Tag Archives: Senate Bill 57

Mostly dead wasn’t good enough for some Colorado lawmakers when it comes to school spending transparency I’m young, and still learning about many different things. Like I’ve learned a lot about the word “transparency” this year – especially as it relates to taxpayer-funded schools making it easy for citizens to see how they spend their money. But I guess I’m still pretty naive, too. It’s hard to believe the lengths the chairman of Colorado’s House Education Committee was willing to go to make sure that Senate Bill 57 was not only mostly dead but double-super-killed, all-the-way dead. You have to read what the investigators at Face The State found out to believe it: Also known as Senate Bill 57, the bill was postponed indefinitely after four hours of committee debate that lasted late into the evening. Speaker Terrance Carroll and House Minority Leader Mike May arrived to work the next morning ready to revive it. But they were too late. When legislation is postponed indefinitely it is technically not dead until the committee report is officially filed with the House clerk. This process usually takes about a day, or at least 24 hours. If the bill is intercepted before it […]

Nancy Mitchell of the Rocky Mountain News has reported that Denver Public Schools (DPS) plans to cut the budget by 2 percent. To its credit, DPS already has made some moves toward financial transparency, but not to the degree that Senate Bill 57 (PDF) would have DPS and every other Colorado school district and charter school do. At least the original version of SB 57. I told you last week how many citizens came to testify in favor of school districts adopting the relatively simple and cost-effective approach of posting expenditures online in a user-friendly, searchable format. But a majority of legislators on the Senate Education Committee hijacked the bill and made it merely a suggestion – a worthless way of pretending to support transparency. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, February 3) SB 57 will be debated before the entire state senate, and we’ll get to see whether our legislators support real transparency or the phony-baloney kind. Over at YourHub, Lakewood citizen and transparency supporter Natalie Menten says the debate provides an opportunity to send a strong message to state lawmakers:

It’s going to be a tough fiscal year for education officials used to managing ever-expanding tax-funded budgets. 2009 just might be a year in which policy makers and administrators find ways to cut out the fat and focus the lean spending on classroom success. One way to help is to empower everyday citizens – like my mom and dad, and thousands of other Colorado taxpayers – with detailed financial information online so they can help find cost savings. What am I talking about? It’s called online financial transparency. Can you imagine if school districts and other local education agencies all had searchable databases on their websites that allowed you to see exactly how money is being spent? What once was a distant dream is fast approaching reality. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow explains it all in his new backgrounder Shining the Light on Colorado School Spending. Transparency promote greater public accountability and confidence that local schools are being run efficiently and effectively. In many cases it also pays for itself. Today’s technology means it requires little time and cost to put up these databases. Hopefully, some Colorado school district will take the lead and do this on its […]