A NOTE FROM STERLING SIMMS:
The decisions of the next five years will determine my generations’ future for the next twenty. From AI, to the climate crisis, and unprecedented threats to our democracy, we will be the ones who inherit the costs of whatever lies ahead. We need a seat at the table where those decisions are being made.
I’m running for State House because I’m fighting to build a Colorado that is prepared for the future, and resilient enough to stand on its own in the face of Wall Street’s instability and Washington’s neglect. I'm not running on what I've done, I’m running on what I’ll do. Here's the plan:
PUBLIC BANKING
Charter a state public bank — modeled on North Dakota's BND, the only one of its kind in the country and 109 years strong — put Colorado's money to work for Colorado, not Wall Street.
We're told every year to brace for a budget crisis. The truth is we're not broke. Colorado is the 35th largest economy in the world — but billions of our tax dollars sit in out-of-state Wall Street banks that invest them in extractive industry and gives the profits to their own shareholders.
A public bank, like the Bank of North Dakota, brings that money home and does three things:
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Keeps our money in Colorado.
Instead of parking state tax deposits with Wall Street, the bank partners with our local banks and credit unions to provide low-cost capital to Colorado students, business owners, and local governments.
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Makes affordable loans here at home.
Low-interest student loans, small business and housing development financing, and bonds that lower borrowing costs for our cities and counties — all reinvested in our own communities.
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Sends the profits back to us.
The returns we earn from investing in Colorado go straight into the general fund — a sustainable, homegrown way to close our budget gap instead of cutting the services families rely on.
My first step
Amend the Public Deposit Protection Act to allow Colorado's public deposits to be held in a state-chartered public bank or a local bank — with the goal of getting our money out of Wall Street within ten years.
COMMUNITY WEALTH BUILDING
Build an economy where Colorado's wealth stays in Colorado's hands — owned by the workers and neighbors who create it, not out-of-state conglomerates.
We don't have an affordability crisis — we have an inequality crisis that's become a cost-of-living crisis. Too many of our industries are dominated by out-of-state corporations that set our prices, undercut our local businesses, and ship the profits somewhere else. The answer isn't growth for growth's sake. It's making sure the market share, the ownership, and the wealth stay rooted here at home.
That means backing worker and employee ownership so businesses stay locally owned, cutting the fees and red tape that make it harder to start a small business here than to bring in an out-of-state chain, and using tools like our public bank to put affordable capital in the hands of Colorado entrepreneurs instead of Wall Street. When our businesses are owned by our neighbors, the wealth they build stays where it matters most.
My first step
Create a state incentive — tax credits, technical assistance, and financing — to help retiring Colorado business owners sell to their employees instead of to out-of-state private equity. When a founder retires without a plan, their business too often closes or gets bought up and stripped for parts. Keeping it in the hands of the workers who built it keeps the jobs, the ownership, and the wealth right here.
CLEAN & SAFE STREETS
Send the right responder to every call, hold gun owners to the high standard that comes with the right to bear arms, and treat addiction as the health crisis it is — not a jail sentence.
Expand community resources.
In my work at the City's Office of Homelessness Resolution, I've called Denver's STAR program — the clinician teams that respond to mental-health and welfare calls instead of police — and I’ve watched no one come. Every team was already out on another call. STAR works. There just aren't enough of them. When a person in crisis gets an armed response by default, or no response at all, that's a failure we’ve built and one we can fix. I'll fight to fund and expand clinician-led response so the right team gets to the right call — which means help for people in crisis and officers freed up to focus on the crimes only they can handle.
Weapons Accountability:
Colorado has brought gun deaths to their lowest rate in a decade, but too many lives are still lost to violence and suicide that responsible policy can prevent. I'll fight for the basics that responsible owners already live by: a permit to purchase, regular safety training, and real accountability for the gun lobby that profits while blocking common-sense reform. Accountability isn't about punishing responsible owners — it's about making sure everyone meets the standard the rest of us already hold ourselves to.
End Public Use:
We don't have an overdose crisis — we have an outdoor overdose crisis. People are dying alone on our streets, using outside because they're addicted and have nowhere else to go. When their addiction turns fatal, no one is there to revive them. That's not compassion and it's not order. It's the worst of both.
Forty years of mass incarceration has given way to six years of de-regulation. We can't arrest our way out of this. But we can't pretend we have a treatment system either. Colorado ranks 48th in the nation for treatment capacity. On paper the numbers look better, but only because we count inpatient beds in places like Vail and Aspen that cost tens of thousands of dollars a week and don't take Medicaid. For a working family in House District 5, that "capacity" may as well not exist — the real wait for an actual bed can stretch for weeks. We are second in the nation for need and nearly last for help.
So here's what I believe: if I can't get someone sober today, I can at least make sure they're not using on a sidewalk, not carrying a weapon, and not dying alone in an alley. That means investing in overdose prevention centers — supervised spaces inside existing health clinics where someone who overdoses can be revived by a trained clinician and connected to treatment on the spot — paired with a clear standard that public drug use, when a safe place to go exists, is no longer something we tolerate on our streets. You can't recover if you don't survive. And recovery is the entire point.
We can pay for all of it without raising a dime in taxes — Colorado is sitting on nearly $1 billion in opioid settlement funds it still hasn't put to work. This keeps people alive, gets them into care, and keeps our streets and storefronts clear of public use — all without a jail cell that couldn't hold them anyway.
My first step
Deploy Colorado's nearly $1 billion in unspent opioid settlement funds to stand up overdose prevention centers within existing health clinics — supervised places that revive people and connect them to treatment — so we end public drug use by giving people somewhere to survive and recover instead.
CLIMATE ACTION
The most contaminated zip code in America isn't somewhere far away — it's right here in House District 5. We don't read about the climate and pollution crisis. We breathe it.
For our neighbors in 80216, and across HD-5, environmental harm isn't a headline — it's the air, the water, and the ground we live on, this is the legacy of decades of putting heavy industry next to the families with the least power to fight it. We don't see the climate crisis on TV. We see it out the window.
Now a new threat is coming for those same communities: massive AI data centers that devour electricity and water and get sited wherever the resistance is weakest — which means neighborhoods like ours. I won't let HD-5 become the dumping ground for the next extractive industry the way it was for the last one. I'll fight to keep data centers out of environmentally sensitive and already-overburdened communities, expand the state's PFAS and air toxin enforcement to hold our biggest polluters accountable, and reform the rules that make it needlessly hard to bring clean energy and efficiency to the historic homes and buildings that fill our district.
My first step
Run legislation to keep AI data centers out of environmentally sensitive and overburdened communities — so the next extractive industry can't do to HD-5 what the last one did.
EDUCATION
WITHOUT DEBT
A degree shouldn't come with decades of debt. Colorado should be its own lender — offering the lowest-interest student loans in the country through our public bank, so the next generation isn't handed over to Wall Street to get an education.
Gen-Z carries one of the heaviest debt burdens of any generation in American history, before they purchase a home. Much of it from the staggering cost of higher education — trapping young people in thousands of dollars of debt before they're old enough to rent a car. While we work toward universal college education and career training for every Coloradan, we need a real alternative to predatory private loans right now. North Dakota already does this: the same public bank that keeps its state's money at home also offers some the most affordable student loans in the country. Colorado can do the same — for undergraduate, graduate, and career education alike — and give our students a path that builds their future instead of mortgaging it.
My first step
Build a low-interest state student loan program through our public bank — modeled on North Dakota's — so Colorado students can fund undergraduate, graduate, and career education without being handed to Wall Street.
My first step
Take on exclusionary zoning to let us build the homes we need, while funding community land trusts that keep those homes permanently affordable — so we're adding supply and protecting against displacement at the same time.
HOUSING
AFFORDABILITY
Housing is a human right — not a commodity. We need to build more homes, protect the renters we have, and keep housing permanently affordable in the neighborhoods most at risk of displacement.
Thousands of Coloradans are housing insecure, and far too many are pushed onto the streets. Displacement isn't an abstract worry here — House District 5 is home to five of the top ten Denver neighborhoods most at risk of displacement, according to the city's NEST Index. Housing stability will be a top focus of mine in the Legislature, and it takes all three: more supply, stronger protections, and permanent affordability.
On supply, I'll fight to combat the exclusionary zoning that drives up the cost of development and keeps homes from being built. On protection, I'll expand tenant protections and eviction defense to give renters a lifeline. And on permanent affordability, I'll build on Colorado's momentum for community land trusts and invest in social housing — right here in the District 5 neighborhoods that need it most.
Endorsed by YIMBY Denver — because building the homes our neighbors actually need is how we make this district livable for the next generation.
