An easily-missed, but important, detail in the renter's bill from the special session. And then they came for the cars.

Something easily missed in the bills passed during the special session:  using non profits to do the government's work.

The bill linked first below, HB23b - 1001, is one of the bills passed in the recent special session and signed into law by the governor.

It takes government money and (quoting the fiscal note): 

"...creates the Emergency Rent Assistance Grant Program in the Division of Housing in the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) to provide grants to tenants who meet certain income requirements and are at risk of eviction or displacement."

Now, you could argue whether it is reasonable to do this, but I want to focus on something else.  A small detail, likely to get missed in the discussion of whether or not we should be giving government money to people who are renting.  

Take a look at the attached screenshot and the parts I underlined in red.  This too comes from the fiscal note.  

It has become quite common for the Assembly to contract with non profits to help accomplish what it wants to do.*  That is, just like what you see in the screenshot, money goes from the treasury to the Department of Local Affairs which starts the ball rolling and then ultimately ends up in the hands of non profits that hand out the wads of cash and run the program.  These non profits contract with the state and are subject to being checked up on by same.

In my most recent memory, this form of public/non profit partnership has come up in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and in the case of Connect for Health Colorado.

And therein lies my concern.  

With regard to the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, I think it more of a question mark as to whether or not the money is being used inappropriately (my investigating led to no direct link between taxpayer dollars and money spent politically by any of the groups, although some of the groups were most assuredly political).

There is NO question as to whether or not Connect for Health Colorado took taxpayer money and gave it to political causes; this is well known and admitted to by the guy who runs Connect.**  See the second link below.  

I will repeat what I said about Connect earlier.  I do not think it at all appropriate to take taxpayer money, give it to a non profit, and then have that taxpayer money end up used in any way for political purposes.  I don't care if it's a cause I support or don't support.  

No one should be compelled by the government to give money to causes they don't support.  Knowing what we know now, this cannot be shrugged off as farfetched either.  If it has happened once, it can happen again.

Toward that end, I am moving on a few things.

1.  I am still trying to figure out whether or not Connect will face an audit.

2.  I will be following the contract procedure and seeing what kind of accountability is built into the system for the Rental Assistance bill.

3.  I intend to watch proposed bills for a public/non profit connection and will try to make a point of mentioning Connect and my concerns in those bills, regardless of context.

I will update as I know more or do something of note.  If this issue is a concern for you, #3 is pretty straightforward and can be done on your own, but I am happy to help you figure out ways to advocate on #1 and #2 if you'd like to join me.  


*And here, out of fairness, I need to be clear that I am not making any particular claim as to which party started this or has done it more.  I haven't done any thorough research on the practice, and I think until shown otherwise that it's only right to assume this is something both parties are equally guilty of.  

**I cannot say this enough times, so I will reiterate here.  I tried to contact both Connect for Colorado and Progress Now to see if there were any plans or attempts to return taxpayer money.  Despite his claim that the gentleman running Connect would be "accountable" for the decision, they didn't respond with any plans to return our money.  Progress Now did not either.




https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb23b-1001


https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorados-health-care-exchange-donating-left-leaning-political-interest-groups/

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And then they came for the cars.

We all knew it would eventually come around to this.  Apparently our state is not projected to meet the (arbitrary, capricious, strict, pointless) mandates on climate reductions and the problem is you.

Yes you.  Driving around in your car to your job, getting your kids.  

The picture comes pretty clear when you look at the graphs attached (from the link below).  They show where our law requires us to be (solid line) vs. where modeling shows we will be without some correction (dotted line).  

I hear you asking yourself, we've a problem and what are we to do about it?

Well, first, we can all get behind Gov Polis' policy regarding land use and zoning because, well, land use will impact cars?

To quote Will Toor (the head of the Colorado Energy Office) from the article below:

“'The single, most important thing that we can do now on the transportation front really involves moving forward on the governor's land use agenda to make it easier to provide housing in our cities,' Toor said."

Having done that, we can throw money at public transit including RTD and a rail line paralleling I-25.  That was also noted by Mr. Toor in the article.  

I hear you again, you're now saying, yes, but Cory, what if it's STILL not enough?  Won't someone DO something?

Never fear.

We can stop expanding roads that have lots of traffic so that we can force people into public transportation.  Hell (can't a guy dream?), maybe one day we could just not be driving ourselves at all!

Quoting State Representative Froelich (Dem) from the article who apparently has no sense of what fewer lanes mean for traffic density:

“'I wish we could stop our use of highways, but we're a long way away from that,' Froelich, the Democratic lawmaker, said. 'And until we have really viable alternatives, it doesn't serve us to have clogged roadways.'”

Missing from the article, but something we all know is hiding back there, waiting in the wings, is the specter of some sort of mandates on drivers.  

The Employer Traffic Reduction Program which died on the vine a few years back should show you roughly what the thin end of the wedge will look like here. 


On to our glorious future!

https://www.cpr.org/2023/11/16/colorado-could-miss-first-climate-goal/