The Regional Transportation District’s elected board would be shrunk by two-thirds under a bill introduced in the Colorado statehouse on Monday.
It’s the latest fight in a years-long effort over the management of RTD, which faces a budget gap of hundreds of millions of dollars and persistent complaints about its bus and train services. There have been multiple bills aimed at addressing RTD's continuing issues, like the creation of an accountability committee last year. SB26-150 is the second bill aimed at reforming the board.
“This bill is about addressing those issues in a thoughtful and balanced way,” said state Sen. Matt Ball, a Democrat from Denver, at a press conference on Monday. “RTD is essential to life on the Front Range. It connects people to jobs, schools, healthcare, and to each other.”
But the proposal is facing pushback from RTD board members and community groups like Green Latinos, who worked with a board director to put forward a petition, aiming to allow voters to decide on the reform.
If the bill passes, the agency also would have to conduct an independent study of its paratransit services for people with disabilities, something advocates have been pushing for.
State lawmakers previously tried to shrink RTD’s board in 2024, but that proposal was defeated by 20 votes.
How the board would change
An accountability report published in January found the RTD board needs "meaningful structural and non-structural" changes.
The current board has 15 elected directors. The new bill would leave the board with only nine directors — five elected and four appointed. Two directors would be appointed by the governor, and two by the Denver Regional Council of Governments
Ball said the goal is to make the board more efficient and add new expertise to its leadership. The appointed seats would have to include positions like a financial expert, a planning and multimodal transportation expert and a representative from a historically disadvantaged community.
RTD Director Chris Nicholson, representing central Denver, opposes the bill. He said the change would nearly triple the number of residents in each district, watering down voters’ voices. He added that it would be harder for candidates to get on the ballot.
“The biggest concern in the bill and the thing that I think is easily the most significant issue is representation,” Nicholson said. “This bill creates a system where districts are so large as to make it functionally impossible for someone who is not of means or already famous to run a reasonable campaign.”
He added: “Quite frankly, it's just, it's not really possible. You're talking about a district that's nearly the size of the entire county of Denver.”
Ball pushed back, saying the new districts would be about the same size as the CU Regent districts. He also said the pay of the board would triple.
“Our hope is that those things taken together will ensure that we broaden the scope of people who can afford to run and serve on the board and that we're not excluding voices that we want to make sure end up on the board,” Ball said.
The bill also would require an independent impact study into RTD’s paratransit program. Changes to RTD’s Access-on-Demand program have been highly controversial as the board voted to raise the cost to riders.
The bill would be implemented in 2028. State Sen. Iman Jodeh and state Reps. Meg Froelich and Jamie Jackson, all Democrats, also are sponsoring the bill.
Part of a years-long debate
The fight to restructure the board goes back to 2024, when lawmakers introduced HB24-1447.
The bill was controversial and ultimately died at its first committee hearing. The goal then was to shrink the board from 15 members to five, with two being governor appointees. In 2025, the state legislature passed a law creating an accountability committee and setting other requirements for RTD.
James Flattum was appointed by Gov. Polis to serve on the committee, and he’s also an advisory consultant for Colorado’s Department of Transportation's Front Range passenger rail project. He said RTD is a key part of the state’s transportation plans.
“I hope we can get to a place where there can be a consensus that progress can be made. … How can we come together to make progress with the pieces that we have?” Flattum said.
Ball said the latest bill comes from the work of the late Faith Winter, the state senator who died in a car crash last year.
“Her leadership and commitment to transit reform helped lay the foundation that led us to this moment and we're honored to be here to continue this work today. This was her bill, and in some ways, this bill still has her fingerprints on it,” Ball said. “She was a tireless advocate who believed the board reform was critical to delivering a quality transit system.”
