Colorado State Treasurer Walker Stapleton, a rare voice of reason on Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) Board of Trustees, told News Talk 1310 KFKA talk show host Amy Oliver in a recent interview that when the Board voted to maintain an unrealistic 8 percent rate of return one Board member provided the following reason, ”We [...]

Believe it or not, there are bills that both respect taxpayers and enjoy enormous bi-partisan support. HB 11-1002 is a great example from the 2011 legislative session. State Rep BJ Nikkel worked with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and drafted legislation to “develop and maintain a publicly accessible, searchable, online database of its revenue [...]

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 [...]

Rep. B.J. Nikkel (R-HD 49) earned another win for transparency when HB 1002, a bill that COST profiled two weeks ago, received unanimous bipartisan support in clearing the House Transportation Committee on Wednesday on an impressive 12-0 vote.
A recap of what the transparency bill requires of the Colorado Department of Transportation:
This bill requires the Colorado [...]

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 [...]