September 22, 2004

The Honorable Donetta Davidson

Colorado Secretary of State

1560 Broadwy, Suite 200

Denver, Colorado 80202-5189

Re: Campaign Finance Complaint Filed Under

Art. XXVIII Colorado Constitution and Title 1 Article 45 CRS

Dear Madam Secretary of State:

Please consider this a complaint pursuant to the above-referenced campaign and political finance standards set forth by the Constitution, the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act, and the applicable rules promulgated by the Secretary of State.

This complaint is directed at the following entities:

RTD

1600 Blake Street

Denver, CO 80202

FasTracks Yes

1175 Osage Street #203

Denver, CO 80204

These two organizations have illegally conspired to mislead the public about measure 4A as follows:

1. On or about July 7, 2004, RTD distributed approximately 620,000 copies of a four-color brochure promoting FasTracks. As shown in the attached detailed review of this brochure, it is strongly biased towards FasTracks and ignores any and all drawbacks in the FasTracks proposal. From inquiries to RTD, we have determined that at least $294,000 of public money was spent printing and distributing this brochure. This is a violation of 1-45-117(1)a)(I) of the Fair Campaign Practices Act, which states that “no agency . . . expend any public moneys from any source . . . to urge electors to vote favor of or against any . . . (C) Referred measure.”

2. On September 17, Rebecca Barnes, the deputy campaign manager of the FasTracks Yes campaign, submitted a statement for the voters’ guide on FasTracks, fraudulently claiming to be against the proposal. As reported by today’s Denver Post, a spokeswoman for FasTracks Yes admitted that the purpose of this fraudulent submission was to “dilute” the arguments of those who oppose the proposal in the voters’ guide.

3. RTD, having already proven itself to be biased in favor of FasTracks, accepted Barnes’ statement and “blended it” with the statement submitted by Taxpayers Against Congestion on behalf of several groups and individuals that are legitimate opponents of FasTracks, including Mothers Are Driving and Jack McCroskey. According to the same article in the Denver Post, RTD was aware that Barnes is actually a supporter of FasTracks, but used her statement anyway.

Many of the arguments included in Barnes’ statement are specious and misleading. For example, she wrote that highways should be expanded to “equal carrying capacity of a line of transit, roughly 10 lanes.” In fact, no rail transit line in the country carries as many people as two freeway lanes and no line outside of the New York urban area carries as many people as one freeway lane. No one has seriously proposed expanding Denver highways to 10 lanes.

Nor has anyone seriously proposed charging $22 to use toll roads or double decking Sixth Avenue, I-25, and I-70, all ideas that were included in Barnes’ fraudulent statement. The Denver Post reports that all of these arguments were included in the voters’ guide statement “blended” by RTD. The effect of these arguments is to make FasTracks opposition appear foolish and unrealistic

The task of the election official is not to ration words but to include the most salient and cogent points in a merged voters’ guide statement. Including specious and misleading arguments made by supporters of a proposal in the opposing statement fails to meet this obligation.

The combined effects of these actions are to mislead the public and suppress legitimate arguments against measure 4A.

As remedies, we request that:

1. Taxpayers Against Congestion, the leading issue committee that has legitimately formed to oppose FasTracks, be given final say over the wording in the voters’ guide; and

2. RTD be required to pay for the printing and mailing of a brochure prepared by Taxpayers Against Congestion that is equal in size and distribution to the brochure that RTD already illegally distributed to voters.

Respectfully,

Dennis Polhill

Taxpayers Against Congestion

P. O. Box 16721

Golden, Colorado 80402

303-278-3636

Attachment: “Review of the RTD FasTracks Brochure: Is It Campaigning?”

cc: RTD