Clean Government Colorado launched its first TV ad this week and made Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, the poster boy for why Amendment 54 is needed in Colorado.
TapiaState of CO
A 9News investigation from April found that Tapia spent eight years in the General Assembly advocating greater funding toward the Colorado State Fair. During this same period, his engineering firm received nearly a half-million dollars in fair contracts, none of which were awarded through competitive bids.
Amendment 54 would establish a no-bid searchable database, which would have made Tapia's contracts more transparent to his constituents and the media. Currently, the only way to uncover such information is through a Colorado Open Records Act request, which is how Tapia's contracts were discovered.
"I highly resent this," Tapia said in reference to the ad, also voicing his opposition to the transparency Amendment 54 would provide.
Tapia claims that he had to compete for his contracts. According to reports in The Denver Post and Tom Lucero, campaign manager for Amendment 54, however, Tapia recieved at least 15 no-bid contracts from 1999 until 2008.
"If Amendment 54 was around in 1999, Tapia's contracts would have been transparent at the time they were awarded," Lucero said.
Amendment 54, if passed, would not bring an end to no-bid government contracts, but it would prohibit certain political contributions from recipients.
CORA requests are important tools when it comes to keeping government honest, and to Tapia's credit he complied when issued with one. But not every government agency is as cooperative, and database of no-bid government contracts is just one more smart way to keep our lawmakers honest.