Article Contributed on: 12/29/2008 3:20:57 PM
While Colorado finds itself in budget crisis, activist and spending hawk
Natalie Menten has her own idea for a solution.
Menten, who last year led the charge in Lakewood to repeal the city's sales tax on groceries, has been documenting local government spending on her Web site,
nataliementen.com. She's learned two major lessons from the effort - first, that some of government's most questionable expenditures are on little things that quickly add up, and second, that obtaining government records can be extraordinarily difficult. It's with that in mind that she's pushing for city and state governments to adopt extensive transparency efforts to itemize even the smallest expenditures.
Menten makes a point not to call out any particular spending as frivolous. "Some people may be shocked to know Jefferson County Schools spent over $10,000 at Starbucks over just twenty months," she says on her site, "while another person thinks that's not outrageous."
She leaves no ambiguity, though, about the difficulty of getting government records, and getting them complete. She leafs through a stack of records, pointing out information improperly redacted before being turned over. And then there's the price.
"I question whether it should cost that much," Menten said, "particularly with things that statute doesn't mandate, like research fees, the cost of copying a CD." These fees generally cover the time a government employee spends finding and copying records and amounts to paying their hourly wage. Menten estimates that in the several months her project has been underway, she has spent $500 raised by her and a handful of volunteers.
The next step in her fight for transparency will take place at the state capitol building Jan. 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., where she hopes others will come to make a strong public showing during a legislative briefing on open government and transparency.
She's betting on state representative
Don Marostica, (R-Loveland) and potentially a few others to push a bill that would itemize and make records of state government spending available. She cites Texas as an example, where she says a system that cost $300,000 has already recovered $9 million in savings. Menten is optimistic about the chances of adopting a similar system here.
"We need to get it through committee. Once it gets to the floor, they're going to be scared to go against it," she said.