By Chuck O’Reilly | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Meet Colorado’s special districts. Your wallet knows them better than you. Your tax dollars feed special districts most can’t even name. They siphon cash quietly until they are exposed.
Wherever you live in Colorado, you will be in some type of special district for water, fire protection, sanitation, open spaces, metro districts and schools.
Many Colorado voters are uninformed or unaware of how the various special districts, in which they reside, function. They don’t grasp their rights related to those districts or how the property taxes they pay get regulated, assessed or used by those districts.
New property owners are not informed about assessments or the board member election process for their districts. For most, special districts are a black hole until the property tax statement arrives.
Voter turnout and board participation in special districts is very low, compared to other state or county elections. In an effort to change that, I asked a fire district to add certain forms to their website for increased transparency.
I received the following one sentence reply: “Posting of the self-nomination form and application for an absentee ballot is not required to be posted.”
In other words, if it is not required, they don’t have to do it. They may or may not do it, who knows? Apparently, the residents, voters and taxpayers of the respective special district are not the primary concern.
Transparency and informed special district voter or board participation are apparently not the desired goals. Special districts and their boards often don’t communicate with the district’s voters. When is the last time you heard from your special district?
Remember, these groups are running on our taxpayer dollars.
No law requires special districts to publicly post self-nomination forms for people wanting to serve on a board.
For people often gone from home, special districts don’t offer a process for obtaining absentee ballots for elections. To receive them, residents have to request them via email.
If there’s a special district election, the laws are weak when it comes to notifying residents. A special district only has to post a tiny notice about the election in a public paper that 99% of voters will never see. These low-threshold requirements for transparency and communication with voters result in apathy.
The outcome? Hardly any voters show up, and boards run by a tight clique dodge openness.
This creates our reality where special district residents — the taxpayers who fund special projects — find out about decisions after they’re made. We lose the right to be proactively informed and the opportunity to impact decisions that affect us.
Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs requires government entities to make key information accessible to the public. When information is not posted to their websites, residents must request the information.
There are approximately 3,661 special districts across the state. Combined, they collect more than $3 billion in taxpayer dollars from Coloradans annually.
Special districts should provide accurate, up-to-date information and forms on their websites. Ensuring financial reports and other key documents are easy to access helps build public trust and accountability by showing how these districts operate and what they accomplish.
Voters and decision-makers rely on clear, accurate information to determine if special district programs are working as intended.
Clear communication helps keep voters informed. The website ought to spotlight a place where folks can sign up for a monthly newsletter, packed with board meeting minutes, recent happenings and upcoming meetings.
It should also feature a rundown of board members, including when their terms expire, plus the current budget and quarterly financials — think balance sheet, profit and loss and cash flow statements — to keep everything open and clear.
Election information should be easy to find. The self-nomination form and absentee ballot application (with a permanent status option) should be posted online.
A call for nominations should go up in early January and be included in the newsletter, along with the deadline. The website and newsletter should include a list of candidates on the ballot, and if an election is canceled, due to no opposition, that notice should be added.
Keeping this information current helps build trust, maintains transparency and encourages public involvement.
Basically, all of this is common sense and good ol’ American grassroots democracy, which is still very much in style in our Republic. Plus, transparency is the path to trust.
Taxpayers benefit when they understand and participate in their government. I think special districts can and should do better.
Chuck O’Reilly is a member of the Non-Partisan Elections Committee, working to promote fair and impartial electoral processes. He can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.