Denver7: Colorado’s “Uncle Sam” is under fire over claims of waste, incompetence and mismanagement, according to a whistleblower letter sent to Contact7 investigative reporter Ryan Luby.

The letter, which arrived in a standard-issue Colorado Department of Revenue envelope, is signed by “Concerned [Colorado Department of Revenue] Employees, Taxpayers & Citizens of Colorado.” In response to the letter, Contact7 submitted an open records request to the department to review anonymous “Climate Surveys” conducted on Tax Division employees to substantiate the allegations, but the department’s leadership team refuses to release key portions of those surveys.

“It is very important you get the results of these surveys … to understand the level of internal strife caused by the incompetence and mismanagement of resources by our leadership team,” the whistleblower letter said. “No one outside CDOR is paying attention to this problem and taxpayers are out millions of dollars.”

The whistleblowers also expressed grave concerns about the Tax Division’s software system and staff leadership who, “at the time of their appointments had little to no tax administration experience or qualifications, even though it was (or should have been) a minimum requirement of their jobs.”

Contact7 has been battling the department over pages of redactions in the records it released for nearly a month and sought legal counsel in the process, who argued against the department’s assertion that the redacted information is exempt from public inspection under the “deliberative process privilege.”

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