By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
A CORA request came back recently (part of digging into a reader question) that illustrates the importance of paying attention to what your legislature is doing — in particular, paying attention to those seemingly-unimportant, unsexy bills.
The reader had asked how much money Denver has spent on homelessness. I’m not even going to pretend that I can find or relate a full accounting to you. Not only are there different streams of money, how you do the counting matters.
I’ve seen headlines that put the number at $155 million spent by Denver. Okay. Personal experience, making repeated requests to Denver officials for information on the topic have gone unanswered. Let’s go with that number, though I wonder whether the lack of responsiveness is more a function of me being small fry or Denver’s reticence to give a number (thus casting some doubt on the $155 mil figure).
In addition to asking Denver, I sent out some CORA feelers and one netted something interesting. A CORA request to the State of Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) returned three different disbursements from the state to Denver in the calendar year 2024. They are linked first through third below.
In total they represent $24,516,351 and change in state money which went to Denver.
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
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