Noticias

• Lane Masters Announces Bid for San Miguel County Sheriff
• Bills Pass and Stall in Denver

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Lane Masters Announces Bid for San Miguel County Sheriff

Lane Masters grew up in Telluride, the son of former Sheriff Bill Masters. He graduated from Telluride High School before joining the Marine Corps. After retiring from the military, he stepped into law enforcement. Masters joined the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office in 2023, and now works as a Telluride Marshal Deputy.

Masters recently announced his candidacy for San Miguel County Sheriff. He spoke with KOTO’s Julia Caulfield.

Julia Caulfield (JC): Why are you running for sheriff?

Lane Masters (LM): My overall career trajectory, my life goals were all oriented around someday getting back to Telluride. My joke is I spent 17 years trying to get out of here to spend the next 17 years trying to come back. Personally, I believe in civic duty. I feel a bit of a responsibility to this community because it’s the community that raised me and helped shape my personal outlooks on the world and also how my profession should be conducted.

Now being a family man, I have one son and we’re expecting our second. My kids will be raised here and I want them to have that same quality of life that we’ve all come to know and love living in San Miguel County. So that’s, that’s my major motivation.

I would say secondarily, I think the sheriff position is very important because it is an elected position and it should be the voice of the people on how they want policing to be conducted. Whether we like it or not, the reality is politics and policing are intertwined. I think this past year has really demonstrated that. We’ve seen much more action with federal police than we’ve ever seen in modern history. So I think it’s really imperative that a community be able to vote for and decide what they want policing to look like within their jurisdiction.

JC: If folks vote for you, it’s voting for your vision of what policing should look like in the county. So what does that look like? What are folks voting for if they vote for you for sheriff?

LM: The easy thing to say is, if you liked my dad, I was raised by him. I’d like to point out, I became a peace officer and had a successful career far outside of his sphere of influence, but generally speaking, who your father is, who your parents are, how you’re raised has a big implication on how you see the world and what that worldview actually looks like. So I’d like to say, if you liked my father’s policies and practices, I’m very similarly aligned. With that said, I bring a more modern view of how things need to be conducted in the modern era.

We’re seeing a crisis of staffing across the nation for police officers; and one thing that I’ll say is what we want out of our peace officers is we want informed, educated, experienced, physically fit peace officers that are, emotionally intelligent. Well, those people are worth a lot of money in any profession, right? So I think it’s really important that who’s running an agency, who’s that figurehead, is building a culture around that and demonstrating that what we want to see with our peace officers are members of the community that are involved in the community, that understand the community, and that care about the community. So that’s a major push for me.

Also, I think there’s a lot of technological advancements that need to be implemented. One of the major things (not to jump on the AI bandwagon) but a recent technology is with body-worn cameras being able to live translate using AI. We have a diverse community here, and I just think everybody understands, being able to actually understand what somebody is saying, especially in a potentially stressful moment, where they’re interacting with the police, is really paramount, and it’s important to get that right. And it’s important to make sure that all community members, regardless of what language barriers there may be, have a trust in their police officers.

So it’s another push of mine is to ensure that we’re modernizing appropriately and using tools like that to ensure that what we’re doing is effective and continues to build up the community trust that was such a harbinger of my dad’s career.

JC: Why are you the right person for this job, recognizing that Sheriff Covalt has also indicated that he’s planning to run as well?

LM: I think I’m the right person for the job because I offer both local knowledge and experience. I understand what it’s like to live in our community, throughout our community, and the challenges therein. I understand the people. I understand the differences between our communities. We’re small, but we’re interdependent on each other. You know, we have a community of ranchers, of athletes, of immigrants, and business professionals. Though we might not always agree, all of us need one another. So I have that local experience.

As far as moving forward, I also bring with me a breadth of experience, a volume of experience that came from working in a more kinetic area in a larger agency, in an agency that is objectively more modern and had to be more modern because those problems arose more often, more rapidly, and more consistently. So it’s an advantage to be able to say, ‘well, I understand these things and I know where these issues are coming from’, and getting ahead of them beforehand.

JC: Taking back to the beginning, and I think you’ve probably spoken to this throughout the whole conversation, but big picture, what do you think policing’s role is in San Miguel County?

LM: So not to echo my father too much, but I’m a strong believer in upholding public peace. I say that because it’s an easy enough thing to say is an overarching goal, but it’s actually a very complicated and nuanced matter to achieve. I would say there are plenty of instances where maybe what a police officer is trained to do in a moment is might actually conflict with what is the bigger picture for promoting public peace.

You know, my dad in the early days was one of the first County Sheriff’s to say, ‘I’m done with enforcing marijuana laws in particular. I’m done with this because this isn’t a problem for us in my community doesn’t need it to become a problem and my enforcing it isn’t improving public peace. It’s rupturing it’.

He was mocked for it at the time, and now we see, I think pretty broadly that he was right. He was just way ahead of the curve on that. So the question is always going to be looking at every situation moving forward and trying to have that same mindset of, ‘is this what’s right for public peace? Is this the right thing to be doing?’

Lane Masters is a Democrat candidate for San Miguel County Sheriff.

Sheriff Dan Covault is running for San Miguel County Sheriff as an unaffiliated candidate. Tune in to KOTO on Wednesday, March 18th for a conversation with Covault.

The candidates will face each other in the general election on Nov. 3.

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Bills Pass and Stall in Denver

Lawmakers in Denver are moving some bills through the General Assembly, and stalling others indefinitely. This week on Capitol Conversation, statehouse reporter Lucas Brady Woods shares the latest.

Julia Caulfield (JC): I first wanted to talk about some bills that on Monday moved through some hurdles in their process to become laws. The first one has to do with labor unions in Colorado, and it just passed the state House. Can you remind folks what this bill is?

Lucas Brady Woods (LBW): Yeah, absolutely. So this bill is a big-ticket item this year here at the state Capitol. What it would do is repeal this rule that’s unique to Colorado that requires workers at a company, once they vote to form a union, to hold a second vote in order to fully negotiate over everything. Supporters say this is a real barrier to unionization in Colorado, and this bill would repeal that rule. Supporters are calling it the Worker Protection Act.

One big reason this is so significant is because Democratic lawmakers and labor unions ran the same bill last year. It got all the way through the Legislature, but then Gov. Jared Polis vetoed it. So they decided to bring the same exact bill back this year. There’s really no indication that even if it passes the entire Legislature, that Polis will sign it. He has not indicated that he has changed his mind, and it’s the same bill.

JC: If it doesn’t appear that Polis has changed his mind — he’s not up for election again, and lawmakers didn’t change the bill — have you heard anything about why they decided to go with the same bill and expect a different outcome?

LBW: I don’t think it’s quite clear what they think is going to change with this when it comes to the governor. I know with a lot of other policies that might not be so favorable with the governor, lawmakers are thinking of bringing them back under a new governor next year. Like you said, he’s in his last term. So if it doesn’t get past him, there’s a chance they’ll bring it back once again next year with a new governor.

JC: Another bill I wanted to touch on has to do with funding for EMS services. It also progressed on Monday. What’s happening here?

LBW: This one’s a little less controversial or politically charged than the last one we talked about. This one is about EMS funding and creating a more sustainable system for EMS funding.

Ambulance services currently are really only reimbursed in Colorado — whether by Medicaid or by insurance companies — if they transport a patient to an emergency room or a hospital. What this bill would do is allow them to get reimbursed for their services if they treat someone on site without taking them to a hospital. It’s called treatment in place. This would really allow them to actually get paid for a lot of the work they’re already doing.

Not only would it help EMS agencies be more sustainable as far as their funding is concerned, it’s also projected to save the state a bunch of money — multiple millions of dollars a year on health care spending — because it would cut down on ER visits. If EMTs can treat someone in place at their home instead of taking them all the way to a hospital for something that might not need to be treated at the hospital, that saves the state money on health care.

JC: Those two bills moved through, but there is a bill of interest that we talked about that stalled and will not be going through this session, and that would have decriminalized prostitution. What happened here?

LBW: So this one would have fully decriminalized prostitution. The idea here is to combat a lot of the abuse and exploitation that happens in sex work. It would not have legalized anything like pimping — that’s when somebody makes money off somebody else’s prostitution. It would have decriminalized sex work for the sake of avoiding this exploitation and abuse.

One of the sponsors told The Colorado Sun that it just doesn’t have the support to make it through its first committee. So he is abandoning the effort. He’s postponing it until after the last day of the legislative session, which is how lawmakers essentially kill bills if they want to abandon the effort. That’s what the sponsor has decided to do. So this one will not be moving forward.

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Sheep Mountain Alliance Hosts Backcountry Film Festival

Telluride is heading into the backcountry film festival.

This week, Sheep Mountain Alliance, in collaboration with Winter Wildlands Alliance, will host the Backcountry Film Festival to celebrate human-powered adventure, winter storytelling and public lands advocacy.

The films highlight stories that connect people to wild places — and to each other — while exploring the movement to keep winter landscapes wild.

The festival is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, at the Telluride Science and Innovation Center. Tickets are available at sheepmountainalliance.org.