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.

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?