“I am not optimistic about the ability to access federal funding for the (local Salud) clinic, at least in the very near future,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, Friday afternoon in Estes Park at his first town hall meeting of 2025.
“This doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be working as best as we can to make the case, and we’ll certainly do that with the local leadership here. But I also think it’s important to level with you, when we’re literally right now…fighting to just make sure that federal programs stay afloat,” Neguse told more than 200 Estes Valley area constituents.
According to Town Clerk Jackie Williamson, the boardroom holds about 150 people. Every seat in the room was taken, people stood flanking the walls, and spilled over into an overflow area in the front vestibule.
“I had to stop letting people into the board room,” Williamson told the Estes Valley Voice after the event explaining that the number of people who turned up exceeded the capacity allowed into the room.
Neguse began by thanking Estes Park Mayor Gary Hall and then acknowledging several people in the room including U.S. Navy (Ret.) Captain Richard “Dick” Life, Estes Park Police Chief Ian Stewart, and Estes Valley Fire Protection District Chief Paul Capo, before making some brief opening remarks.
Neguse’s background
The son of immigrants from the Province of Eritrea in Ethiopia, Neguse received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University Colorado-Boulder. “I grew up in Colorado, down in Douglass County. I remember every year coming up to Rocky Mountain National Park with my dad and hiking,” he said.
His affection for the Estes Valley runs deep as he chose to propose to his wife by Lake Estes. “It’s not a particularly endearing story,” he quipped describing the scene of getting down on his knees with the lake on one side and the U.S. Highway 36 on the other as noisy trucks raced by. “You know, very romantic.” The audience enjoyed the story.
Neguse provided a bit of background about his time in Congress. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2018, the first Black representative from Colorado, to represent Colorado’s Second Congressional District which includes many of Denver’s northwestern suburbs and Front Range communities, including the Estes Valley.
He serves as the Chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, and is a member of the House Committee on Rules, House Judiciary Committee, and the House Natural Resources Committee.
“This is the first session of Congress that I will be serving in which there’s a trifecta with the Republican Party having a majority in the House and in the Senate and the presidency,” Neguse said.
“And so for us and for my team, as we endeavor to do what we have always done, which is do our best to serve this community, to fight for our values that we share, to make sure that every person in this community feels heard, irrespective of their political affiliations or views.”
Now beginning his fourth two-year term, the Congressman then took questions for an hour from people eager to voice their concerns and encourage him to fight for things that are important to the community.
Questions and answers with the audience
The questions raised by the audience focused primarily on the topics of federal funding, the need for immigration reform, the high cost of living, and wildland fire protection.
Neguse’s first response was to a question from the Estes Valley Voice about the $1 million shortfall the local Salud Family Health Center is experiencing due to the Medicaid disenrollment. Unless the funds can be raised by May 31, the clinic, which provides primary medical care to more than 2,000 low-income and underinsured people in the Estes Valley, will close.
“I don’t know that the American people fully appreciate how insane the federal funding freeze, the Office of Management and Budget directive, was,” said Neguse.
“I cannot begin to describe to you the frantic phone calls and outreach that my team (has received). We serve everyone in our district, irrespective of their views, the calls we received from people affiliated with just about every institution you could think of, a hospital, a university, folks accessing government services, you name it, all in one fell swoop because of an ideological directive that was issued by the administration. It’s completely unconstitutional,” said Neguse.
Neguse went on to site how the executive orders violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, long-standing Supreme Court precedent, and Article I of the U.S. Constitution which affirms that Congress, “the people’s house, has the power of the purse. The president of neither party or either party has the ability to decide by executive fiat, what funds they’re going to spend and what funds they’re not going to, it is illegal.”
The fact that the White House rescinded the OMB funding freeze memo temporarily “is a testament to the outrage that I think people felt in that moment, and to many of you who lifted your voices in support thereof,” said Neguse.
Several of those attending asked about the current administration’s immigration policies. Neguse took an “unscientific poll” of the audience, about three core precepts that he believes would fix a “broken Immigration system.”
He asked his audience for a show of hands if the fix should include “a system that protects dreamers and farm workers? A system where we have a secure southern border? A system in which if you’ve committed a violent crime, that you’re removed from the country?”
Most of the audience raised their hands in the affirmative to each of these questions.
“I believe that if I walked downtown in Estes Park and asked 10 people those same questions, nine of them would answer the same way most of you did,” he said.
“And yet, you have, unfortunately, a president and sycophants that are following him in his party, in the House, that instead would choose to demonize immigrants, to break up families, to engage in destructive policies, in my view, because they know that the solutions to this problem are actually fairly common sense, bipartisan and broadly supported by the American public.”
Other questions and concerns about local issues were raised. One woman who identified herself as a mother and a member of the Lakota nation expressed concerns about how the police handle mental health calls.
“As you probably know, Larimer County, for several years, had one of the highest suicide rates, not just in the state but of the country, per capita…I think that there are levers to pull within Medicaid in particular, to try to incentivize better and broader mental health services for populations across our country, and that would certainly include our state,” he said.
Another woman mentioned recent increases in local utility rates. “I do a lot of town halls, so I get a great sense, I think, of the pulse of different communities, and it is becoming awfully hard to continue living in these communities for a lot of Coloradans,” said Neguse referring to rising costs in just about everything from HOA dues to utility payments.
Several audience members expressed fear about the parallels between the rise of Hitler in Germany and Trump’s rise to power, and the increasing prevalence of white supremacy and bigotry against the LGBTQ community and other minorities in the country.
“We have a powerful tool, and that is a microphone,” he said explaining that it will take citizen action, a more engaged voting public, and personal advocacy to change people’s worldview, one neighbor at a time.
He asked if anyone would like to be a citizen co-sponsor on a bill, Tim’s Act, which is designed to insure that wildland fire fighters receive parity in pay.
“They are the most underpaid people in our federal government,” Neguse said. “They are sometimes described as the forgotten first responders, right? The wildland firefighters, the Hotshot Crews, these are people who risk it all, and they’re making less money than you might make working at a Starbucks. It’s unconscionable.”
Frustrations and challenges
Neguse admitted to being frustrated with the current administration’s policies and actions. “What they intend to do is to spark and create more fear, more outrage, so that ultimately we can never come to terms on solutions that, as I said, would actually ameliorate some of the challenges,” he said.
“I’m always going to speak honestly and candidly about what I think about the abuse that is happening at the federal level, and the unlawful ways in which this administration is already pursuing an agenda that I think is deeply out of step with the American people.
“But I also think that we’re going to have to speak candidly… about what we believe, about how we think these challenges can be addressed, because that is how you ultimately convince your neighbors, your friends, people who have different world views than your own, to join a coalition of people to oppose the more regressive approaches that the administration is taking. That requires a level of candor, a level of empathy, of speaking truth to power about what’s going wrong, but also being willing to talk about what we believe the alternatives could and should be,” Neguse said.
Neguse stayed on for another 25 minutes to speak to people one-on-one and pose for photos before heading off to another town hall in Fort Collins.
Neguse’s parents are from Eritrea, not Ethiopia. https://neguse.house.gov/about-joe
Joe Neguse’s parents immigrated from the Province of Eritrea in Ethiopia in 1980 and 1981 and not from the country of Eritrea, so our copy is correct.
Ten years after his parents immigrated to the United States the province became an independent country. The defacto date of independence from Ethiopia was may 24, 1991 and the de jure date was May 24 1993.
Technically and accurately, his parents immigrated not from the nation state of Eritrea, but from the Province of Eritrea, which in 1980 and 1981 was still part of Ethopia.