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@nickcoltrain Feb. 13, 2026, Colorado Capitol in review. Housing bills live and die, family affordability tax credit and memorial for Sen. Faith Winter. @The Denver Post #copolitics
One of top Colorado Democrats in state Senate resigns to take new job
State Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, one of the top Democrats in the Colorado legislature, will resign her seat on Friday.
Michaelson Jenet, of Commerce City, the Senate’s president pro tem, announced her resignation plan on Tuesday. She is leaving to serve as director of the David Merage Foundation for Confronting Antisemitism, an Englewood-based organization.
“It’s cliché, but this has been the biggest honor of my life,” Michaelson Jenet said in an interview. “I’m so grateful that I’ve had the opportunity that I did and that I had my family’s support so I could do it for so many years.”
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Colorado House passes bill allowing nonprofits, schools to sidestep local zoning rules to build housing
The Colorado House has passed a bill that would allow nonprofits, school districts and transit agencies to build housing on their land without their local government’s approval — the latest salvo in the legislature’s yearslong crusade for land-use reform.
House Bill 1001, the first bill introduced in that chamber this year, cleared a final vote 35-24 on Friday. Most Democrats supported it, against total Republican — and some Democratic — opposition.
The bill would allow school districts, institutions of higher education, housing authorities and transit agencies to build housing on their own property by right. It would also allow other nonprofits to partner with a peer organization that has a “demonstrated history of providing affordable housing” to do so on the nonprofit’s land.
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Colorado’s family-oriented tax credits gave ‘light and hope’ to one mom — but costs make their future uncertain
When Bukola Arije received a slew of new and expanded state tax credits last year to help raise her three children, she saw not only a chance to catch up on bills. She also saw a rare opportunity to take her kids out of Colorado and show them that the world is bigger than the square state that Arije has called home her entire life.
For Arije, 39, a bus driver for Denver Public Schools, the thousands of state and federal dollars she received through various credits were a life-changing, life-saving cushion — though the state credits’ future is at risk as the state works to square its own budget.
“(The credits) only gave light and hope,” Arije said. “Knowing that you could look forward to knowing, no matter what might come, it will get better.”
Arije’s family was one of the more than 330,000 in Colorado to qualify for the new Family Affordability Tax Credit last tax-filing season, and one of the tens of thousands that qualified for multiple credits. Overall, state lawmakers directed $1.3 billion last year to the family tax credit, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and the Colorado Child Tax Credit.
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Colorado Democrats ramp up anti-ICE strategy after raids, killings: ‘The community’s been calling for it’
Last spring, Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates stood in a room in the Colorado Capitol to announce their plans to further limit the state’s cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The gathering was small, and it seemed dwarfed by the large room where the bill’s supporters had assembled. They’d repeatedly delayed the proposal, and tweaked its scope, amid lingering concerns from Gov. Jared Polis — who months earlier welcomed immigration authorities’ presence in the state to help arrest “dangerous criminals.”
The delayed and low-key nature of that April news conference would make for a stark contrast with the unveiling of another round of immigration legislation just 10 months later.
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Energy, data center tax break debates set to kick off in the Colorado legislature this week
Welcome to another week at the state Capitol, where lawmakers will begin publicly debating how much they want data centers built in the state.
On Thursday, House Bill 1030 will be in the House’s Energy and Environment Committee, officially kicking off the session’s data center war.
This bill would give tax breaks to eligible data centers — 100% exemptions from sales and use taxes for 20 years, to be precise. To qualify, a company would have to commit to $250 million in data center investments and to creating a certain number of jobs, among other things.
A more-or-less competing bill, which has not yet been introduced, would require data centers to match their energy consumption with renewable energy credits, according to a January draft of the proposal. That bill, which is backed by environmental groups, will start in the Senate.
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