Just a few days ago the Denver Post published a great investigative piece on the large amount of wasteful spending our largest three school districts (Denver, Douglas, Jefferson) indulge in year after year. Normally we would shrug at school districts spending thousands of dollars on flip-flops and Starbucks, but these days are anything but normal. With each school district facing budgets cuts in the tens of millions per year, it’s becoming more difficult to justify those taxpayer paid trips to Vegas and that $90,000 tab from Udi’s Food. (What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas when you’re spending other people’s money….)

But if you’ve been following the Independence Institute at all in the last couple years, this is old news to you.

Friend of the Institute Natalie Menten has been dredging up credit card receipts and the embarrassing spending habits from school districts and other local governments for the past few years. If transparency is your thing, Natalie’s website will put you in a coma with its information. Colorado Transparency Project Director Amy Oliver’s blog called Colorado Spending Transparency (COST) will also whet your transparency appetite. Those two women have been at the forefront of spending transparency and the folks at the Denver Post owe a lot for their hard work. (You’ll notice Natalie is quoted often in their article).

Just today, the Denver Post wrote an editorial touting school district transparency and using new web technology to get the information out to taxpayers. I am happy they are serious about this issue, as having the influence of the Denver Post now strongly in the corner of taxpayers is a great boon. I hope they continue urging sunlight on how schools and local districts spend our money. Because let’s not forget, the money they are spending is OUR money. It’s ethically and morally required that we see how it is being spent.

If you can’t get enough of the transparency issue, look no further than your favorite free market think tank. Recently, education policy analyst Ben DeGrow went on a transparency rampage as evidenced by his Issue Backgrounder, “What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like?,” his appearance on my show Independent Thinking – “Can the State be as Transparent as Jeffco?,” and this iVoices.org podcast with Lorie Gillis on Jeffco schools’ transparency leadership. In case you hadn’t seen, Jeffco is the shining example of what transparency looks like. Just take a look at this.

I guess what I’m saying is… if you don’t believe transparency is as sexy an issue as say health care or education, you’re wrong. And here’s why.

Colorado’s largest school district has become a national leader in transparency by posting detailed spending online for citizens to search. Will the state of Colorado and other government agencies follow the example of Jeffco Public Schools? On this week’s Independent Thinking, Jeffco’s chief financial officer Lorie Gillis and Independence Institute policy analyst Ben DeGrow join me to explore the growing trend of governments opening up their checkbooks. Tune in tonight at 8:30 PM on KBDI Channel 12, re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM.

I was looking at the Examiner’s list of new bills introduced on the first day of this year’s legislative session, and a couple of them are goofy, some are not so great, and some are good ideas. One of the good ones in my humble opinion is House Bill 1087 which would eliminate the mandatory withholding of state income taxes. Strangely enough, our Transparency Czarina Amy Oliver discussed this very bill with Mike Krause on iVoices.org.

Aside from the obvious arguments relating to every working citizen in Colorado giving an interest free loan to the government, whether they like it or not, due to mandatory withholding, there is another argument to be made about leaving withholding up to the employee: IMAGINE WRITING THAT CHECK! I wonder how much outrage and hostility your average voter would have if they had to write a check to the government each year. Would that sort of income tax transparency be enough to cause an overall shift in demand for lower taxes and less spending?

Want to learn more about the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) and how you can use it to obtain information bureaucrats don’t want you to see?

TOMORROW at 2pm, we will be holding a FREE how-to CORA session here at our office in Golden! That’s right, you heard correctly. A FREE class on open records requests taught by none other than the CORA master himself, Todd Shepherd.

As Todd explains,

A lot of times, the media can make ‘open record requesting’ sound incredibly hard. The opposite in fact is true. Within 60-90 minutes, I can teach you just about everything you need to know about Colorado’s Open Records law, and how to use it effectively.

Please contact Mary MacFarlane if you are interested in taking the class. Either call 303.279.6536 or shoot Mary an email.

Space is limited so please call today!

With the crumbling print media, radio, and television industries, more and more folks are getting their news from Al Gore’s greatest invention since global warming. I for one spend more time on the Internet than I do watching TV, listening to talk radio, or reading much of anything — and it’s not just because the porn is free. Bloggers, citizen journalists or whatever you’d like to call them are doing more than picking up the slack for old media — they are leading the way. Take for example the People’s Press Collective. You could get most of your statewide political news just from that one website. Add in the Rocky Mountain Right, Todd Shepherd (Investigates and Complete Colorado), and a couple choice sports blogs and shizzam! All your news in a matter of minutes.

Case in point, our investigative reporter Todd Shepherd has uncovered some very significant stories in the last year. If you’d ask him how he does it, he’d likely respond with just one word: CORA. The Colorado Open Records Act is the statute that allows ordinary citizens like you and I to make open records requests. Trouble is, most folks who are interested in researching, writing, and doing their own investigations are not familiar with process, and often find it intimidating.

But don’t worry, we at the Independence Institute have got you covered! On Wednesday, December 9th at 2pm, we will be holding a FREE how-to CORA session here at our office in Golden! That’s right, you heard correctly. A FREE class on open records requests taught by none other than the CORA master himself, Todd Shepherd.

As Todd explains,

A lot of times, the media can make ‘open record requesting’ sound incredibly hard. The opposite in fact is true. Within 60-90 minutes, I can teach you just about everything you need to know about Colorado’s Open Records law, and how to use it effectively.

Please contact Mary MacFarlane if you are interested in taking the class. Either call 303.279.6536 or shoot Mary an email.

Spots will fill up fast (much like the lines for “free” health care), so call now!

I can’t help but be impressed with every post I’ve read on the Colorado Spending Transparency (COST) blog run by our transparency Czar (just kidding), I mean Transparency Director Amy Oliver.  Following our investigative reporter Todd Shepherd’s report, Amy’s thoughts on Bill Ritter’s lack of disclosure transparency were right on the money.  She has also been taking the Greeley-Evans school district property tax hike (3A) to task – both on the COST blog and on her own personal blog. After BJ Nikkel successfully passed transparency legislation forcing the state to create and maintain a website that showed state spending in an easy, search-able format, they unfortunately came out with this poor excuse of a transparency website. Amy has written several times on the inadequacies of the TOPS site in providing spending reports, but this most recent assessment shows just how poor TOPS is.  Evidently, transparency still means general rather than specific, while conveniently leaving out any and all semblance of context.  No, I’m afraid that… “we spent $100″ does not constitute transparency in spending.

Also, don’t forget tonight’s episode of Independent Thinking, hosted by none of than the Mistress of Transparency herself – Amy Oliver.

(Amy, you’re choice is either Mistress or Czar.  “Director” is just too boring).

Why can’t the state be more transparent like Jefferson County?  While Colorado’s largest county actively pursues detailed financial transparency with its new website Transparent Jeffco, Governor Ritter and the state controller violate the spirit of the Colorado Taxpayer Transparency Act by providing taxpayers with confusing, aggregated numbers with no context. To discuss the two dramatically different transparency websites, State Representative BJ Nikkel and Jefferson County Commissioner Kevin McCasky join host Amy Oliver Cooke on Independent Thinking. Tune in tonight at 8:30 p.m. to KBDI Channel 12.  Repeated Monday at 1:30 p.m.

Subtitle: Or How He Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Disclosure

Last Friday, our investigative reporter Todd Shepherd broke this story about Governor Ritter and his cabinet largely ignoring a 1999 ethics executive order for nearly 3 years.  Todd and I also recorded a podcast for iVoices.org on the matter.  I’ll let Todd’s report give you the low down on what Ritter failed to do:

Governor Ritter’s office has only one “conflict of interest” report on file for the fifteen members of his cabinet, despite an executive order that requires each and every member of his cabinet to file such a (financial) disclosure.

Thus, we have former prosecutor Bill Ritter ignoring a law, an ethics law, for almost 3 years.  Why is it that this administration must be dragged kicking and screaming into transparency?

He had a few options he could have taken when faced with former Governor Bill Owen’s executive order:
1. Follow it.
2. Rescind it.
3. Ignore it and hope it goes away.

Unfortunately for Ritter, option 3 did not work out. He was caught dead to rights and was forced to publically dig himself out of a ditch – which he tried to do on 850KOA’s Mike Rosen show. Here is the audio of Ritter on Rosen explaining what went wrong and what he plans to do to fix it. I’ll give you a minute to listen to the clip….

Did you hear that?! Ritter THANKED me and the Independence Institute! (You’re welcome, sincerely Guv, thanks for stepping up and taking responsibility for this one).

Ritter’s plan to correct this ethics misstep is to rescind Bill Owen’s executive order and issue a new one, which he’s done as of this morning, as reported by the Denver Post. And by new I mean virtually identical to the old one (minus the gifts part which is now covered by Amendment 41).

The Westword covered the story with an emphasis on the Governor’s office ignoring all of our requests for facts and comment. Didn’t Evan Dreyer realize we could tell he was reading our emails and ignoring them?

***Our 5 year old education blogger, little Eddie, made quite a splash with his thoughts on Obama’s speech to school children. It evidently struck a chord with one of the writer’s from the Westword, who penned this response. What sort of man picks a fight with a 5 year old??

***The good Guv Ritter gets called out by the National Taxpayers Union’s Joshua Culling for signing off on transparency, but not actually following through on it. As Colorado taxpayers, we were supposed to be able to pour through the state budget, line by line, thanks to the passing of HB 1288. Unfortunately, Ritter gave us the less than impressive TOPS (Transparency Online Portal) website. Line by line? Nope. Specifics? Nope. It’s a bunch of aggregate numbers, just as Joshua Culling points out in this NTU blog post. And Joshua should know, he testified on behalf of HB 1288 last year.

***Speaking of transparency, don’t forget the financial trouble PERA is still in. Amy Oliver touts senior fellow Barry Poulson’s PERA transparency paper in this PERA Colorado post.

***Our Patient Power Now health care blogger Brian Schwartz caught the attention of the good folks at Pajamas Media with this great op-ed, Health Care is Not a Privilege…. Nor a Right.

***Justice Policy Center director Mike Krause made his way into this AntiWar.com piece on the overuse of the military, most often to make up for budget shortfalls.

***39 Fallacies About Health Care, by Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. Richard’s 39 Fallacies article goes very well with our Brian Schwartz’s Real Health Reform persuasive piece, where he tears down a slew of Obama Care arguments.

Ritter (reluctantly) signed House Bill 1288, setting us on the path to full state spending transparency. (Or as little transparency as they can get away with). I’d like to thank State Rep. BJ Nikkel for bringing this legislation forward, and our Director of Colorado Spending Transparency (COST), Amy Oliver, for helping to push it through. And let’s not forget the ordinary citizens who took time off from their lives and jobs to show support for such a revolutionary concept: Allowing taxpayers to actually see how and where their money is being spent!