Senator Rollie Heath was the chair of the ”Unimaginative Failure” Commission (a.k.a. Long Term Fiscal Stability Commission) on which I sat in 2009. Heath constantly asked “what kind of Colorado do we want?” As if a chosen few have the right to force an answer for more than five million people, but that did not stop [...]
GEO needs a dose of sunshine!
For years the Governor’s Energy Office has operated in the shadows. As an “off budget” agency, it has spent millions of dollars with virtually no transparency or accountability. A newly-released paper titled “Governor’s Energy Office Needs a Dose of Sunshine” from intern Kyle Huwa examines three years worth of GEO expenditures, a time period where [...]
How much does the state spend on cell phones?
Want to know how much Colorado taxpayers pay for cell phones for state employees? That’s a good question that no one is able to answer. Welcome to the opaque world of Colorado spending transparency. The Associated Press sent a Colorado Open Records Act request (CORA) to 19 state agencies and couldn’t get anything more than [...]
Colorado taxpayers deserve more transparency
February 20th, 2011 by Amy
Categories: Public Utilities Commission, general, health care
No Responses
COST has long considered transparency in government a bi-partisan issue. We’ve profiled State Representative BJ Nikkel’s excellent CDOT transparency bill (HB 1002) that is cruising through the House.
Another bill that deserves praise is State Representative Mark Ferrandino’s (D-Denver) tax expenditure transparency bill (HB 1104), which focuses on selective tax relief that is used to advance [...]
Hick Gets a shot at Ritter's Mulligan on State Vehicle Use
Newly elected Governor John Hickenlooper has a chance to curtail government employee usage of state-owned vehicles for personal commuting and save the state as much as $3 million in the process – something his predecessor, Bill Ritter, took a pass on last June when he vetoed HB 1287, according to COST:
Can a governor get a [...]
Increasing Transparency for CDOT
January 13th, 2011 by michael
Categories: PERA Colorado, Public Utilities Commission, general, health care
3 Responses
A bill sponsored by Rep. B.J. Nikkel (R-HD 49) and Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp (R-SD 22) expands the previous access to governmental expenditures through an online database like Colorado’s Transparency Online Project (TOPS) that was signed into existence through an executive order by former Gov. Bill Ritter in 2009.
Nikkel pioneered the bipartisan Colorado Taxpayer [...]
The Pinnacol of Profligate Spending
January 10th, 2011 by michael
Categories: Public Utilities Commission, general, health care
One Response
A $318,000 lavish junket to Pebble Beach involving Pinnacol Assurance executives and board members in May 2010 inspired a lawsuit forcing the release of travel receipts, investigations by two local TV stations seeking to expose the profligate spending habits of the quasi-governmental agency, and now calls by Gov. Bill Ritter and other Democrats for the [...]
Earmark Defeat a Victory for Transparency
The takedown of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill is both unprecedented and the result of a concerted effort to focus on transparency that is now assisted by public furor against pork, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points out in “Transparency Killed the Earmarking Stars”:
How often do omnibus spending bills go down to defeat? [...]
Fort Collins blocks transparency
October 4th, 2010 by Amy
Categories: general, health care, higher education, local transparency
One Response
For a city that was on the cutting edge of transparency, today’s article about Fort Collins‘ lack of transparency in official communications among city council members came as a shock.
Greg Campbell of Face the State reports Fort Collins City Council is not using the email account set up so residents or other interested parties can [...]
