Our Concerns with SB26-150

Executive Summary

A new bill, The “Modernizing The Regional Transportation District Act” introduced this legislative session would replace RTD’s current 15-member elected board with a 9-member board made up of 5 elected members and 4 gubernatorial appointees confirmed by the Senate. The bill follows the January 2026 final report of the RTD Accountability Committee, which was established by SB25-161 and whose recommendations the bill substantially adopts. The Committee argues that the current structure suffers from excessive size, weak competition for elected seats, insufficient expertise, low public visibility, and diffuse accountability. It further argues that a smaller hybrid board would be better positioned to provide strategic leadership and support ridership growth.

Those arguments are serious and deserve careful consideration. The Committee spent substantial time reviewing RTD’s governance, finances, workforce issues, paratransit, and relationships with local governments. It met publicly over 12 meetings spanning more than 43 hours, reviewed extensive materials, and framed its recommendations as a response to systemic problems rather than isolated concerns.

At the same time, the bill does not clearly establish that RTD’s core governance problems are caused by direct election itself, and the bill’s own text contains provisions that directly contradict its stated goal of strengthening elections. Many of the concerns it identifies are more accurately problems of board size, board support, candidate development, training, role clarity, fiscal oversight, and organizational design. The report itself recommends numerous non-structural reforms in those areas, including stronger fiscal oversight, CEO evaluation, General Counsel authority, performance reporting, candidate training, increased compensation, and improved staff support.

The central issue is not whether RTD needs reform. It is whether the report shows that reducing direct voter representation is necessary to achieve that reform. On that question, the report’s case is weaker than its rhetoric.

Background

The RTD Accountability Committee was established by SB25-161 to examine RTD governance, workforce retention, paratransit services, and collaboration with local governments and state agencies. The Committee submitted its report on January 30, 2026. SB26-150, introduced this session, translates many of the Committee’s recommendations into statute. It would take effect January 1, 2029.

The bill’s core structural change is reducing RTD’s board from 15 elected directors to 9 members — 5 elected and 4 appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. Two of the 4 appointed seats would be filled from a nominees list provided by the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG); 2 would be filled at the governor’s discretion. The bill also shrinks the number of elected districts from 15 to 5, assigns redistricting authority to the Office of Legislative Legal Services (for the initial 2028 map) and the Independent Legislative Redistricting Commission (after the 2030 census), raises the ballot petition signature threshold from 250 to 1,000 for RTD director candidates, imposes two-term limits on elected directors, and adjusts board compensation and quorum rules.

Central Question

The central policy question is not whether RTD needs governance reform. The bill makes a strong case that it does. The question is whether those governance problems justify reducing direct democratic control over the agency — and whether the bill’s specific design choices are consistent with its stated goals.

A fully elected board and a hybrid board are not simply two technical arrangements. They reflect different approaches to public legitimacy and accountability. A fully elected board emphasizes direct accountability to voters. A hybrid board emphasizes a blend of electoral legitimacy and appointed expertise. The Committee plainly favors the latter. But that preference is persuasive only if the report shows that RTD’s present problems are meaningfully caused by direct election, and that appointed seats are likely to address them better than reforms within an elected structure.

That showing is less clear than the report suggests.

The Committee’s Strongest Arguments

The Committee’s strongest argument is that RTD’s governance structure is not keeping pace with the complexity of the institution. The report repeatedly links governance reform to system health, fiscal stewardship, long-term vision, expertise, and increased ridership. It argues that a smaller, more nimble board with stronger expertise would be more capable of strategic leadership.

The report also makes a strong practical argument that RTD elections are not functioning as robust accountability mechanisms if the seats are low-visibility and weakly contested. The Committee presents low competition and limited public profile as real governance deficiencies, not merely political inconveniences.

A third strong argument is the Committee’s focus on expertise. By recommending gubernatorial appointees with designated areas of competence, the report suggests that the current structure does not reliably ensure the knowledge base necessary for governing a large, complex transit district.

Finally, the report is rhetorically effective because it presents these changes not as an attack on democracy, but as a modernization intended to strengthen representation and public outcomes by aligning governance with the scale and complexity of the agency.

These are the strongest arguments in the report. They deserve a direct and serious response.

Counterargument 1: The Committee identifies real problems, but many are not problems of election

The report groups together several distinct governance problems and treats them as if they all point toward appointed seats.

That is not necessarily true.

A large board is a board-size problem. Weakly contested elections are a candidate-recruitment and ballot-design problem. Insufficient expertise is a training, support, and board-development problem. Weak oversight is a role-clarity and performance-management problem. Limited visibility is a civic-engagement and public-awareness problem. None of these issues inherently require reducing the number of elected members.

The report itself reinforces this point by recommending many non-structural reforms. It recommends clearer authority over fiscal oversight, CEO evaluation, and General Counsel; stronger performance metrics and public reporting; stronger budgeting and audits; board financial training; a Transit Academy-style candidate training program; higher compensation; a full-time chair; and improved board staffing and access to agency support.

That matters because it shows that even the Committee understood that RTD’s governance weaknesses are not reducible to election alone. The report makes a strong case for reform, but a less conclusive case for reducing direct voter control.

Counterargument 2: If the problem is board size, the remedy can be a smaller elected board

The Committee’s criticism that the current board is too large may be valid. A 15-member board can be harder to coordinate, slower to deliberate, and more prone to fragmentation. But that is not inherently an argument for appointed voting seats.

A board could be reduced in size while remaining fully elected. Districts could be consolidated. Committee structures could be tightened. The chair could be strengthened. Terms and staggering could be revised. These steps would address the concern about nimbleness without reducing the voters’ direct role.

But consolidation is not costless from a democratic standpoint. Larger districts generally make campaigns harder and more expensive to run. They require candidates to communicate across a broader geography, reach more voters, and rely more heavily on fundraising, endorsements, institutional support, or existing name recognition. That can narrow the path for candidates who are not wealthy, not self-funded, and not already connected to political or donor networks. A reduction in district seats can therefore change not just the size of the board, but who can realistically compete for it.

Once board size and election are analytically separated, the Committee’s structural case becomes narrower. The strongest reform argument may be for a smaller board, but that is not the same thing as a strong argument against elections.

Counterargument 3: Expertise can be added without replacing direct accountability

The Committee’s emphasis on expertise is substantial and serious. It wants appointees with backgrounds in finance, land use, transportation planning, disproportionately impacted communities, and labor.

But there is a fundamental governance question here: what kind of institution is a board?

A public transit board is a governing body, not a substitute operating staff. Its role is to hire and evaluate the CEO, set policy direction, approve budgets, oversee the institution’s health, and represent the public interest. Technical expertise certainly helps in that work, but transit operations, planning, finance, and labor expertise can also be brought to bear through executive staff, board briefings, outside experts, committee structures, audits, independent advisors, and formal training.

The report itself proposes many such mechanisms. It recommends stronger financial training, stronger reporting, more robust oversight, and better board supports.

The key question is not whether expertise matters. It is whether expertise requires appointed voting seats. The report does not fully establish that it does.

Counterargument 4: The report does not clearly show how appointed members would produce better governance or better results

The report does not clearly explain the mechanism by which its proposed structural changes would lead to better governance outcomes, much less better operational outcomes.

This is a significant gap because the Board’s role is to govern, not to manage the agency day to day. A governing board sets direction, approves budgets, hires and evaluates the CEO, establishes oversight systems, and holds management accountable for results. It does not operate service, manage frontline staff, dispatch buses, maintain rail vehicles, or run daily operations.

For that reason, a recommendation to add appointed voting members requires more than a general appeal to expertise or efficiency. It requires a clearer explanation of how a different board composition would produce better oversight, better executive management, and ultimately better agency performance.

The report does not fully make that connection. It identifies real concerns about board size, expertise, visibility, and accountability, then proposes appointed seats as a solution, but it does not clearly show why appointed members would govern more effectively than elected members, or why that change would produce better outcomes than other reforms to board structure, training, oversight, or leadership.

That analytical gap matters. The report may establish that RTD needs stronger governance. It does not clearly establish that appointed voting members are what would deliver it.

Counterargument 5: Weak elections call for better elections, not fewer elected seats

The Committee’s argument about low competition and low visibility is politically potent. If the public does not closely follow RTD Board races, and if seats are often not strongly contested, then the accountability benefits of direct election may appear weaker in practice.

But the logical response to weak elections is to improve elections.

That is especially true if reducing the number of elected districts would make campaigns materially more expensive and less accessible. If a candidate must reach a much larger electorate, the practical barriers to entry rise. Mail, voter contact, field organizing, and basic communications all become more demanding. In practice, that can advantage candidates with personal wealth, established donor access, institutional backing, or prior political prominence, while making it harder for ordinary riders, community advocates, younger candidates, and working people to mount viable campaigns. A structure that reduces the number of elected seats may therefore weaken not only representation in the abstract, but the socioeconomic accessibility of the office itself.

The Committee itself recommends increasing board compensation, reviewing and increasing ballot signature thresholds, and reinstating a Transit Academy-style program led by an outside entity to train and inform prospective candidates. These are not trivial recommendations. They point toward a more constructive first step: strengthen the pipeline, seriousness, and visibility of RTD Board elections before concluding that the electorate should have a smaller role.

The report therefore supports the conclusion that RTD’s electoral structure may be under-supported, but it does not necessarily establish that elections themselves are the problem.

The bill’s own text makes this tension concrete. While reducing elected seats from 15 to 5, the legislation simultaneously raises the ballot petition signature requirement for RTD director candidates from 250 to 1,000 — a fourfold increase. Candidates must now gather four times as many signatures to qualify for a seat covering three times as many residents. That is not a reform designed to strengthen elections. It is a reform that makes elections harder to contest, in the same bill that reduces the number of seats available to contest.

Counterargument 6: A hybrid board may blur accountability rather than sharpen it

The bill argues, as the Committee did, that the current structure makes it difficult to hold any single entity accountable for systemwide performance.

That claim is understandable, but the bill’s specific design makes the accountability map more complicated, not simpler. Under a fully elected structure, voters know who governs RTD — every voting board member is directly answerable to the public. Under the bill, responsibility would run through at least four actors: elected district members (accountable to district voters), two gubernatorial appointees chosen from a DRCOG nominees list (accountable in some sense to DRCOG, the governor, and the Senate), two appointees chosen at the governor’s discretion (accountable to the governor and the Senate), and the governor herself for all removal and reappointment decisions. DRCOG is itself not directly elected by RTD district voters, adding another layer of representational distance.

That question becomes even more important in a period of fiscal strain. RTD faces serious financial challenges, and in that kind of environment clear responsibility matters. When an agency is under pressure, the public needs to know who is accountable for difficult decisions, long-term planning, and financial stewardship. Diffuse responsibility may be manageable in stable times, but it becomes more problematic in a crisis.

It also matters that the state is not in a position to treat RTD as an institution it can simply rescue from the outside if governance problems persist. A structure that spreads responsibility across multiple political actors may make it harder, not easier, to identify who owns the outcome when finances tighten and tradeoffs become unavoidable.

Responsiveness matters as well. An elected RTD Board can change substantially from one election cycle to the next. Half the board can turn over in a single cycle, allowing the agency’s governing body to respond more quickly to changing public concerns, shifting regional priorities, or dissatisfaction with current leadership. By contrast, gubernatorial appointments tie part of the board’s composition to a statewide executive elected on a longer political timeline and for a broader set of issues than transit governance alone.

A hybrid structure may create a more complicated map of accountability. That may still be worthwhile in some cases, but it cannot simply be assumed to be clearer.

A fully elected board may be imperfect, but it is legible. There is democratic value in that simplicity, especially when the stakes are high.

Counterargument 7: The DRCOG nomination process does not substitute for democratic accountability

The bill requires that two of the four appointed board seats be filled from a nominees list provided by the Denver Regional Council of Governments. This is sometimes presented as a check on pure gubernatorial discretion — a way to ensure that the appointments draw on regional expertise and stakeholder input.

But DRCOG is not directly elected by RTD district voters. It is a council of local government officials whose primary mandate is regional planning, not transit governance. Under the bill, DRCOG would screen and nominate candidates, and the governor would choose from that list. The public would have no formal role in that process. Neither DRCOG’s selection criteria nor its nominee list would be subject to direct voter approval.

The bill does include diversity and expertise requirements for the nominees — geographic and demographic representation, backgrounds in finance, transportation planning, and disproportionately impacted communities. Those requirements are meaningful. But they describe the characteristics of nominees, not the accountability mechanism that keeps appointed members answerable to the public over time. A well-credentialed board member appointed through an expert panel is not the same as one chosen by the voters who ride the buses.

Counterargument 8: The proposal plainly reduces direct democratic control

The Committee insists that its recommendations are intended not to diminish democratic representation, but to strengthen it.

This is the most rhetorically effective part of the report, but it should be examined plainly.

Reducing the number of elected seats from 15 to 5 and adding 4 appointed seats is, in direct terms, a reduction in the public’s ability to choose the people who govern the agency. That does not automatically make the proposal wrong. There are many legitimate public bodies with appointed or hybrid boards. But the democratic tradeoff should be stated honestly.

The proposal may pursue expertise and efficiency, but it does so by reducing direct voter control over RTD’s governing body. That is a real tradeoff.

Counterargument 9: The recommendation for statutory implementation weakens the democratic case

The Committee recommends that all structural reforms be adopted through statute rather than ballot referral.

That recommendation may be legally available to the General Assembly, but it raises an important democratic question. If the argument for hybrid governance is truly compelling and truly intended to improve public accountability, then there is a substantial case for letting district voters weigh in directly on whether they want fewer elected representatives on the Board.

This is especially true because the proposal does not merely adjust procedural details. It changes the core relationship between RTD and the electorate.

A proposal of this magnitude raises a serious question about whether district voters should have a direct say in the change.

Conclusion

The bill’s drafters identified real governance problems at RTD, and those problems deserve serious attention. But the bill does not clearly show that those problems are caused by elections, or that they require fewer elected representatives to solve them. The bill’s own design undermines its stated rationale: it simultaneously reduces elected seats and raises the barriers to running for the ones that remain, while diffusing accountability across a more complicated web of actors — the governor, DRCOG, the Senate, and district voters — than exists today.

Its strongest points concern board size, weakly contested elections, uneven expertise, and the need for stronger oversight. Those are real issues. But the report does not clearly connect its preferred solution to the outcomes it promises. The Board governs; it does not run the agency day to day. A proposal to add appointed members therefore requires a clearer showing that this change would lead to better oversight, stronger executive accountability, and better institutional performance.

That showing is not clearly made. The report makes a persuasive case that RTD needs better governance. It does not make a comparably persuasive case that better governance requires less direct accountability to the public, or a structure that may make service on the Board less accessible to candidates without wealth, donor networks, or institutional backing.