Denver, CO – You’ve seen those bumper stickers that say “COEXIST” with all of the religious symbols used to spell it. Yeah, our first reaction is one religion doesn’t want to get along with the other religions. We’re not going to get into that today because the internet watchers and social media don’t like the truth.
But much like that religion that can’t get along with the others, we have a government the just can’t seem to get along with accountability.
We could easily write a novel about this, and this theme has been peppered throughout our articles from the beginning. So, we’ll just use this as a shameless plug to check out more articles on our website. We’ve covered national, state, and local governments, and there is a lot of good information.
But this article is going to give some kudos to the affable Joey Bunch at Colorado Politics. Apparently, he’s been paying attention to the happenings at the Colorado Legislature’s Audit Committee. Something that is efficient (in our view) in Colorado State Government is the State Auditors office.
Why, you may ask? It’s because the Auditor consistently calls government agencies out on the carpet for not complying with the law while wasting our tax dollars. These audits can be expensive to the tune of $150,000 but, one of their recommendations usually saves Colorado taxpayers at least that much. Most of their audits have over 20 recommendations – you do the math!
In this piece on Colorado Politics, Bunch talks about how these government agencies often don’t comply with audit recommendations. In fact, they thumb their nose at the Auditors and Audit Committee – namely lawmakers. This is bad, and this is why we need less government. Much of what the Colorado government does far exceeds Constitutional authority.
As citizens, if we want the government to be better, we need less of it. If there is no accountability, then this is a problem.
Bunch mentions that Republican Minority Leader Neville wants to give more power to legislative committees in reference to the budget. This may not be a bad idea. At least there is some expertise and institutional knowledge on these committees vs. the Joint Budget Committee (JBC), who writes the budget. The JBC can’t be all-knowing, and there is a lot more turnover on that committee, hence less institutional knowledge.
We wrote about the JBC and how his Majesty Jared Polis has very little power over the state budget. We’re fine with that. We don’t like monarchs.
Stay tuned, and stay alert!
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