“If you can’t defend it, don’t spend it,” is the rallying cry of allies Sen. Ted Harvey didn’t know he had.
He’ll try today to rectify a bill asking school districts to post their checkbooks online and expects more than 100 supporters to look on from the Senate gallery.
Last week, the Education Committee — citing financial burdens on local school districts — changed the bill to encourage rather than require reporting.
Harvey said he walked into the meeting expecting the bill to die until about two dozen unplanned witnesses took to the mike. Since then, support for Senate Bill 57 has only grown.
“It’s really taken on a life of its own,” said Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch.
Current law opens school-spending records to the public, but attaining them can be costly, depending on volume and local policy.
Getting all of Colorado’s school districts to publish their spending and funding sources online would cost about $3.5 million combined, legislative staff estimates.
Education Committee members tried to pare that down last week by requiring monthly instead of daily reporting and by exempting about 30 rural districts and charter schools that don’t have Internet access.
But spending any amount of money on what is not a school’s core mission is too much, said Sen. Bob Bacon. He carried the amendment to make reporting optional.
“In these times in which we are cutting K-12 education by $100 million, I’m not about to vote for anything that adds cost,” said Bacon, D-Fort Collins.
About 400 districts across the country — including two smaller districts in Colorado — have adopted similar policies, according to a paper by the free-market think tank the Independence Institute. And Gov. Bill Ritter has promised to implement the public record-keeping for state government.
Harvey points to the ways online bookkeeping could help save money. He said vendors can see what’s already being spent and offer better deals, and officials might think twice about writing some checks.
“What breeds mistrust in government is . . . telling taxpayers that if they want more information, they can do an open-records request,” Harvey said.
