These are the issues I'll fight for in the Colorado House. They're concrete, they're already being debated at the legislature, and they cut across party lines. None of them depends on a national political wave to be worth doing.
When Coloradans pay a vehicle registration fee or a transportation tax, that money should pay for roads and bridges. It often doesn't. Revenue meant for road maintenance gets diverted into other line items every year — and then we're told we need a new tax to fix the potholes. That's not a budgeting problem. It's a trust problem.
I'll support Initiative 175, which amends the state constitution to require transportation tax revenue to be spent on roads and bridges as advertised. And I'll push to apply the same principle to every tax and fee on the books: if a bill says the money is for X, it should go to X. Not "X-ish." Not "X-adjacent." X. That's the simplest possible standard for a legislature to meet, and right now we're not meeting it.
The Colorado National Guard has been deployed into active combat overseas, repeatedly, for decades — without Congress declaring war. The Constitution puts that decision with Congress for a reason: it's the only check on a president sending other people's children to fight. Skipping the vote isn't a small procedural shortcut. It's the entire problem.
I'll support Defend the Guard, which prohibits Colorado Guard members from being deployed into active combat outside the United States unless Congress has formally declared war. This is a bill anti-war Democrats wanted under Bush. It's a bill anti-Obama-war Republicans wanted under Obama. It's a bill veterans and Guard families want now. It is one of the few issues in modern American politics where the principled answer and the popular answer line up — and the legislature should act on it.
Civil asset forfeiture lets police seize your car, your home, or your savings — without ever charging you with a crime. The state then makes you go to court to prove your property is innocent, on your dime, often with a deadline you can't meet. That's not how a justice system is supposed to work in either party's tradition.
I'll vote for civil asset forfeiture reform every time it comes up. The state already has a tool for taking property from people convicted of crimes — it's called criminal forfeiture, and I'd keep it. What I oppose is the parallel system that takes from people who never get charged. There's bipartisan movement on this at the legislature already. The job is to push it across the finish line.