Our state’s highest court not only undermined Colorado’s crime fight in a ruling handed down Monday, but it also flouted the will of our governor.

It was Jared Polis, after all, who stood in the way of an attempt by the legislature last May to do what the Colorado Supreme Court wound up doing this week — gut tougher local sentencing laws. Polis had vetoed House Bill 25-1147, which would have barred local ordinances invoked by municipal courts from imposing stiffer sentences for crimes than the slaps on the wrist meted out under state law by ruling Democrats at the State Capitol.

Now, the state’s top court — notoriously soft on crime in its own right — has countermanded the governor. As reported by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, the court essentially imposed from the bench the provisions of HB 25-1147 that aimed to bar stricter sentencing by local governments. And, even more maddening, the court decision was based on an appeal orchestrated by criminal-defense lawyers to make it to the offender-friendly Supreme Court. 

Sure, Polis is a Democrat, just like the criminal-coddling, “justice reform” advocates in the legislature. But the governor also sees the writing on the wall — politically and practically. He knows that his party’s image — and the image of the state it controls — have taken a beating for a reputation of being harder on cops than on criminals. And he knows rank-and-file Coloradans, regardless of party affiliation, are fed up.

Our state was slammed by a crime wave a few years ago, aided and abetted by a legislature that has been slashing criminal sentences for years. That left it to hard-hit local governments to figure out how to respond. With state lawmakers abandoning the crime fight on every front — hard drugs, auto theft, illegal immigration, you name it — a number of Colorado cities, commendably, took the reins. Some municipalities imposed stiffer sentences than the state’s for shoplifting and motor vehicle theft. Some made clear they’d continue to cooperate with federal authorities seeking to catch lawbreakers who had entered the country illegally.

Last spring’s Legislation would have undone those local efforts, making it as hard under local laws as it already is under state law to keep petty career criminals — serial shoplifters, robbers, auto thieves, street-level drug dealers — in jail.

Polis got it, writing in a formal letter explaining his veto, “I heard from police chiefs, cities and towns, mayors, victim advocates, and business groups from around the state about the detrimental effect that this bill would have on public safety should it become law. Specifically, this bill would undermine numerous local ordinances that have been thoughtfully debated and adopted to address locality-specific crimes, including bike theft, assault, and domestic violence.”

To all intents and purposes, that vetoed bill will become law anyway in the wake of this week’s court ruling.

What is even more outrageous about the legislative attempt to undermine local law and order was that it was the state lawmakers who had created the sentencing disparity in the first place. They enacted measures such as Senate Bill 21-271, in 2021, decriminalizing wide-ranging crimes without regard to the consequences.

The ruling ensures local governments limit themselves to the same lax standards as the state’s, regardless of how much it imperils public safety. Our legislature abdicated its responsibility to wage war on crime; Colorado’s Supreme Court now expects local governments to follow suit.