Ritter working to kill transparency bill
As the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” Or in the case of Governor Ritter’s transparency executive order, “the devil is no detail.”
According to a Denver Post article, this new era of transparency includes “descriptions of revenues and expenditures” and “aggregated state credit-card expenditures instead of line-by-line statements.”
A friend of COST described Ritter’s executive order as a husband telling his wife, “honey I’ll be faithful, I just can’t tell you what I’m doing.”
The timing of the Executive Order is somewhat suspect as well. According to State Representative BJ Nikkel, sponsor of the Colorado Taxpayer Transparency Act, Governor Ritter is trying to kill her bill because HB 1288 provides much more detailed information that taxpayers want and the Governor and State Controller David McDermott do not.
The bill was supposed to be heard in the House Appropriations Committee today (Friday, April 3). If it passed, that would have been a major hurdle and much harder kill later. Make no mistake, this bill was supposed to be dead by now. As COST reported earlier, the hearing has been delayed.
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