Rose Community Foundation's grants. Sanctuary State provisos in State Contracts. More money is needed to pay for "free" lunch, you got to vote on it.
Rose Community Foundation's grants
This is the third post on Rose Community Foundation., RCF. The previous two (Intro and Who is Rose Giving To? are linked below in that order).
In this post, I want to look into the recent grants our state has given to RCF. RCF gets a significant amount of state money, but let's limit ourselves to grants from fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
The third link below is a spreadsheet from a TOPS expense report run on RCF, but the grants I looked into are shown in screenshot 1 attached.
In total, the grants over these two fiscal years amount to about $9 million dollars. Many of these grants, as we'll see, went to RCF from the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) and the Colorado Department of Public Safety (CDPS -- specifically the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management). There is a Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) grant tossed in there too for good measure.
I ran CORA requests for the contracts behind the grants and wanted to share those results with you. There's a lot of material which I will summarize briefly below, but first let me orient you to what I received. Link 4 below is to the folder holding the grants from CDHS. Link 5 below is to the folder for CDPS's grants. Link 6 is for CDLE.
RCF gets lots of money from both the state and Federal governments. If you poke around in the grants and the contracts (and if you see something else noteworthy, speak up), you will see the phrase ARPA over and over. If you see ARPA, think American Rescue Plan Act. This was part of the money the Feds were spraying all around the nation during and immediately post COVID.
It is reasonable to agree and/or to disagree with the intent behind the grants I found. Some are support for resettling refugees (from Afghanistan, as well as the expected, though probably not materialized in as great a number, from other places like Ukraine). Some are for legal support for immigration proceedings for the migrants that were flooding into Colorado from the border.
It is also reasonable to agree and/or disagree with the rationale. Screenshot 2 is taken from two different spots in the contract named "Rose Community Foundation CDPS ARPA Grant".
Reading the language out of the contract spells out what happened here. The Colorado legislature authorized the use of Federal COVID rescue money to be spent for things like getting people into long-term housing. This took tangible form as RCF getting money to spend on helping those who came here across the border get legal representation for immigration hearings--a tenuous connection at best.
What concerns me most, what I see as a pattern in many of the state grants I looked at, is how RCF was given authority to pass through state and Federal dollars to sub grantees. They get to choose how to spend your money (with some guardrails), but they are not part of the government. They are not accountable. This is why I referred to them as basically a fourth branch of Colorado government in my introductory post.
Let's run through the process again for emphasis. Federal dollars were given to states to spend on emergencies, etc. related to COVID. The state legislature then says it can be given out as grants for the purposes outlined in statute. Part of that is allowing grantees the ability to hand out money as sub grants. RCF applies and gets the state money and then gives it out to what are essentially subcontractors.
And the wheel turns.
I ask this. By the time oversight and accountability have reached that subgrantee level, do you have any illusions about meaningful supervision happening? What controls are there to prevent any sort of waste, fraud, or abuse of taxpayer money by the time it passes this many hands?
Screenshot 3 attached illustrates. At the top is the purpose of the contract, clearly laying out the fact that RCF is to dole out the money given it by the state to the organizations that RCF finds worthy. Under that is a copy of one of their invoices. Sparse would be an apt phrase for the details therein.
It is an oversimplificaion to say that RCF hands papers like this in and checks get passed over the table, but digging in on the process doesn't inspire one with confidence. I am nearly certain that no one you elected at the Federal level, or at the state level, has any sort of clear idea exactly who got every dollar and what they did with it. One look at this invoice makes that clear--it spells out almost nothing.
To find what kind of compliance there was, you need to look a little further into the contract. To help in this, I refer you to the contract I singled out and linked to 7th below. Scroll to Exhibit D on page 78 of the pdf: RCF makes portals and helps people use portals and subgrantees post to portals, all under the "supervision" of the Colorado Refugee Services Program.
I'm not accusing any state employee of not doing their job, but think about this practically. In order to get just to this information took me multiple emails and requests, and I have barely scratched the surface for the ultimate destination and use of our money.** I question just how much they're able to keep track.
I have one last little nibble to share about RCF which I will take up in the last post on the topic. Stay tuned.
**Part of my CORA request was also for audits/reviews of the contracts, performance reviews. What you see in the shared folders is what I received. Either there were not audits or reviews or they were not shared.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/who-is-rose-community-foundation?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/who-is-rose-community-foundation-e5c?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ipPZwzaQNG3CRvpEAbyIYVKs0qW-i_JP/edit?gid=1749725236#gid=1749725236
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YNH5NKf4V-fV_MbEz3SNgQ3VK5iEYHK4?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fjwDpIlFhW05p18kIcRHL-l5iVmEj32C?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12hcnF4lAEbGj15Vo0NhFfb96aIQMt-Ok?usp=sharing
Sanctuary State provisos in State Contracts.
In many state contracts you will note a provision requiring the contractor to protect Personally Identifying Information, PII.
To wit, a quote from one of the contracts I reference in the post prior to this one.
"If Contractor or any of its Subcontractors will or may receive PII under this Contract,
Contractor shall provide for the security of such PII, in a manner and form acceptable to the State, including, without limitation, State non-disclosure requirements, use of appropriate technology, security practices, computer access security, data access security, data storage encryption, data transmission encryption, security inspections, and audits. Contractor shall be a “Third-Party Service Provider” as defined in §24-73-103(1)(i), C.R.S. and shall maintain security procedures and practices consistent with §§24-73-101 et seq., C.R.S. In Contract Number: KONA CT 2025-890 Page 12 of 24 Version 07.2024 addition, as set forth in § 24-74-102, et. seq., C.R.S., Contractor, including, but not limited to, Contractor’s employees, agents and Subcontractors, agrees not to share any PII with any third parties for the purpose of investigating for, participating in, cooperating with, or assisting with Federal immigration enforcement. If Contractor is given direct access to any State databases containing PII, Contractor shall execute, on behalf of itself and its employees, the certification attached hereto as Exhibit E on an annual basis Contractor’s duty and obligation to certify as set forth in Exhibit E shall continue as long as Contractor has direct access to any State databases containing PII. If Contractor uses any Subcontractors to perform services requiring direct access to State databases containing PII,
the Contractor shall require such Subcontractors to execute and deliver the certification to the State on an annual … "
That's a mouthful!
If you are like me, you'll pass right through that giant block of text and move on. If you do, you might miss something.
Putting some of the citations into Google got me to the link below.
What exactly does our state define as PII?
Well, the usual. Quoting (partially to save room) from the link:
“'Personal identifying information' means information that may be used, along or in conjunction with any other information, to identify a specific individual, including but not limited to a name; a date of birth; a place of birth; a social security number or tax identification number; a password or pass code; an official government-issued driver's license or identification card number; information contained in an employment authorization document; information contained in a permanent resident card; vehicle registration information; ..."
Continuing down the LENGTHY list in statute you find, near the bottom, "immigration or citizenship status" is also on the list.
This proviso in state law and in state contracts is yet another reflection of just how hard Colorado works to be at cross purposes with immigration enforcement.
If the media struggle (disingenuously?) to define "sanctuary state" or "sanctuary city", if they keep reminding us all in articles that there's no legal definition, all they need do is look at the manifold ways that Colorado has to hide people here illegally.
Oh and for what it's worth, I am not 100% sure, but I doubt Rose Community Foundation has any qualms about this proviso in their contract.
https://codes.findlaw.com/co/title-24-government-state/co-rev-st-sect-24-74-102/
More money is needed to pay for "free" lunch, you got to vote on it.
When Colorado voted YES on Prop FF, a measure that put taxes on high-income households to fund lunches to any and all Colorado students, it proved popular. So popular that the program quickly ran out of money.
If you want some context on that, and a bit on how the legislature and our governor propose to fix it, see the Colorado Politics article linked first below and the law setting up the referred measures (HB25-1274) linked second.
Screenshots 1 and 2 attached (both from the bill's fiscal note) give a rundown on what the bill does.
It creates two referred measures which will (with the governor's signature on 6/3) appear on your 2025 ballot. The language is fancy, but stripped of its jargon they are both pretty straightforward. The first lets the government keep the TABOR surplus it collected in funding this "free" lunch. The second lets the government raise taxes to give more money to the program.** While they were at it, the legislature also added in that more tax money can go to other places.
I'll have more on these measures as we approach the actual ballot, but there is one last thing I'd like to mention.
If you want to be in on the process of crafting the Blue Book language for these referred measures (or any others), you can sign up to be on the Initiatives and Blue Book mailing list by clicking on the third link below.
Doing this gives you a chance to check for errors and have an effect on how measures like this are described to the public via the Blue Book. Don't wait, however, the cycle for things like this starts soon!
**The screenshot references income tax addbacks. As I understand it (see the fourth link below for more), this means that you do not get to claim as much of a deduction from state income taxes. I.e. you pay more taxes.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb25-1274
https://leg.colorado.gov/BallotAnalysis
https://tax.colorado.gov/income-tax-topics-state-income-tax-addback
It is AMAZING how much effort has been made by the current State Adminstration to WRECK the State.