The Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) & Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Investments in Colorado’s Great Outdoors performance audit conducted by the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) in 2017 contained six recommendations that the GOCO Board agreed to address by developing and adopting modifications to its policies and procedures.  The six recommendations were as follows:  

“The State Board of the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund (GOCO Board) should ensure that it has a clear and transparent process for categorizing grant expenditures and dividing spending across the four purposes on a substantially equal basis by promulgating policies and procedures through a public process that:

  • A: Specify how the GOCO Board and its staff should determine when it is appropriate to categorize funding to the four purposes when the grant recipient is not specifically listed in the Constitution under the applicable purpose.
  • B: Specify how the GOCO Board will obtain and document concurrence from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to award outdoor recreation or wildlife funding to recipients other than CPW.
  • C: Clearly define acceptable uses of grant funds and how specific uses will be categorized under each funding purpose.
  • D: Establish guidelines for the categorization of its discretionary spending authorized by Article XXVII, Section 5(1)(b) of the Colorado Constitution.
  • E: Define what it means for grant expenditures to be ‘substantially equal’ over the time period(s) that the GOCO Board considers to be ‘a period of years.’
  • F: Specify what actions the GOCO Board will take if expenditures for a certain funding purpose fall outside of the acceptable limits that define ‘substantially equal’ established in PART E above."

The GOCO Board has developed draft policies which seek to address these recommendations, and the Board it is seeking stakeholder, partner and public input regarding these draft policies at this time.  The new policies are:

Send comments or questions to us at info@goco.org by Feb. 15, 2018.