The Home Front: A Colorado hunting store owner charged with shooting at hunters

“The owner of a Greeley hunting outfitter store now has a court date scheduled to face felony charges after Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers say he fired a gun at hunters and shouted racial slurs east of Kersey,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “Jim Arnold, 38, owner of Waterfowl Haven Outfitters, was charged Monday with two counts of felony menacing. Those charges stem from April 22 and 23 incidents in which Arnold fired multiple shots at hunters on a neighboring property. According to the report, trouble had been brewing between Arnold and the hunters for quite some time. Arnold owns property on the South Platte River just east of Kersey, near Weld County Road 388. A few years ago, the report states, Kevin Dunnigan bought property next to Arnold’s. Dunnigan often let Arnold use the property for hunting as well as business, since Arnold also worked as a hunting guide. Problems didn’t begin, the report states, until the Dunnigans began to hunt turkey on the property themselves, along with a few friends.”

“The U.S. Senate Wednesday rejected an effort to repeal the Bureau of Land Management’s new rule controlling methane emissions from oil and gas development, with Sen. Michael Bennet tweaking the vice president in a tweet about the vote afterward and fellow Coloradan Cory Gardner voting in the minority,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “The Senate voted 51-49 to defeat a measure to move forward with debate on a repeal resolution. Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine joined Democrats including Bennet in defeating the measure. Gardner long had been publicly noncommittal on the issue, and even Wednesday his spokesman indicated that the procedural vote wasn’t necessarily a reflection of how Gardner might have voted on repealing the rule itself had debate gone forward.”

“The National Transportation Safety Board has been added to the list of investigators of the deadly Firestone house explosion alongside fire officials, police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “Board spokesman Keith Holloway confirmed in an email Wednesday that investigators are probing whether there are any safety issues that could have a national impact, though results will be slow in coming. ‘A typical accident investigation can take 12 to 18 months before a probable cause is determined,’ he said.”

“The district attorney has again asked the Fremont County Commission to increase its budget, in part, due to ‘several significant investigations into alleged officer misconduct,'” reports The Pueblo Chieftain. “In a letter presented to the commission at its Tuesday meeting, District Attorney Molly Chilson made a plea for increased funding. Chilson and Assistant District Attorney Thom LeDoux made the same plea in January, but the commissioners only funded a partial increase. ‘Fremont County approved a contribution of $1,068,640 for 2017, which is a $90,236 increase from the 2016 contribution of $978,404. The resolution states that this is a 10 percent increase, however, it is actually a 9.2 percent increase,’ LeDoux said at the time when the district attorney’s office requested a 20 percent increase.”

“Two people injured in a bus crash and a woman struck by a plow on a pickup are among the people seeking damages from the city of Steamboat Springs,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “In response to a Colorado Open Records Act request, the city released the five “notices of claim” it has received since January 2016. A person is required to send a government the notice in order to later file a lawsuit. The city sends the notices to its insurance company.”

The Coloradoan in Fort Collins takes a look at what the stat legislature did this year. All lawmakers were required to do was pas a budget. But they got some other things done, too.

“Boulder is prepared to partner with an outside organization on a temporary summer sheltering program for the homeless, the city announced this week,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “A request for proposals describes a desire to pair with groups “with experience in homeless sheltering to plan and implement a temporary shelter or authorized camping program, and manage all aspects of a shelter or camp operation, including start-up, staffing, program rules and oversight, client services, security, sanitation, liaison with the city and shut down.” Officials said preference would be given to “building-based” shelter sites, but that outdoor sites could be considered, too.”

“Like many departments and agencies within the executive branch, the Bureau of Land Management has its headquarters in Washington,” reports The Durango Herald. “But Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, and Congressman Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, want to change that. Gardner introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to instruct Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to develop a plan to move the headquarters of the BLM to a western state. Tipton has introduced the companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. ‘One of the consistent concerns I hear from (constituents) is they feel like sometimes Washington doesn’t listen to them. They feel like they have a great relationship with their local BLM office, but something happens on the way to Washington that changes that process,’ Gardner said.”

“On the balcony outside the House chamber, Johnny Cash crooned on the loudspeakers as state lawmakers sipped Colorado wine from plastic cups in the final hours of the 2017 legislative session,” reports The Denver Post. “A 1991 cabernet sauvignon in hand, state Rep. Paul Rosenthal raised his cup and offered one word that captured the mood at the Capitol: ‘Cheers!’ The celebration Wednesday reflected victories for Democratic and Republican legislative leaders on most of their top priorities in the 120-day term — even as two late efforts at compromise failed. The bipartisan agreements included measures to preserve the hospital provider fee program, avert potentially catastrophic cuts to rural hospitals, find new money for highway construction, increase per-pupil education spending, and make it harder to sue for construction defects. For each bill, the final result is less than what lawmakers hoped to accomplish but represented significant progress after failing to reach accords for years. ‘I think this was a very productive session,” said Rosenthal, D-Denver. “I always knew we’d get some good compromises done.'”

“When Manitou’s resident artist C.H. Rockey drew two gnarled elms on Canon Avenue roughly 30 years ago, he didn’t know his accompanying story of the ‘The Tree Couple’ predicted their demise,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “In the story, Ella Elm says nobody but ‘the artist,’ presumably Rockey, has heard ‘even our loud screams when they cut down our kin’ … ‘and some day soon, they’ll take us away as well.’ ‘Soon came Wednesday. Five trees at Canon and Washington avenues, including Rockey’s iconic tree couple, were cut down in a controversial project to remove what the city called dead or diseased elms and widen the sidewalk below.”