Great Outdoors Colorado

By Jennifer Lay

People in the Centennial State have been buying into the Lottery promise of “Your ticket to a more beautiful Colorado” at the average rate of $336.4 million per year since 1991. For Colorado Lottery players, the financial pot is supposed to be sweetened by knowledge that even when you don’t hit the jackpot, the long-term payoff is huge for the state’s open space, parks, and wildlife.

That’s because about half of all Colorado Lottery proceeds goes to Great Outdoors Colorado, the quasi-governmental agency dedicated “to help the people of Colorado preserve, protect, enhance, appreciate and enjoy our parks, wildlife, trails, rivers and open space through strategic grants, partnership and leadership,” according to its mission.

Fifty-eight percent of Colorado voters approved a 1992 citizen’s initiative that amended the state Constitution to create Great Outdoors Colorado, known as GOCO. Not to be duped by a past program that diverted lottery proceeds to prisons, the constitutional amendment that created GOCO specifically secured lottery proceeds to be “guaranteed and permanently dedicated to the preservation, protection, enhancement and management of the state’s wildlife, park, river, trail and open space heritage.”

But eleven years later, a group of GOCO’s founding members is skeptical that the organization is adhering to their land protection vision.

“The way that the Owens administration appointees are spending the lottery money is different than what we envisioned,” said Susan Kirkpatrick, past chairwoman and founding member of GOCO. “The balance has shifted away from land protection for the long term, for the people of Colorado, and more toward the short term, for staff and paper production,” she said.

A loosely assembled group of past board members and activists calling themselves “Friends of GOCO” is concerned that a growing percentage of GOCO’s money is being spent on personnel and operations for cash-strapped government agencies, specifically Colorado State Parks and the Division of Wildlife—rather than on land protection.

An analysis of GOCO expenditures featured Nov. 10, 2003, in the Denver Post provided compelling support for their argument. The Denver Post’s analysis compared funding allocation between GOCO boards appointed by Gov. Roy Romer (1995­1999) and Gov. Bill Owens (1999­2003). Average “funding for nonprofit groups seeking to protect open space,” including the state’s land trusts, has dropped more than $650,000 per year during the Owens administration, according to the analysis. And the average money spent “acquiring state park lands” has dropped $810,000 per year during the same period.

In contrast, the analysis showed a $786,000 average annual increase in GOCO “funding for parks project operations.” And 2003 “funding for Division of Wildlife operations” was up $3.77 million compared to 1999’s expenditures.

Many of GOCO’s founders say these expenditures are outside the organization’s mission—and the voter-prescribed mandate.

In February 2002, Attorney General Ken Salazar expressed his concerns about how GOCO funds were being used in a letter to then-executive director John Hereford. Salazar’s letter outlined his formal position on how GOCO funds can be spent by state agencies. The constitutional amendment requires “Great Outdoors Colorado funding to the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation and the Division of Wildlife be used as supplemental funding,” he wrote. Salazar also said in his letter that there is “a clear prohibition against using Great Outdoors Colorado funds as substitutions for other funds historically and currently available to the state agencies.” Salazar recommended the GOCO board undertake a rule-making process to address the “substitution” matter.

GOCO’s rule-making was completed in October 2003. New rules state that the GOCO board must spend equal amounts of money on open space, wildlife, parks, and local government recreation programs during each “rolling ten-year period.” In addition, the Division of Wildlife and Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation are now required to submit annual reports to GOCO “concerning the status of each investment… so that the Board can monitor the benefit of each of its investments to the people of Colorado.” And finally, the rule-making process established board member committees to serve as liaisons with the wildlife and park agencies and to “participate in the planning process” for the two agencies. The new rules suggest activities that “may” be included in this oversight, but make no specific requirements.

Ann Bonnell, a former state parks employee who has been an active participant in GOCO’s recent public comment sessions, said the rulemaking was unsatisfactory.

“They are not policing themselves,” Bonnell said. “They didn’t change very much—they changed some words but they still mean the same thing.” They are “self serving rules” she said, that do nothing to help land conservation or address complaints about how GOCO money is being spent.

John Fielder, a prominent anti-sprawl activist and founding GOCO board member, suggests the current board needs more than just rules to get the job done. “Passion and connection are what the board members need,” Fielder said. He added, “GOCO’s mission is to do the most premium protection available and that’s land protection. The (founders’) focus was on the ultimate way to promote bio-diversity.” And that was “through outright purchase of natural areas and conservation easements on farms and ranches with wildlife values,” he said

But Diane Gansauer, acting Executive Director of GOCO, said there are many misconceptions about GOCO’s mission. She said many people don’t realize that the full scope of GOCO’s mission addresses more than just land protection programs. The organization is truly holding onto its constitutional obligations—particularly by funding wildlife programs, she said.

“Our mission is broader than many people are aware,” Gansauer said.

GOCO has five competitive grant programs, in addition to funding specifically earmarked for the Colorado Division of Wildlife and Colorado State Parks. The five grant programs include the Legacy Initiative for large-scale, multi-year projects that integrate wildlife, open space, recreation, and local government aspects; open space land conservation; local government park, outdoor recreation and environmental education facilities; trails; and planning and capacity building.

Open space grants are dispersed twice per year in highly competitive grant cycles where demand typically far exceeds the amount of money GOCO has to disperse. Local governments, nonprofit land conservation organizations, the Division of Wildlife, and Colorado State Parks are all eligible to use these funds for land conservation.

Gansauer said that open space has $13 million available to grant in the fiscal year that started July 1, 2003—the largest amount of money ever available for the open space program.

Today, GOCO is playing an important role in more than just habitat protection.

GOCO has become a prominent source of funding for the state’s threatened and endangered species protection programs—including the high-profile lynx reintroduction program. GOCO has been one of the key funding sources for the lynx program, according to Rick Kahn, a wildlife management supervisor at the Division of Wildlife.

Gansauer said funding lynx reintroduction absolutely fits GOCO’s mission. The constitution calls for wildlife “programs,” and it would be naïve to say GOCO never intended to pay any staff expenses, she said. Gansauer said people need to pause and think about what it really takes to recover endangered species.

“There’s more to species recovery than buying land and walking away,” Gansauer said.

While Gansauer stressed that GOCO needs to keep a close eye on staff spending and justify expenses, she said she takes issue with criticism that implies it only takes land purchases to recover a species.

The Denver Post study showed the Division of Wildlife is spending GOCO funds on species protection programs at an average rate of $6.2 million per year during the Owens administration, up from a $2 million average during Romer’s term.

Critics say this is too much. It is cutting into the state’s critical land conservation funds, they say.

“GOCO has become much more of a tool of the Department of Natural Resources than before Owens, to accomplish its own mission, which is endangered species protection so they can keep the federal government out of Colorado,” said Will Shafroth, executive director of the Colorado Conservation Trust and former executive director of GOCO from 1993 until 2000.

Kirkpatrick said the lynx program is a good idea and protecting other threatened and endangered species is important—but she said protecting habitat for a multitude of species is what is really in the long-term interest for Colorado.

“Fundamentally, focus on the individual critter is not where it needs to be, given the population growth in the state. We need to focus on the habitat. There’s sure to be an overlap,” Kirkpatrick said. She said species protection programs need to use other available funding sources, not GOCO’s land protection funds.

The GOCO Board is now made up entirely of Owens appointees. And Shafroth said there has been an almost complete turnover in staff since he left GOCO in 2000. The lack of an executive director from August through December created a vacuum, he said. The GOCO board appointed John Swartout, a senior policy advisor to Owens regarding environmental, energy, natural resource, and agricultural issues, to be GOCO’s next executive director starting Jan. 1, 2004.

But according to Shafroth, the board really drives the organization.

“The appointees are not dyed-in-the-wool open space savers,” said Bonnell. She said the state is trying to find ways to get around the endangered species act, and open space protection is suffering.

In the beginning, Kirkpatrick said GOCO used statewide expert advice about large scale landscapes that were most in need of protection to continue Colorado’s quality of life. She said the Colorado Division of Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy identified landscape-scale target areas that needed protection and special attention in order “to encourage careful planning.”

Fielder pointed out that Colorado’s open and natural spaces are “what cooks our economy.” He said the state’s mountain valleys and urban edges need protection now. And GOCO is an important source of funding for statewide land conservation.

As of December 2003, GOCO had awarded $384 million for more than 2,000 projects throughout Colorado. By GOCO’s estimates, these grants have helped ensure that more than 580,000 acres of Colorado’s open spaces, wildlife habitat, river corridors, and agricultural lands are “preserved in perpetuity.”

Fielder said citizens need to pay attention to what GOCO is doing. He recommended concerned citizens attend open meetings and write letters. He said lawsuits may be one way to enforce the voters’ intent, but right now public comment and media attention to GOCO’s spending is working best.

Bonnell agreed that public input is critical to shaping GOCO’s policies at this time.

“There’s all kind of people writing letters and trying to change this system. Hopefully we can get things turned around, but it will take some time, even if we change the administration. We’re in a pickle for a period of time,” Bonnell said.

The GOCO board is scheduled to make a final decision in March regarding bonding criteria for the $115 million Colorado voters authorized GOCO to bond for land protection projects. Public comment, scheduled to begin in January, will help shape the board’s criteria for selecting what kind of land conservation projects get funded.

Whatever the consensus is, Gansauer said she is sure the bonding will be used for land protection that is “big and grand and an otherwise lost opportunity.” P