November 08, 2011 11:33 PM UTC

GOP Shuts Down Online Schools Audit

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: FOX 31’s Eli Stokols:

The State’s auditing office gave preliminary approval to the request, but the audit committee had to approve it to let it move forward.

On a 4-4 party-line vote Monday, the audit request failed with all four Republican committee members — state Sens. Scott Renfroe of Greeley and Steve King of Colorado Springs, as well as state Reps. Brian Delgrosso of Loveland and Cindy Acree of Aurora — voting against it…

Republicans called Shaffer’s initial request “political grandstanding”; and, on Tuesday, they tried to amend Shaffer’s request to call for an audit on all state education spending, not just online schools.

That amendment was defeated.

“They wanted to be political in looking at one part of education and not all of it,” Renfroe told FOX31 Denver.

Our understanding is that the proposal was definitely intended to spike the process of investigating deficiencies in online schools. Nonpartisan staff were reportedly blindsided by the GOP’s request to expand this audit to include all schools, and the proposal would have inflated this investigation into a years-long morass, hopelessly off track from the task at hand. Online schools are significantly different than traditional schools, whether public or private, so there’s no rational reason to not investigate them separately.

The incident does little to reassure us that this kind of petty obstruction isn’t going to happen over and over again, every time they think there are points to be scored off Brandon Shaffer.

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That news in a press release we just got from the Senate Majority Press Office:

Today, Republican members of the Legislative Audit Committee voted against investigating possible waste, fraud and abuse by schools in the State’s online schools system. Many online schools currently receive state funding. It was estimated during today’s hearing that the overall online school budget was as much as $85 million last year. Senate President Brandon Shaffer (D-Longmont) requested an emergency audit of online schools on September 26, following the review of several Colorado Department of Education reports that exposed serious problems with a number of online school programs.

On September 27, members of the Legislative Audit Committee authorized the State Auditor to study the feasibility of such an audit. However, despite the study released today determining an audit would be feasible, Republicans on the committee-Senators Scott Renfroe and Steve King, and Representatives Brian DelGrosso and Cindy Acree-voted against the transparency and accountability measure.

Following the party-line defeat of his request for an audit of online schools Senate President Brandon Shaffer released the following statement:

“I am very disappointed Republicans chose to make this into a partisan issue, instead of simply doing the right thing.  Despite overwhelming evidence of widespread fraud and abuse by online schools, they blocked an audit that would have saved Colorado taxpayers millions of dollars.

“Instead of fighting for taxpayers, they chose to stand with corporate giants on Wall Street who are bilking Coloradans of millions while providing a vastly inferior educational product resulting in low test scores and high drop-out rates.

“While today’s vote is disappointing, it’s not entirely unexpected.  Lobbyists representing online schools are extremely powerful in the legislature, and that’s why these schools have a sweetheart deal with no accountability or oversight.  

“I will continue to fight for Colorado taxpayers.  The investigative reports of numerous news outlets across the State give us ample evidence of online school abuses.  I will bring forward legislation during the 2012 session to reign in these abuses and restore accountability to the system.

“Coloradans deserve better representation than what they received today.”

It’s quite odd to see Republicans voting all together against an audit of taxpayer funds spent on public education, especially after the heavy press coverage deficiencies in these schools received at the end of September. We haven’t seen a press release from Republicans yet, but the arguments against this audit seem to boil down to accusations of “politics” on the part of Senate President Brandon Shaffer–who, in case you’ve been living under a rock all summer, is running for Congress. Unless you latch onto that and stop, this decision seems awfully out of place. Republicans should want public school accountability, shouldn’t they?

Anyway, you hope this doesn’t become a pattern. There are many issues between now and next November they could become suddenly intransigent over…because Shaffer has an opinion. Just because he’s running for Congress doesn’t mean his opinion is suddenly less relevant.