From The Denver Post:  Colorado legislators should do the right thing and demand accountability and transparency from the organizations that serve our communities’ most vulnerable citizens.

Whether that occurs is yet to be seen as Senate Bill 38, introduced by Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, has its first committee hearing on Monday.

The issue is whether Colorado’s 20 community-centered boards (CCB) that provide services for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities should be required to comply with Colorado’s open records law.

Now, they don’t, despite years of requests for transparency from activists and parents.

Colorado was the first to start the CCB model in 1963 with a $60,000 pilot project in Boulder and the San Juan Basin.

The concept was to provide services for people with developmental disabilities in their communities rather than shuffle them off to institutions, which was both costly and inhumane.

By 1966, 14 community-centered boards had formed. Now, there are 20 CCBs, nonprofits that deliver long-term services and support systems to the disabled.

The noble goal of the organizations still is to keep people in their homes and communities and out of institutions.

The nonprofits, though, have become large-scale operations that collect millions in public dollars with virtually no outside oversight.

This problem was magnified when Denver Auditor Tim O’Brien’s office recently showed the city’s CCB, Rocky Mountain Human Services, had shamefully misused millions in city mill-levy funds that make up 26 percent of its budget.

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