Re: “Polis threatens to veto bill addressing sentencing disparities between Colorado\u2019s state and municipal courts<\/a>,” April 9 online news story<\/p>\n This legislative session, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston inserted himself in Capitol politics to the detriment of Denver\u2019s most vulnerable. Johnston\u2019s platform for addressing homelessness includes micro-communities, wraparound services, and ordinance enforcement to channel folks into services. Notably, it does not include year-long jail sentences for poverty offenses, which are costly, harmful, counterproductive and forbidden in state courts. Yet, Johnston fought hard to preserve municipalities\u2019 power to send unhoused people to jail for nearly a year for poverty \u201coffenses\u201d like camping, more than 30 times the jail sentence allowed in state court for similar offenses. Johnston\u2019s team actively and, by many accounts, effectively lobbied Gov. Jared Polis to veto House Bill 1147<\/a>, Fairness & Transparency in Municipal Court, a bill supported by the majority of the Denver City Council that would have ended these disparate and extreme sentences.<\/p>\n Mayor Johnston could not have misunderstood the harm of the veto he advocated for.<\/p>\n Damning reporting by The Denver Post revealed how disparate municipal court sentencing, too often meted out without access to legal counsel, was creating a two-tiered system of justice at the expense of unhoused people. As Denver Post\u2019s Editorial Board recognized when it urged Polis to sign the bill, HB 1147 is common sense legislation that would have fixed these irrational disparities by guaranteeing the most basic of legal rights to people prosecuted in Colorado\u2019s municipal courts: a lawyer when jail is on the line, a courtroom open to public observation, and a jail sentence that complies with state sentencing laws. When city courts are allowed to use poverty \u201coffenses\u201d to disappear homeless people for nearly a year in jail, our entire community suffers and no one is safer. But that\u2019s exactly the result Johnston fought for.<\/p>\n Rebecca Wallace, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n Editor’s note: Wallace is the policy director at Colorado Freedom Fund.<\/em><\/p>\n Re: ” ‘This has our history’<\/a>,” May 28 news story<\/p>\nThankful for the preservation of history at Blair-Caldwell library<\/h4>\n