Article Contributed on: 2/22/2009 7:01:33 PM
Transparency is still alive!
We started February with
Colorado Senate Bill 57 which requires that all public school districts post their spending and revenues online.
Round one was the Senate Education Committee.
Twenty-five people testified in favor and attended in support of this bill, one even drove 3 hours to get to the Capitol. Only three paid opponents testified against SB57.
Ignoring the strong public testimony, the Senate Education Committee neutered the bill so it was only a suggestion to the schools. The Senate Education Committee split on this issue with some democrats leading the charge to weaken the bill.
It's upsetting when 25 of us go to the Capitol to testify and the 3 paid opponents win. So
transparency advocates began to make hundreds of calls and emails to Colorado Senators.
The Senate or House as a whole body votes twice on bills, this is called second and third reading.
The
second reading of the School Financial Transparency Act was very close about 20-15 but
we did get it amended back to a requirement, all of the republicans voted to pass it but only a minority of democrats were in favor.
Because second reading was such a close vote we stepped up the grassroot movement.
The Senate's
third reading ended with 26 republicans and democrats in favor and 8 democrats voting against the bill. State Senators Bob Bacon, Betty Boyd, Joyce Foster, Evie Hudak, Brandon Shaffer, Suzanne Williams, Linda Newell and Moe Keller voted against the bill.
Now the Public School Financial Transparency Act goes to the House and we expect another fight. We expect some state representatives will try to weaken the bill.
Transparency is a win-win. We need accountability. Especially with credit card or p-card purchasing.
At
www.nataliementen.com, I've posted some government spending records so people can review spending by a spender, vendor, dollar range or best of all by a keyword seach.
Even though it's easy to put spending records online, it's expensive to get the records.
I had to pay the school district a $75 research fee for the spreadsheet with credit card spending.
Transparent spending opens the door for competitive bidding.
An example in Jefferson County Schools - Go to my website, click on searchable databases, then Jefferson County Schools, then General Query Tool / Advanced Users. You'll see the search engine.
1. Set the date range from January - December 2007.
2. In the box marked description, type in the word
cell phone.
3. Click make search string
4. Click run search.
The search engine subtotals each month and also gives a complete total at the end.
Over $150,000 just for cell phones for Jan. - Dec. 2007 in one school district.
Transparency can save money on a thousand services or supplies with more competitive bidding.
Go to my website for contact information for the House Education Committee including an easy copy & paste of all the email addresses. It only takes 5 minutes to send a quick email to them.
We need your voice.
Transparency lets 1000's of eyes see what we don't see now.