Democrat State Representative Lorena Garcia was appointed by a vacancy committee to her seat in the Colorado legislature after her predecessor resigned in 2023. She successfully passed a re-election bid in 2024 and is now serving out a full term in the statehouse.
Prior to that, Garcia worked at a number of nonprofits, landing in 2018 as the executive director of Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition (CSPC), a job she presently still holds.
Mirroring Garcia’s political rise among the majority Democrats at the Capitol, CSPC’s fortunes have also greatly improved. According to the nonprofit’s tax form 990, CSPC’s revenues when Garcia took the helm were about $517,000, growing by about five times to $2.7 million in 2023 (the last filing year available).
Clearly CSPC was pleased with Garcia’s leadership, since her salary went from $57,000 to $133,000 in the same period.
This in and of itself isn’t remarkable. It makes sense that those at the helm of a non-profit be compensated when the organization does better; it would, at least, be smart to align things that way. There is a plot twist here, however. CSPC’s revenues have ballooned in large part because of lots of state tax dollars flowing in.
Colorado runs a website called the Transparency Online Project (TOPS), a statewide database where, among other things, you can search to see who the state is paying, from what department, for what, etc. Think of it as an online register for Colorado’s checkbook.
I ran a report on the TOPS website to see what kinds of state money was going to CSPC, and then downloaded it as a spreadsheet. When you look at the numbers, it’s no wonder that CSPC is doing a land-office business. Since 2018, the non-profit has taken in $1.845 million in grants and other payouts from the state.
There’s more. If you zoom in on the numbers, you’ll see that the amounts really shoot up starting in January 2023, with a goodly number of grants after that date easily being triple the biggest payment for services rendered prior to 2023. If you run totals, you’ll find that 99.3% of the total money CSPC got from the state came after Garcia’s appointment as a state representative (also in January 2023).
None of this is illegal mind you, nor is it some kind of state secret. But just because something is legal doesn’t mean it can’t reek of swampwater. CSPC’s sudden rise in fortunes is a great example.
Things start to smell even worse when you note from CSPC’s 2023 tax filing that Garcia’s parents got a total of $60k for their own nonprofits funneled through CSPC. On that same form, you’ll also see that CSPC spent $48K on lobbying.
Ironic for one who styles herself a progressive that Garcia gaining a grip on the levers of state power coincides with new doors opening for CSPC; the kind that are closed off to rank and file Coloradans and politically unconnected non-profits. Perhaps I misunderstand that political ideology, but don’t progressives continually talk about standing up for those without power, those on the margins?
That ideology is hardly reflective of someone who got appointed to office, whose outside employment starts raking in government money after that appointment, and who spreads the taxpayer-funded love to family.
The discrepancy easily leads to questions about what Rep. Garcia truly believes in, and what is truly important to her.
Cory Gaines teaches college physics and is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. He also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack
