Colorado transparency headlines
From Sunshine Review
Featured article
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This article is a list of transparency related news from Colorado.
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| Report It • | The Good • | The Bad • | The Ugly | |
Accountability in Colorado after wasteful spending
Jones paid $940 to the state for 2.5 years of personal calls he made on his state cellphone. The media looked into and asked about his expenses and exposed the extraneous spending.
The payback was almost half of the total $2,227 billed to Jones' cellphone since he started the job. Later, reports about expensive meals and new office furniture were billed to Jones' expense account at a time of severe state budget cuts.
The Department of Education requires its employees to reimburse the state monthly for anything more than the occasional, short personal call.
"He knew about the policy, and he just hadn't done it," said department spokesman Mark Stevens. "It was an oversight."
Denver delays HUD grants
Since the award, an additional 4,000 Denver homes have been foreclosed. The city says it is working on contracts with nonprofit groups for the program's execution and hopes to start spending money on homes in October or in November. Notice of the grants first hit the Federal Register on October 6, 2008, but officials say Denver did not get a formal contract from the Housing and Urban Development department (HUD) until March 2008.
Aurora won $4.5 million from the first round of the same program and so far has spent $2.6 million buying and repairing 21 homes.
The $6 billion NSP was intended for the American communities hit hardest by the recession. Experts say there are similar problems in other cities are caused by a dense bureaucracy.
Info sought on severance tax issue
"A former state senator from Colorado's eastern plains has filed an open records request to see if the governor's office or any other state body has used taxpayer funds to formulate a controversial ballot measure.
Former Sen. Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, said he filed the request for correspondence between the Colorado Department of Higher Education and the governor's office to see if taxpayer funds were improperly used to push for a ballot measure to increase the severance tax."
District attorney's expenses questioned
"Fourth Judicial District Attorney John Newsome took in a college football game in South Bend, Ind., in October and left taxpayers with the bill for six months.
He did repay most of the extra expenses involved in staying two extra days on a trip to Chicago to accompany a detective to interview witnesses in a death-penalty case."
Open-records lawsuit against Aurora councilman dismissed
"A lawsuit against City Councilman Ryan Frazier that claimed he did not respond to an Aurora resident's open-records request has been thrown out of court.
Foster Hines was seeking documents concerning Frazier's campaign contributions."
Government is the people's business
"My first business cards hadn't even been printed when an editor sent me out to cover a county hospital board meeting. Something about the board hiring a corporate management team.
Snooze.
The chairman gaveled the meeting into session, made a few comments and I scribbled some notes. No news here, I huffed. Then he called for an executive session, cast me out into the hall and closed the doors to the boardroom.
And that's where I sat. For hours.
A doctor, who also had been kicked out of the meeting, finally broke the silence in the hallway,saying, "Don't you think you have a right to be in there, you know, if they're deciding the fate of a publicly held hospital?"
Well, if you put it like that."
Denver should provide more details of security spending
"Denver's "disclosure" of security-related equipment spending for the Democratic National Convention is hardly an act of "transparency," as the city claims. The one-page-plus-two-lines document resembles an entry in an essay contest requiring responses in 25 words or less, not a reasonable accounting of how the city will spend the public's money."
From the editorial advisory board: BVSD and open meetings
"Two Louisville residents have lodged a complaint with the Boulder Valley school board alleging members violated the state's open-meetings law by using e-mail to discuss public business in private."
Post sues to see Ritter records
"The Denver Post today sued Gov. Bill Ritter after the governor's refusal to turn over 19 months of cellphone records that would show some of who Ritter has called and been called by since taking office in 2007.
The newspaper claims it is entitled to a list of calls made and received by Ritter during the 19 months related to his work as governor." [ Read the full article here].
Petty cash payments and open records noncompliance raise questions
"Activities of the Hartsel Fire Protection District continue to raise eyebrows as new information becomes available about the district's authorization of payment of about $182,000 for Fire Chief Jay Hutcheson's personal legal fees; the district's use of a petty cash fund to make more than $1,000 in payments to Hartsel's Only Bar this past February and April and more than $4,000 to Hutcheson's Maverick Construction Co. for snowplowing; the failure of the district to comply with requests for information in a timely manner, or at all, under Colorado Open Records Law; and its billing one requestor more than $1,000 for legal bills related to her requests."
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