FAMLI by the numbers. An approximate rural electoral college? What is Wheat Ridge PD doing with drones?
FAMLI by the numbers ...
I saw the article linked first below about how people up in Logan County are using the Family And Medical Leave Insurance.
I wasn't aware, prior to reading, that there is a website where you can go and track where the money is going and thought you might be interested in seeing it yourself in case you didn't know either. That's linked second below.
I didn't try because the article tells me about local usage, but my guess is that if you wanted a breakdown specific to your area (the page lists only statewide numbers) you could reach out to the contact email at the top of the page.
One thing not in the article that I do think bears mention are the last couple rows near the bottom. Not much comment here, but more a curiosity. I took a screenshot and attached.
I get it that some folks don't follow up. I get it that some may withdraw the claim. What surprised me were that there would be denials. Everything I read seemed to make it such that this was a pretty sweeping program.
As a percentage (4% of total claims are denied), it's not big, but it ain't zero.
Oh, and just for fun, another number. So far 72,510 claims have cost us a total of $243,441,084, or an average of about $3357 per claim. Compared to Colorado's population, 72,510 is not a lot of claims, but at that rate God save us if we have more!
https://www.journal-advocate.com/2024/06/13/logan-county-residents-using-colorados-new-famli-paid-leave-program/
https://famli.colorado.gov/resources/famli-by-the-numbers
An approximate rural electoral college?
I wanted to share Rachel Gabel's recent op ed with you because I really like her idea.
A quick history lesson. Coloradans can, by the ballot box, pass laws (initiatives) and amend our constitution (amendments).
Depending on your age and how much attention you've paid, you may or may not remember how much easier it used to be to amend the state's constitution. After too much monkeying around with the constitution we decided to make it harder to amend.
I'll skip lots of the detail and keep the focus narrow here: one of the changes involved requiring that amendments get a certain number of votes from every single Colorado county to appear on the ballot. The (sound) thinking there that the whole state should show some support behind the amendment.
In her op ed below Gabel proposes something similar for initiatives.
A quote:
"It's not inaccurate or unfair to venture outside dollars fund the majority of ballot initiatives in Colorado, certainly the case with the wolf reintroduction. It is tone deaf for voters not to require signature gathering occur in every Colorado county. It is inappropriate that electors sympathetic to these initiatives be targeted for signatures without proponents ever stepping foot outside the Denver/Boulder area. Not only do metro voters alone then have the power to place a question on the ballot, but also the lion’s share of votes to make it so. Signature gathering should take place in every county, even the ones the proponents know won’t support the initiative and the ones they can’t find without the intervention of Google. That is, after all, the point of asking people for their support to send a question to a vote."
I welcome your thoughts on this idea. Please add to the comments section.
As someone who lives in a rural area (having moved from the Front Range), I have to say I like it. I'm naturally cautious about changes, but the way this state has drifted since so many transplants have moved in, the way that the Front Range has taken a hard left and never looked back, I am convinced that having more statewide buy-in on things is a good idea.
The only counterargument I could come up with would be that it would make it harder to get initiatives done (and possibly add to the cost of getting them on the ballot), but I think I can live with that, always have been an quality vs. quantity guy when it comes to policy (and they're already outside the reach of rank and file people anyway).
What do you think?
Know what your police are doing, what they're watching and how.
I saw the Denver 7 article below about using drones to, as the headline has it, "crack down on illegal fireworks" and it made me curious. In what way specifically?
I called over to the Wheat Ridge police department and had a conversation with their public information officer (PIO).
As I told him when we spoke, from the outside this kind of activity does carry a dystopian flavor. I want to encourage you, if you have similar concerns, to do some digging before you make up your own mind on the topic, however.
Whether that flavor, that first impression, reflects the full and complete reality is not something you're likely to get from a single quickie news article. The only fair way you'll go from one to the other is to ask.
Asking not only establishes connections to your own local police (and lets them know that someone is paying attention), it also gives you a chance to get a fuller picture.
I thought I would share what I got from Wheat Ridge PD with the idea that you could see not only how they intend to use drones (apparently other departments either are or are on the way to having drones of their own), but also so you could get some ideas of fruitful questions to ask.
First, just call and ask whether your department is using drones. If they are, follow up. The next thing I would try to get is a copy of their drone policy. Wheat Ridge shared theirs with me and I link to it below the 7News story below.
If your department is like Wheat Ridge, there will likely be lots of information about the logistics and mechanics of using drones (e.g. the certifications of the pilots). Fine things all, but my concerns tend to run more to the civil rights/privacy aspects so that's where I focus.
Look for answers to questions like:
--Who can use the drones?
--Where can they be used? Where can they not be used?
--What are you using them to find? What are they NOT allowed to be looking for?
--What kind of cameras do they have (interestingly in my phone conversation with Wheat Ridge I found out their drones have IR cameras for fire detection)?
Depending on your department's policy (see screenshots 1a - 1c for roughly the section from Wheat Ridge's policy that pertains to my questions above), you may or may not get full answers to these questions, but there's no reason to not follow up with a human.
The PIO and I talked a fair bit about their plans and the below are my impressions of what they're thinking and doing.
Wheat Ridge mostly wants to use drones on the 4th for fire watch and fire suppression, especially given that they have an IR camera (which would in theory be better able to spot a fire while it's small and easier to deal with than a someone driving around in a police car or looking over the area's open space).
I gather--the PIO reasonably did not go into great detail about the number and location of the deployments--that the drones will be deployed up in the air around public areas idly scanning the evening of the 4th. If they see a fire, they'll send police or fire to investigate. If they see bazooka shells exploding over a neighborhood, they'll send someone to look into it. If a call came in that someone saw fireworks being set off on their street, the drone might look over that way, and, if warranted, a police car with human in it would be dispatched to investigate.
I was told, and have no reason to doubt it til I'm shown otherwise, that the drones would not be used to surveil people's backyards or anywhere else that you or I might have a reasonable expectation of privacy. You won't look up from your grill or from lighting a firework into the cold, emotionless IR eye of a drone in your backyard for example.
This use strikes me as pretty reasonable. As long as people are secure in their homes and persons, as long as the drones stay where you have no expectation of privacy, I'm okay with them being used in this manner.
As I have written about with Flock cameras, my next questions about these drones center around the data collected and kept. What becomes of the drone footage and/or any reports made by a human after a drone flight? Screenshot 2 shows the proper excerpt from Wheat Ridge's policy.
I put in a follow up question to the Wheat Ridge PIO to see about public access to drone reports and/or footage. The response I got was, quoting an email, "Any recording would certainly be subject to a CORA request. At the same time, a lot of our drone deployment so far has been more about relaying real-time information, and we don’t always record in those situations."
One last thing. Drone or not, do not be afraid to contact the police or sheriff's office if you feel as though someone did something inappropriate. Remember that these folks are here to serve you. If you don't get satisfaction with them, you follow up with the next level of elected officials.
Whatever you choose to do with fireworks, please do it safely!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZy_e0ditu_NfGsILO00Q2HA1hMseunE/view?usp=sharing
Regarding "An approximate rural electoral college?"...
I also like Rachel Gabel's idea. When a ballot initiative affects Colorado as a whole, we should require petition signatures from all counties. At the very least this would put the issue right in front of all voters, not just those in the front range or rabid activist zone. In a bit of wishful thinking, I would also take it further to actual voting. Each county would have a "yay" or "nay", the cumulative results for all counties would decide the outcome of the measure. The margins for the wolf introduction were very narrow in many counties and the measure passed in only 13 (Denver Gazette article linked below). Of course, since I stood in adamant opposition to the wolf deal, this would have been a "We beat the brakes off them moment".
https://denvergazette.com/outtherecolorado/news/map-wolf-reintroduction-was-approved-by-voters-in-13-of-64-colorado-counties/article_a046bba8-e731-5a68-abdd-ecc3635961d9.html
To the other current matter of my interest...
Well, the "cool cats and kittens" got their signatures, 55,762 more than the required number to put banning mountain lion hunting on the ballot. Sheer numbers alone may preclude an effort by those opposed to this initiative to validate signatures but I've neither seen nor heard anything about that, yet. It's quite costly to challenge petitions so perhaps the $$ are better spent to defeat it at the box. KRDO posted an article yesterday, I've listed the link below and will give them credit for including both sides.
https://krdo.com/news/2024/07/04/colorado-group-seeks-to-eliminate-mountain-lion-hunting-but-state-wildlife-advocates-oppose/
I appreciate the opportunity to comment,
Julie