Transparency needs your help this Tuesday, Feb. 3rd.
The Colorado State Senate will debate the
Public School Financial Transparency Act that intends to require that each public school district in Colorado post their actual spending (checkbook+ c/c) and revenues in a searchable database on the internet.
Last Wednesday, many citizens testified in favor of this bill before the Senate Education Committee, far outweighing the only opposition of three paid individuals.
Thursday, the committee voted to pass this bill to the entire Senate but in a weakened form that now only
suggests schools follow this legislation. One Senator felt school districts may find it "cruel" to have to show the spending.
We need to help our pro-transparency Senators fight to amend this bill back to meaningful legislation.
Help by showing up at the state capitol on Tuesday, Feb. 3rd. The Senate will convene at 9 or 10 AM, firm time will be posted Monday, read below.
Go to the Senate gallery on the 2nd floor.
Senator Ted Harvey, prime sponsor of Senate Bill 09-057 and co-sponsor Senator Mike Kopp, will lead the charge to amend the bill back to the original intent. Senator Harvey will ask the Senate to recognize us in the Gallery and ask that we stand in support.
Your attendance is important, essentially you'll represent a hundred or thousand people who can't take time off work to be there or live too far from the capitol.
One of the three paid opponents of public school transparency testified last Wednesday that people don't care about seeing what a school spends. The reality is that the public currently only gets to see budgets and budgets tell you little.
When you evaluate your household spending, would you only look at budget category "supplies" or do you look at what you actually spent money on? Do you think it's important to know if a school spends $500 on "staff team building" at a bowling alley? What if that expense in the school budget is categorized as "other professional expenses" or "promotional"? Maybe you're ok with that but it makes me wonder.
To see a school districts' spending, a person has to request this information and in many cases pay a lot of money for the public records, not only for copies but some school districts charge research fees just to let you see the information. Spending and revenue transparency provides real accountability to the public.
A bonus is that we can save money because merchants can try to competitively bid for the billions of dollars we invest Colorado's public schools.
Read more about spending transparency for all Colorado governments:
www.transparency.i2i.org
www.nataliementen.com
This website includes a searchable database for Jefferson County Public Schools credit card spending illustrating how inexpensively it can be done. The public records cost $75, the website costs $5 a month. The database itself took 20 hours to create, upkeep after setup is minimal. You can search by vendors, spenders, amounts, keywords and it automatically totals your search. You'll also find the City of Lakewood's credit card spending.
To read about our adventures this last Wednesday in the Senate Educ. Committee, see the pre and post amended bill, the committee voting record:
Public School Financial Transparency Act(click it)
The Senate will convene at either 9 or 10 AM for Tuesday, they won't post the official time until Monday, once I know I'll post it on my website calendar. Senate Bill 09-057 is third on the list of bills to be debated that morning. To receive a condensed list of the Senator's email addresses and phone numbers, send me an email nmlakewood@gmail.com