Colorado Spending Transparency

State Representative and Joint Budget Committee member Kent Lambert wants to put the brakes on state employees using taxpayer funded vehicles for their personal commute to and from work.  The Associated Press quoted Lambert,  ”Nobody else in state government is getting a free ride to work, and they shouldn’t be doing it either.”  

Following up on a COST discovery about the state’s fleet vehicles, Lambert plans to introduce legislation to eliminate ”Gov. Bill Ritter’s fleet vehicle program and bar the use of state-owned vehicles for tax-free commuting unless it contributes to public safety.”

What’s interesting is the state’s response to Lambert’s legislation. 

Julie Postlethwait, spokeswoman for the Department of Personnel and Administration, which oversees the state fleet, said department heads decide who gets a state vehicle and the department has no control over the decision. She said the department has been reviewing fleet rules for a year and tried to cut back on the program.

‘It’s a program we offer, and we can’t force other departments to cut back,’ she said.

Raises taxes? You bet.  Tell departments to “cut back” on employees using taxpayer-funded vehicle for their personal commute? No way.

Residents of the Poudre School District in Fort Collins realize that transparency means more than financial.  The Fort Collins Coloradoan and some taxpayers are demanding more transparency when it comes to school district policies.  

According to Coloradoan editor Bob Moore, the district’s deliberate withholding of information about the arrests of two employees was unlike anything he had ever seen and ”has prompted the Coloradoan to investigate the issue and compile the ongoing coverage regarding transparency in Fort Collins area schools…”

Moore also stated that the trust between the school district and the community has eroded.  Facing a nearly $12 billion budget shortfall, the district is contemplating asking voters for a property tax increase this fall.  Poudre School District need only look east to Greeley Evans School District 6 to see how voters feel about giving more of their money to a school district that doesn’t respect taxpayers enough to share information whether its financial or policy related.

Check out the Coloradoan’s extensive coverage of the Poudre School District and transparency.  Also check out Transparency Czarina Amy Oliver Cooke’s podcast on iVoices with Bob Moore.

Another aspect of transparency allows the public enough time to review and comment on legislation.  Both Governor Bill Ritter and President Barack Obama show the same lack of respect for those paying the bills.  We don’t even get to review the bills that affect our lives and wallets.

Candidate Obama promised that the public would be given five days to review and comment on any legislation before he signed it into law.  Cato has documented how President Obama repeatedly has broken the hearts of transparency advocates. 

That same habit of rushing a bill through the legislature is happening here in Colorado.  Whether you agree with SB10-36, the “teacher tracking bill,” or not, the public should be given more than 48 hoursto read, review and comment on legislation before it is signed by the Governor Ritter or any other governor for that matter. 

This is especially true since SB 36 was passed with the “Safety Clause,” which says: “The general assembly hereby finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety.”  In other words, the legislature has decided the public cannot challenge the bill.  This is a classic example of safety clause abuse so common in the Colorado General Assembly but taken to a new level since the public wasn’t given time to review and comment.

Some Colorado school districts aren’t waiting for the General Assembly to mandate financial transparency.  Greeley Evans School District Six in Northern Colorado has placed its check reigstry online.

But most impressive is what Colorado’s largest school district Jeffco Public Schools has provided for taxpayers on its financial transparency Web page.  Interested taxpayers set the date parameters, and then search Jeffco expenditures by vendor, account number, fund or department number.  The search results can be easily downloaded into an individual xcel file.  For instance, in just a matter of minutes COST determined that Jeffco spent $313,199.46 on meals/refreshments from July 1 to December 31, 2009.   It’s not up to COST to make a judgement on those expenditures.  That is the responsibility of Jeffco taxpayers.

We will however make a judgement on Jeffco’s transparency Web site, and we have yet to find a better one in the country.  COST believes Jeffco is on the cutting edge of transparency.  We encourage other school districts to take Jeffco’s lead and provide the same type of detailed financial transparency. 

The state of Colorado should take lessons as well.  Governor Bill Ritter’s transparency Web site TOP is an embarrassment.

State Representative and Joint Budget Committee member Kent Lambert provides a tremendous amount of information about the state budget and spending on his Web site. 

COST enjoyed digging through a database on state government vehicles.  According to the database, taxpayers have purchased 5534 vehicles over the course of many years.  What’s interesting is that in the middle of the “worst recession since the Great Depression” Parole purchased over sixty 2009 hybrid sedans at a cost of more than $1million.  COST wondered why.  According to sources, apparently the new vehicles were for employees to ”ride share” to and from work.  

COST will let taxpayers decide if that was a good use of their hard-earned money.

Our transparency Czarina Amy Oliver Cooke is a mom so we hear lots of parenting stories.  Right now, President Barack Obama looks like the over promising parent who constantly under delivers.  While American voters are like the kids who aren’t buying the falsehoods and simply roll their eyes every time Barack Obama utters the word “transparency.”

According to Breitbart TV, Obama has made no fewer than eight promises for transparency in health care reform negotiations.  Those promises ring hollow.  Politico reports:

President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders agreed Tuesday to forgo a formal conference committee for reconciling the Senate and House health care bills, according to three Democratic congressional aides.

The decision means that the White House, Senate Majority Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will attempt to reach an agreement through private negotiations with key lawmakers.

No C-SPAN. No TV cameras. No internet streaming. No opposition party. Once again…No transparency.

Governor Bill Ritter spent more than $200,000 on TV, photographs and videos of himself, an Associated Press investigation revealed.   According to AP, “taxpayers paid that amount for photos of the Democratic governor signing bills and attending a lavish production for the state film commission.”

Also revealed in the story, the Bawmann Group, which COST reported on a few months ago, received a federal grant awarded through the state for $669,000 “to promote fatherhood last year.”

If Colorado employed priority-based budgeting, COST wonders where Governor Ritter’s taxpayer-funded photo shoots would fall on the list of priorities.  Before or after all the money he spends on his own lobbyists?

In her recently published opinion editorial, COST intern Elizabeth Matecki suggests that transparency should extend to taxpayer-funded non-profits such as Community Centered Boards (CCBs), which are state-established service providers for the developmentally disabled.

Elizabeth discovered that some CCBs hide behind their 501c3 status, refuse to answer questions about how they spend taxpayer dollars, and claim they can’t provide necessary services due to lack of funding while paying an executive director nearly $370,000 in salary and benefits each year.   This leaves some parents of Colorado’s developmentally disabled to wonder if some are getting fat paychecks at the expense of their children.

Check out Independent Ideas: “Community Centered Boards need fiscal transparency.”

The Greeley Tribune, in its Sunday house editorial, acknowledges the role that transparency played in the recent defeat of 3A, a massive property tax increase for Greeley Evans School District 6.

A lack of transparency in its financial records was one of the reasons some cited for voting against the recent mill levy override. It became evident during that election that there is a significant mistrust between the district and some of its residents over how the district is spending its money, and if it is making the best use of the funds it now has available.

The editorial also recognizes that taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent.

We believe there is merit to the idea of government doing all it can to disclose as much information as possible about its operations and finances. As taxpayers, we have a right to know how governmental entities are spending our money and the decisions that affect the services we receive.

The newspaper’s previous anti-transparency position has puzzled COST.  We’ve never encountered a news organization that didn’t want more information from government. COST welcomes the Tribune’s enlightened opinion. 

But what COST really appreciates is the editorial’s first line: “Transparency has become the political battle cry of the year.” We, along with many others, have worked hard to make it so.

Taxpayers in Greeley will be happy to know that the city has placed online a wealth of information. On the city’s new transparency page visitors will find everything from the employee pay schedule to financial reports including the check registry.   The city even included a link with information on where to direct an open records request.

COST thanks the city of Greeley for respecting taxpayers.  Greeley Evans School District 6?