The 15-member elected Regional Transportation District board would be cut to nine members, four of them appointed by the governor, if the Colorado legislature adopts recommendations of an RTD they created last year.
The restructuring is outlined in a sent Friday to state lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis. The committee of 14 members, six of them appointed by Polis, has been meeting for the past five months and comparing transit governance around the nation. Only two other major agencies, in the San Francisco area, are run by publicly elected boards. Colorado lawmakers, who have tried to overhaul RTD governance before, now must decide on possible changes.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction across RTD districts. This dissatisfaction leads directly to declining ridership,” said committee member Harold Dominguez.
“If you have a system where people feel like they’re gummed up and cannot rely on the time it takes to get to and from a location, or rely on not being stranded, people are not going to ride it. If there’s a better way to balance the system, with ridership being the key, then governance needs to be the first change that occurs.”
Nearly all committee members concluded that the size of RTD’s board should shrink “to improve collaboration,” said committee member James Flattum, co-founder of the advocacy group Greater Denver Transit, who was appointed by Polis. “There’s no doubt that RTD is in need of serious reform.”
Two committee members opposed the overhaul and issued dissenting reports.
“Itap the wrong thing to do,” said Miller Hudson, a retired public policy consultant. “The viability of democracy at the national level is in question. Does Colorado’s legislature really want to vote against democracy and dissolve this elected board?”
Hudson said shifting from an all-elected board to the proposed hybrid, with the appointees bringing specialized expertise in matters such as finance, “would be the first step toward destroying RTD” because it no longer would be as responsive to metro Denver residents across the eight counties where RTD runs buses. “Voters want to feel they have a say, and can touch the public transportation agency they fund with their taxes,” he said. “What this would do is substitute so-called experts for elected representatives.”
The majority’s recommendation specifies implementation as soon as possible but no later than 2028, according to the 90-page .
RTD director Matt Larsen, the only voting member of the committee on the RTD board, argued in his dissenting report for “prudent and incremental changes that address specific real weaknesses ….. rather than a radical reconfiguration that voters did not ask for and that increases the risk of disenfranchising large portions of RTD’s riders, potential riders, and taxpayers.”
Larsen said at least seven elected positions are needed for proper representation and that the overhaul creates risks for transit in the future. “If you have a governor who is not pro-transit, there’s a good chance the governor could get one elected person in addition to the four appointed people to really hurt the system,” he said. “It is too much power to give to the governor.”
State lawmakers in 2025 established the RTD Accountability Committee to explore transit governance, RTD efforts to retain bus and train drivers, and mobility for people with disabilities, and make recommendations to improve the agency.
“I wouldn’t say it’s radical,” said committee chair Maria Garcia Berry, who served as an RTD director on an appointed board before voters in 1980 decided on an elected board to make the agency more responsive. The transit agency’s current “lack of a unified vision for the region,” she said, “is startling.”
“What they need is more expertise. The only way to guarantee expertise is to do it through an appointed system and Senate confirmation. You cannot assume it will happen through the elected process.”
According to committee members, the other recommendations include:
- Adding two non-voting seats to RTD committees, representing the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents train and bus drivers
- Restructure legal support by making the RTD’s attorney report directly to the directors instead of the chief executive
- Direct RTD to conduct a comprehensive study on how people with disabilities move around metro Denver and their needs to help guide RTD’s Access-a-Ride and Access-on-Demand programs
- Look into the benefits of shifting ownership or responsibility for RTD rail transit systems to the state government
The committee members met a dozen times, starting in August, including three in-person meetings, said Kelly Blynn, a senior transportation and land use adviser in the Colorado Energy Office who administered the project. The recommendations “had to pass by majority votes on a very diverse committee,” Blynn said. Participants “coalesced around a feeling that ridership is a key challenge.”
At the state capitol Thursday afternoon, Sen. Matt Ball, vice chairman of the , said he will sponsor legislation for improving RTD but will first study the committee’s report and confer with current RTD board members and others.
“We’ll have to connect the dots between the outcomes we want to see and some of the recommendations in the report,” he said.
“Doing something to serve public transportation that makes it more available and accessible is very important. I hear from my constituents all the time about their dissatisfaction with public transit. I feel very strongly that we cannot be a great city unless we have great public transit.”
