Smoke screen of outside money, complex disclosure laws obscure spending in school board races
Observers predict total 2015 spending never will be known
Good luck if you’re trying to follow the money in Colorado’s increasingly expensive and contentious school board races.
Increased involvement by outside groups and inconsistencies in state law have made it harder for voters to track who’s supporting board candidates.
“We’ll probably never know” how much money was spent in 2015 school board races, said Luis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, a research and advocacy group.
Referring to Jefferson County, Colorado’s hottest board contest, journalist Sandra Fish said, “We’re never going to know how much money is being spent on this recall.”
Board campaign spending started to escalate in 2009, when total contributions to candidates for the Denver Public Schools board went well into six figures. DPS elections have continued to be high dollar since then, and candidates in Douglas County and Jefferson County have jumped on that bandwagon.
Some observers project contributions will top $1 million this year in Jeffco, where a recall campaign against three incumbents is combined with a regular election for two other board seats.
Several factors are involved in the growth of school board campaign spending and in the difficulty of tracking that money:
- Organized groups not directly connected to individual candidates have become bigger players in board races.
- Even as contributions and spending have soared, state campaign finance laws require less frequent public financial reporting by outside groups on board contests than is required for legislative and other state races in general elections.
- That problem of limited disclosure is particularly acute with independent expenditure committees, which spend money on campaign ads independently of candidates but don’t have to provide as much detail in off-year elections.
- A different set of campaign committees, known commonly as C4s, can spend money in campaigns without any public disclosure of their activities, depending on how they word their ads.
- Finally, school board seats are among a handful of Colorado elected offices for which there are no limits on individual contributions to candidates.
The rise of outside committees
School board races traditionally were funded by individual contributions to candidates, with teachers union committees the largest but still modest contributors in some bigger districts.
Increasing polarization over school choice, district budgets, the role of teachers unions and issues like vouchers have drawn increasing outside interest in school board races.
For instance, in the 2013 Douglas County board elections, $228,378 was contributed to candidates but there was at least in $220,943 in independent expenditures by outside groups, according to data compiled by Ethics Watch.
That pattern is continuing this year in both Dougco and Jeffco.
“We are spending in the low six figures in both Jeffco and Dougco on educating residents about the positive reforms of the school boards,” said Michael Fields, Colorado head of Americans for Prosperity.
In Dougco, “low six figures” would exceed what the six candidates have raised themselves. Americans for Prosperity is connected to the billionaire Koch brothers, who are major funders of conservative causes at the national and local levels.
In Denver, a similar dynamic is playing out, albeit on the other end of the ideological spectrum.
Raising Colorado, an independent expenditure committee affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform, is a major purchaser of campaign materials supporting DPS board candidates who support the district’s reform efforts. Different kinds of committees connected to teachers unions are major direct contributors to opposition candidates.
Ethics Watch has been working to track 2015 spending in the Jeffco recall and has produced a graphic following “traceable” and “untraceable” money. See the graphic at the Smoke screen of outside money, complex disclosure laws obscure spending in school board races | Chalkbeat:
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