A bill that House Democrats say would help Colorado meet its housing, climate, and transit goals is facing criticism from current members of the RTD board.

They argue that the proposed legislation may disproportionately affect representation for minority communities.

House Bill 1447 would reduce the size of the RTD Board from 15 members to seven. Under the bill, the governor’s office would appoint two board members. At the same time, the remaining positions would be filled through at-large elections, serving larger geographic areas rather than the current smaller districts.

The bill would also increase board members’ salaries from $12,000 to $35,000 and move driver training duties from RTD to the Department of Transportation. 

Bill sponsor Rep. Meg Froelich, D- Englewood, said the bill would help increase RTD’s reliability and boost ridership.

Gov. Jared Polis applauded the legislation, saying it will “help professionalize RTD’s governance, provide more accountability and transparency to taxpayers which will provide the public confidence needed for additional investments, and give transit agencies across our state more tools to deliver more convenient and low-cost transit service.” 

Critics, on the other hand, argue the bill is trying to fix problems that don’t exist and further disenfranchise communities of color. 

“The soft bigotry of low expectations”

Board candidate Chris Nicholson, who is running for District A in south-central Denver, argued the bill prioritized the interests of its sponsors and their constituents over the broader RTD coverage area.  

Nicholson said that while he likes all the bill’s sponsors, and two of them have even endorsed his campaign, he thinks they have “a blind spot” when it comes to representation. He took issue with the bill’s proposed at-large voting system, which he said would make it “basically impossible” for any district to have a plurality of minority voters due to their extensive coverage areas resulting in majority-white demographics.

“The population of the metro is not a monolith,” Nicholson said. “We shouldn’t be creating a district where a transit-dependent person is competing with a Hispanic individual, who is competing with a person who has disabilities, who is competing with a person from the African American community. When you draw districts like that, you make it impossible to have a diversity of voices because you essentially create one minority district and whoever can do the best wins that. It’s bad to have a situation where people are actively discouraged from running because they put representation of their community at risk, and that’s what this bill would do.”

In response to these accusations, bill sponsor Rep. William Lindstedt, D- Broomfield, noted that the RTD board only has a handful of members who are people of color in its current setup, and many of them were appointed, not elected.

“The belief that because there are not enough people of color on the board that we shouldn’t care about having a system that will increase representation is incredibly wrongheaded,” Nicholson said. “It’s a perfect example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.” 

Nicholson said if the bill’s sponsors went out and asked people of color why they’re not running for seats on the board, they’d get a “pretty straightforward” response. 

Firstly, he said, the board doesn’t have enough visibility within the community. Most people don’t even know it exists, making it impossible for them to run. Second, the compensation provided to board members is far too low relative to the amount of work required of them. Nicholson said one board member calculated their hourly pay to be less than minimum wage.  

“The result of not paying people a real salary is that the only people who can serve are either retired, personally wealthy, or making enough money that they’re not burdened by it,” Nicholson said. 

Even if a candidate were to run for a seat on the board, they would require substantial financial resources just to conduct a campaign. JoyAnn Ruscha represents District B, which includes parts of Aurora and eastern Denver. She estimated it would cost at least $100,000 to run a campaign for a district as large as the ones proposed in the bill. This financial hurdle presents a significant barrier, Ruscha said, particularly because transit board candidates tend to have a harder time securing funds from donors than candidates for other governmental positions.

“I think the only people who would be able to run at-large in a specific district would have to be able to self-fund or have access to a lot of money or a PAC or something,” she said. “It poses a serious challenge, and for people who are lower-to-moderate income or don’t have the same resources as others, just running for any office is a challenge. I think not only will the constituents lose out, but there are going to be a lot of really incredible individuals who could have made incredible directors but we’ll never know because they won’t have access to the ballot.”

“A power grab by the state”

Nicholson believes the bill is a ploy on the sponsors’ and Governor’s behalf to garner backing for the state’s Front Range passenger rail project, which would be partially overseen by RTD. While Nicholson said he supported the project, he felt House Bill 1447 sponsors should have involved RTD in discussions about the bill before publishing it. 

“A lot of people on the board and a lot of people who are running for the board support passenger rail,” Nicholson said. “I just think that the approach that’s being taken here is very much a sledgehammer rather than a conversation. There’s no need to come in throwing punches in order to get your train when you could be sitting down with the stakeholders and working with them to make that happen.”

Nicholson said Polis has threatened to take funding away from RTD programs like free fare for youth and Zero Fare for Better Air should the bill not pass.

District A board member Jaime Lewis called the legislation “a power grab by the state”. 

“The state wants to build a train; RTD is trying to act within its budgetary restraints, be fiduciarily responsible, and protect their commitment to providing transit to a particular region, and now you’ve got the state wanting a Front Range rail and they want RTD to be a part of that,” he said. “So basically, they’re recreating RTD’s original purpose, and what that’s going to do is it’s going to pull money away from the buses and the people that are dependent on them. They’re basically jeopardizing that for a Front Range train.”

Lewis said the bill was “poorly planned out.” “It looks like they’re throwing stuff on the wall and seeing if it sticks,” he said. “I’m on the board because I think RTD can be better and I think there’s better days ahead for RTD, but not if they have to get drowned out by supporting this train on the Front Range.”

Lewis took issue with the bill’s sponsors’ claim that it would professionalize the board, citing a survey conducted by one of his colleagues that found three ex-mayors several, “finance gurus,” and at least one lawyer currently serve on the board. Lewis also disputed the sponsors’ argument that the RTD board is too large, as many major cities including San Diego and Dallas, have 15 members on their analogous boards. 

Furthermore, Lewis said, if the bill were to pass, he wouldn’t even be able to physically travel to meet with constituents in the farthest reaches of his proposed district. As a wheelchair user, he noted that certain areas lack public transportation, creating a barrier for individuals with disabilities who would otherwise be interested in running for the board.  

“I couldn’t even go to those places to talk to my constituents,” he said. “It eliminates somebody like myself.”

As a frequent RTD passenger, Ruscha believes it is critical for the system’s riders to be directly represented on the board. If the provisions of HB 1447 are adopted, she said she is concerned there may be a lack of actual riders serving on the board. 

“On a transit board, it doesn’t have to be every member, but it’s really important to have people on the board who actively use the system and understand it,” she said. “I can just tell you, it makes a difference. I’m not just afraid, I’m certain that if this bill passes, the everyday rider is going to lose access to their advocate.”

Sponsors address issues 

Rep. Lindstedt said the bill’s intent was not to disenfranchise voters or diminish accessibility, but rather to enhance the system for riders.

“Our region deserves a reliable transit service that serves the entire district, that has professionalized leadership, that can lead the agency effectively, and can provide the level of accountability that I think that agency deserves,” he said. 

Lindstedt said he and his co-sponsors want to increase constituency sizes because there aren’t enough people running for the board the way the districts are currently mapped. 

“We have 15 different districts that ran almost entirely unopposed and are filled with write-in candidates; I think that’s anti-democratic,” he said. “I think we need to have competitive elections with qualified candidates running so that voters can decide who leads a billion-dollar transit agency.”

Lindstedt pointed out that while the current size of RTD’s board aligns with many other cities’ transit boards, there’s a crucial difference: Denver’s board members are elected, making it the largest elected transit board in the country. He contended that the current board structure “isn’t serving the public” who have dealt with reliability issues and service cuts. 

“RTD is an outlier in a lot of ways because it’s entirely elected, it lacks the critical skillsets I think every board needs. Our proposal is to keep the board in voters’ hands with five elected positions that they get to choose and that will hopefully actually be contested elections where you’ll have credible candidates running, and to ensure that there is a level of expertise on the board that can do the job all the time.”