Even as Tom Strickland’s campaign is in its infancy, questions continue to arise over his law firm’s role as a clearinghouse for thousands of dollars in political donations. The players in the latest flap: two prominent Denver businessmen who somehow got listed in federal election records as “employees” of Brownstein…

Ways and Means: October in Colorado just isn’t the same without our annual whinefest over Christopher Columbus. Although this state was the first to honor the explorer/exploiter, giving him his own day back in 1907, it wasn’t until 1990 that Denver really made the map, when an Italian-American group revived…

The Loan Arranger Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Checking Out,” in the October 4 issue: Ms. Calhoun, surely even you can accept this basic fact: If you take out a loan, you are expected to pay it back. I am sorry that the Fords may lose their business, but they didn’t have…

A dispute between lower-downtown business owners and the Regional Transportation District has kept 16th Street Mall shuttle buses off the $2 million, three-block-long extension of the mall to Wynkoop Street. Exasperated LoDo leaders are now planning to fund their own shuttle to move visitors around Denver’s booming entertainment district. The…

It’s becoming a familiar story: A Colorado municipality tires of the increasingly frequent traffic snarls and tract-home developments popping up on the edge of town. Residents’ complaints grow louder, and sooner or later somebody proposes passing a law limiting growth. Except this time, it’s not just Boulderites complaining. It’s the…

Jerry Francisco, a handyman by trade, has come up against something he can’t fix: the death of his dog Cuddles. He sits in his neat, nondescript apartment in southwest Denver with new puppy Skippy, but his heart is with Cuddles. He shows off Cuddles’s puppy teeth, tags and toys. He…

A pressure campaign from Focus on the Family and its Denver affiliate, the Rocky Mountain Family Council, threatens the distribution in the Denver Public Schools system of an AIDS poster developed by the gay community that warns gay youth about the disease. Focus on the Family is credited with generating…

Lawrence Wollersheim’s hands shake as he reads his notes, ticking off the damage done to his computers. Surrounding the 46-year-old Boulder resident is a cluster of reporters and, beyond that, a ring of glowering, dark-suited men (and one woman wearing a clerical collar), all packed into a hallway of the…

Tim Leiweke was whistling Dixie last March. When the boyish 38-year-old former president of the Denver Nuggets unveiled the Pepsi Center, the team’s planned $132 million sports arena across the railroad tracks from Elitch’s in downtown Denver, a Dixieland band tooted its horns at the conference room in the Westin…

The growing popularity of the Internet has spawned discussion groups that offer something for just about everyone, from lovers of Jean-Luc Picard (try alt.sexy.bald.captains) to haters of a certain children’s television program (alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die) to obsessives consumed by politics, computer lore, comic books or the hidden messages embedded in a single…

And they call it puppy love: Denver police officer N.B. Henry pulled some ruff duty in August when he replied to a complaint at a northeast Denver home. A woman there told Henry she’d returned home to give her dog some water when she heard a noise in the garage…

Two lawsuits alleging that the City of Denver harasses anti-abortion protesters seem to be in their death throes. But that didn’t stop one of Mayor Wellington Webb’s top aides from blaming the litigation for the mayor’s refusal to support a program designed to prevent the spread of AIDS. During an…

This year is one of big changes for the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team. Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Rashaan Salaam is gone. The team has a new coach for the first time in a decade. And, starting with the game against Colorado State University four weeks ago, each player began…

Open Secrets Regarding Steve Jackson’s “Closed Encounters,” in the September 27 issue: Let me see if I comprehend this correctly: Jefferson County Open School is a “school” with no texts, no tests and no grades (to hurt a child’s self-esteem), in which “students” design their own curriculum, progress at their…