Scott Franz
Scott Franz is a government watchdog reporter and photographer from Steamboat Springs. He spent the last seven years covering politics and government for the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a daily newspaper in northwest Colorado. His reporting in Steamboat stopped a police station from being built in a city park, saved a historic barn from being destroyed and helped a small town pastor quickly find a kidney donor. His favorite workday in Steamboat was Tuesday, when he could spend many of his mornings skiing untracked powder and his evenings covering city council meetings. Scott received his journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an outdoorsman who spends at least 20 nights a year in a tent. He spoke his first word, 'outside', as a toddler in Edmonds, Washington. Scott visits the Great Sand Dunes, his favorite Colorado backpacking destination, twice a year. Scott's reporting is part of Capitol Coverage, a collaborative public policy reporting project, providing news and analysis to communities across Colorado for more than a decade. Fifteen public radio stations participate in Capitol Coverage from throughout Colorado.
-
Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a bill that would delay public records access. Transparency advocates warn it could hinder access to government information, with a rare override vote now on the table. -
State regulators say the legislature removed the public’s access to funeral home inspection reports last year in the same bill they passed to tighten regulations on the industry. This came in the wake of several scandals involving fake ashes and mishandled remains. -
Almost a year after Colorado lawmakers frustrated transparency advocates by exempting themselves from parts of the open meetings law, a coalition of residents seeking more access to government records and meetings said it’s drafting a potential ballot initiative to strengthen “the public’s right to know.” -
Sen. Kevin Priola blasted his Republican colleagues for what he called their indifference toward the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and refusing to take action on climate change. -
A bipartisan committee on Monday voted to begin drafting 10 bills ahead of their next legislative session. They include proposals to buy remote cameras and invest millions to create a statewide team of wildfire investigators. The same bills died last spring. -
Colorado’s trails, campgrounds and parks are getting more crowded. But surveys show the droves of visitors are overwhelmingly white and wealthy. A new initiative launching this summer hopes to change that. -
Republicans chose Heidi Ganahl as their candidate to challenge Jared Polis in the governor’s race. Ganahl defeated former Parker Mayor George Lopez in the primary. -
Abortion rights advocates have been bracing for the ruling for months. Democrats in the state legislature passed a law this year aiming to stop cities and towns from trying to pass any restrictions themselves. -
There are people running for higher office in Colorado this month that are making unfounded voter fraud allegations a central theme of their campaigns. And that has some of the state’s top election workers worried. -
Service organizations in Colorado and beyond say they are ready to help residents who are grieving after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
