Colorado Politics: When it comes to making its spending decisions transparent and easy for the public to understand, Colorado gets a C-plus in a new scorecard from the CoPIRG Foundation and the Frontier Group.

Researchers for the consumer advocacy groups looked at information available to the public that’s available online. The C-plus is a drop from the A-minus Colorado received in 2016.

The state lost points for ease of use for online data and the amount of disclosure around economic development.

“The public has a right to know how and when their tax dollars are being spent so that they can hold elected officials and civil servants accountable for ethical, effective stewardship of funds,” said Danny Katz, director of the Denver-based CoPIRG Foundation. “While Colorado is providing the basic information, more needs to be done to increase the comprehensiveness of the information and to make finding the information more intuitive and easy.”

Colorado ranked 20th nationally in the report. The measure was started in 2010 to highlight transparency for taxpayers “while also restoring public confidence in government and prevent misspending and pay-to-play contracts,” CoPIRG said.

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