Democrats on Thursday night pledged their allegiance to transparency, but said they could not support a bill to put the checkbooks of local school districts on the Web, calling it an unfunded mandate schools can ill afford.
Senate Bill 57 died on an 8-5 party line vote in the House Education Committee.
Rep. Judy Solano, D-Brighton, said districts should decide for themselves whether to post check amounts, recipients, purposes and other details online.
“These concerns are in front of the wrong group of people,” Solano said. “If you’re upset … then go to your locally elected school boards.”
The vote didn’t surprise bill co-sponsor Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument, who called her Democratic colleagues “masters of obfuscation.”
Stephens and a loosely organized group of taxpayers had argued the bill would promote accountability and save school districts money.
Many school administrators said it would cost too much.
Anna Bartha, president of the Falcon School District Board of Education, disagreed, saying that posting the information online has saved her district time and money.
“That really alleviated a significant amount of (records) requests,” Bartha said.And in other committee news, video footage of school children slammed against the sides of a bus during a rollover accident couldn’t save a bill to require seatbelts on buses.
Neither could the testimony of Longmont resident Rose Swenby, mother of the most recent child killed in a school bus accident in Colorado.
Citing budget constraints and inconclusive safety research, committee members didn’t just kill the legislation; they annihilated it on a unanimous vote.
Senate Bill 26 would have cost local school districts as much as $87 million, and was killed in a way that prevents the sponsors from resurrecting it later.
Swenby said she didn’t care how much it cost.
“I’d pay it. I’d pay it to get him back,” she said.
Her 11-year-old son Kevin was thrown through the in a rollover bus accident in 1989.
But school bus drivers like Revetta Duran, begged lawmakers not to pass the bill, saying seatbelts could injure kids if not worn properly or trap students during a wreck.
“Children will die,” Duran said. “Please do not make me choose who I can save.”
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com.
