Colorado Spending Transparency

“Why does Governor Ritter have to be dragged kicking and screaming into transparency?” asked our big boss Jon Caldara.

Investigative reporter Todd Shepherd exposed Ritter’s latest battle against transparency.  Shepherd discovered that Ritter and his administration have virtually ignored a Governor Bill Owens executive order requiring that “all cabinet members as well as senior staff members submit a conflicts of interest report before the end of January every year.”

According to Shepherd’s report, his CORA request netted only three pages of responsive reports all from Agriculture Secretary John Stulp.  In other words, the rest of the Governor’s cabinet and senior staff members ignored a standing executive order to disclose annually any and all conflicts of interest.

Evan Dreyer, the Governor’s spokesman, blamed taxpayers.  The Denver Post paraphrased Dreyer, “Ritter came into office as the voter-approved gift ban known as Amendment 41 took effect, and the additional ethics rules caused confusion in the new administration.”

This is more than just “confusion.” These disclosures are about good governance and transparency.  The state’s chief executive officer must air on the side of transparency, but as COST has documented the Governor is no friend to transparency. 

Ritter actively tried to kill State Rep BJ Nikkel’s Colorado Taxpayer Transparency Act, which sought to provide detailed expenditure and revenue information online in a searchable format.  When that failed, Ritter issued an incredibly “weak”  and “pointless” executive order to provide aggregated financial information.

A watered down version of Rep Nikkel’s bill did pass, but left the details up to the Governor and State Controller David McDermott.  Unfortunately for taxpayers, the state’s new transparency Web site TOP certainly violates the spirit of detailed financial transparency that so many Coloradans wanted. 

Even though Ritter is no fan of transparency, he must abide by an executive order because it has the force of law behind it. For the last three years, Ritter and his administration have been in violation of the law.  

How did Ritter respond to this ethical laspe?  First, he thanked Jon Caldara and the Independence Institute on the Mike Rosen Show; Then, as the Denver Post reported, Ritter rescinded the previous executive order and issued a new one — making it all better.

COST has another suggestion.  Ritter might want to have a sit down with his spokesman Evan Dryer.  The Westword was right.  Caldara and good governance do not like to be ignored.  Maybe then Ritter wouldn’t have be dragged kicking and screaming into transparency.