Let Voters Choose the RTD Board

The Colorado legislature is moving to replace nearly half of your elected RTD board with political appointees — without asking voters. We believe our transit system should remain democratically elected.

RTD is a public agency with major responsibility for mobility, access, economic opportunity, and quality of life across the Denver region. Its decisions affect riders, taxpayers, employers, students, seniors, and communities in every part of the district. An agency with that much public importance should remain directly accountable to the people it serves.

Our position is simple:

• All voting members of the RTD Board must be elected.
• Any change to the structure of the RTD Board must be approved by voters.

This new bill would reduce RTD’s elected board from 15 members to 5, quadruple the petition signatures required to run for those seats, and hand 4 board seats to gubernatorial appointees — all without a public vote. A decision this consequential deserves real deliberation and a direct say from the voters it affects.

An elected board gives residents a direct voice in who governs RTD. It allows voters to reward strong leadership, demand change when performance falls short, and ensure that the people making major decisions about transit remain answerable to the communities they serve.

The bill also makes it harder to run for the elected seats that remain. Under current law, candidates need 250 petition signatures to get on the ballot. The bill would raise that to 1,000 — four times as many — in districts that are simultaneously three times as large. That is not a reform designed to strengthen elections.

RTD does need strong governance and sound oversight. But those goals do not require reducing the public’s role. Concerns about board effectiveness, training, expertise, and accountability should be addressed in ways that strengthen governance while preserving democratic representation.

Replacing elected seats with appointed ones would reduce direct voter control over one of the region’s most important public institutions. RTD should remain governed by representatives chosen by the public. And if anyone wants to change that structure, the voters themselves should have the final say.