Scott Franz
Reporter, InvestigativeEmail: [email protected]
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.
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Bill sponsors stood by their measure and vowed to seek an override, saying governments in Colorado need relief after being “inundated” with requests for public records in recent years. But the override vote was repeatedly delayed, suggesting the sponsors lacked the two-thirds support they needed in both chambers to force it into law. -
SB25-077 would have given governments more time to respond to records requests from the public and businesses while exempting journalists from the delays.The bill’s sponsors said governments were being “inundated” with records requests and needed relief with longer deadlines to respond to them. -
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.” -
Despite saying unleaded fuel sales would begin in 2024, the airport has yet to start offering it, frustrating neighboring residents who have been calling for the transition for years. -
As nuclear waste piles up at power plants around the country, many states are aggressively fighting plans for new storage facilities. But Northwest Colorado is quietly opening the door to the idea. On this special edition of In The NoCo, we hear why some people like the idea of what nuclear waste storage could do for northwest Colorado’s economy – and why others are dead set against it. -
A strike began today at various King Soopers stores around the Front Range. The strike includes thousands of workers, but King Soopers plans to keep locations open. -
Cañon City in southern Colorado is still dealing with the fallout of radioactive contamination from decades ago. A nuclear waste watchdog group wants communities that are considering partnering with the government on future waste storage plans to have the full picture of the energy cycle and its history. -
As northwest Colorado loses coal jobs and dollars, a small group is raising the possibility of nuclear waste storage as a replacement. Community leaders in coal country have mixed feelings about the idea. -
As nuclear waste piles up around the country, many communities are saying ‘no’ to taking it. In a rural corner of Colorado, however, some see the prospect of storing this spent fuel as an opportunity.
