PLATFORM

Tackle Affordability from Multiple Angles

We need holistic thinkers in the legislature when it comes to affordability. Rising costs are driven by numerous factors that all need to be addressed.

Insurance costs are driven by high cost claims

High crime rates, including auto thefts, are key drivers in rising automobile and home insurance. Colorado tops the lists of highest crime rates in America. We need to enact stricter sentencing and allow law enforcement to do their jobs.
Wildfires are driving insurance companies to drop homeowners or exit the state altogether.
Poorly constructed homes are susceptible to higher claims, especially wind and hail claims.

Housing costs are driven by high costs to build, high maintenance costs, and property taxes

Water rights are both expensive and difficult to obtain for new housing.
Development disincentives, such as proscriptive zoning and building regulations, all but guarantee that new housing is limited to large, expensive homes on large tracts. This is also a big factor driving urban sprawl that is eating up our open space.
High maintenance homes are the result of developers building homes that are cheap to build but expensive to maintain. Homebuyers need options for homes that have low lifetime costs.
High utility bills are driven by misguided regulatory oversight. Utilities are allowed to ignore customer value when determining how to build and maintain reliable and increasingly renewably powered infrastructure.
Property taxes continually increase because counties and local districts are restricted from innovating to find alternative funding mechanisms.

Stagnant salaries coupled with rising costs is making Colorado unaffordable

Employer requirements and benefit structures discriminate against new or younger employees leading lower salaries. This is especially common amongst unions.
Discriminatory hiring and promotion practices are a hidden drain on the economy. Colorado should be a meritocracy where people are hired, fired, or promoted based on merit and not based on their ethnicity, gender, or relationships.

Preserve the Open Space that Coloradans Love

Most Coloradans list open space and being surrounded by nature as the top reason for living here. As the population grows, it's imperative that open space is preserved and we have smart development that does not degrade the natural beauty of our state.

A New Approach to Water

The first-in-time, first-in-right doctrine is archaic and incentivizes water waste because of the built-in 'use-it-or-lose-it' rule. We should work toward dismantling the current system in favor of a market system driven by simple supply and demand.

Common Sense Energy

Regulations, taxes, and/or subsidies should not be in place to favor one form of energy over another except to ensure common and public goods, such as clean air, clean water, and grid security, are preserved.
Regulatory barriers currently harming our grid security need to be removed.
Coloradans face high costs from renewable energy mandates that gives billions of dollars to utilities. Renewable energy targets can be met more rapidly and at a lower cost by requiring utilities to evaluate if it is cheaper to direct generation investments in solar and batteries at homes and businesses rather than utility scale generation.

Smarter Education

The current funding mechanism for schools does not work. Schools are chronically underfunded and parents who opt to homeschool their children or send them to religious schools are discriminated against by requiring them to pay school taxes on top of home schooling and/or tuition costs. As the top driver of property taxes, school funding needs a complete overhaul.
Children are increasingly unprepared for the modern world. For a well-functioning economy, it's imperative that our future workforce knows how to manage money and become productive members of society.
Teachers are not substitute parents. The government should not be allowed to dictate how parents should raise their children.