Colorado Spending Transparency

Senate Bill 57 had a healthy, full-throated debate on the floor of the state senate today. The senate education committee’s attempt to gut the bill and turn it into a resolution was overturned.

Other amendments on the floor have changed the legislation as follows:

• Implementation must be by 2011 rather than 2010
• Archived data storage requirement cut back from 10 years to 5 years
• Data must be updated online monthly, as opposed to daily
• School districts and charter schools that don’t have a website in place by January 1, 2009, are exempted until they create a website

The amendment to show Colorado taxpayers the coded accounts rather than the line-item spending - which would roll back transparency - was defeated.

Senate Bill 57 and Colorado school transparency move forward! A follow-up report with key quotes from the debate forthcoming later….

While we are working hard to educate Colorado about the need for state and local governments to post their spending online where taxpayers can see it, some governments still are in need of even more basic transparency.

The number of special districts in Colorado has grown rapidly in recent years: there are now more than 1,300 of these metro districts, water districts, fire districts, park districts, hospital districts, and on and on…. Colorado prides itself on local control, but these local government bodies collect and spend lots of taxpayer money with very little accountability.

Don’t take my word for it. The State Auditor filed a huge report (PDF) highlighting the serious lack of oversight in these districts.

Kudos therefore is in order to Senator Morgan Carroll for sponsoring SB 09-87 (PDF) to begin addressing the problem. The legislation ensures very basic transparency from these special districts, things like:

• Creating a basic website so citizens know how to contact and petition their tax-funded government offices
• Disclosing to homeowners when they buy a home which special districts they live in and pay taxes to
• Sending out annual notices of when and where meetings and elections are held

Sometimes transparency includes getting governments up to speed on very basic obligations to the people who pay their bills. Public accountability took a step forward yesterday as a senate committee unanimously approved SB 09-87.

A small dose of refreshing common sense coming from the State Capitol, bringing government activities further into the light of day. Brilliant!

Update, 2/20: COST apologizes for an inadvertent misstatement concerning the amount reported spent by the Falcon 49 superintendent. The wires were crossed, as the 2 million dollars was in reference to something else. In fact, the amount in question is undetermined at this time. We apologize for the error, regret any confusion it caused, and are glad to set the record straight immediately.

Update: We just spoke with Falcon 49 school board president Anna Bartha. She said the previous superintendent spent nearly 2 million dollars without Board members seeing the details before they could catch up with him. “Transparency is absolutely essential,” Bartha said. “We’ve seen it played out where the consequences were enormous for students and other stakeholders in our district. We can’t afford not to have transparency.” Well said.

A tip of the hat to Falcon 49 in El Paso County for becoming at least the third school district in Colorado - and very likely the first school district along the Front Range - to start posting its check register online.

The Board deserves credit for taking this basic step of financial transparency. It might have come in handy while the now ex-superintendent was hosting staff retreats across town at the Broadmoor 5-star luxury resort.

As pointed out in Ben DeGrow’s recent paper Shining the Light on Colorado School Spending, Durango and Rangely, both in western Colorado, are the other two school districts to have posted their check registers online.

The competition is on to see which Colorado school district will be the first to post its expenditures in a easy-to-use, searchable format.