Face The State Staff Opinion
Democrats are paying a lot of lip service to the issue of transparency at the Capitol this year, both in Colorado and Washington D.C., but they are failing to deliver on their rhetoric.
Just last week, the state Senate Education Committee gave a first nod to an amended bill that originally sought to require school districts to put their checkbooks online. In its altered version, such compliance would become optional. Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, offered the amendment that stripped the bill of any power by changing its language from requiring school spending transparency to “strongly encouraging” it.
In its original form, Senate Bill 57 would have required school districts, including charter schools, to create and maintain searchable copies of their spending on the Web. The bill sponsor, Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, objected to the amendment saying it gutted his bill. He’s right, and the Democrat-dominated committee still sent the amended bill to the Senate floor in its weakened state.
Meanwhile, Rep. Don Marostica, R-Loveland, has tirelessly advocated to put Colorado’s state checkbook online and in 2007, he proposed legislation that would have done just that. Democrats, meanwhile, promptly killed the bill in committee. Interestingly, just two years later, Gov. Bill Ritter is pledging greater transparency and has adopted the Republican’s idea. However, by allowing the checkbook to go online without legislation, Ritter effectively gets to dictate the terms and timeline by which it happens.
Even President Barack Obama is falling short on his pledges for transparency. Obama has promised that all non-emergency legislation will be open for public comment on Whitehouse.gov five days before he signed it. But when Obama signed his first bill last week, it was not posted on the White House Web site for comment until after it had been signed.
There are also looming questions about implementation of Colorado’s Amendment 54, which was narrowly approved by a majority of voters last November and was sold as a transparency measure. It specifically restricts the recipients of sole-source, also known as no-bid, government contracts of $100,000 or more, from contributing to political candidates. It also requires the creation of a searchable database listing the recipients of such contracts. To date, however, only five vendors have reported a combined 46 sole-source government contracts, including only two with state government.
Without enabling legislation to get the Amendment 54 ball rolling, the Department of Personnel and Administration is limited in its ability to enforce the reporting of these government contracts. The House State Affairs Committee is currently considering such legislation, and will vote on it early this week. Passing the enabling legislation for Amendment 54 would be a step in the right direction for Democrats who want to make good on their transparency promises.