Colorado State Treasurer

The Colorado State Treasurer is the head of the Colorado Department of the Treasury. This includes managing more than one hundred separate bank accounts and a variety of banking services for dozens of state agencies, managing the state’s investments, and ensuring accurate accounting.

The Department of Treasury includes a number of divisions and programs, including:

• Investments Division: Its mission is to provide investment programs that are safe, prudent, and appropriate for the public purpose of each fund, with rates of return consistently at or above performance benchmarks.
• Cash Management Division: provides efficient management of state receipts and disbursements, ensures effective banking services to state departments, and offers cash-management assistance to state departments and local governments.
• Accounting and Administrative Divisions: The titles for these divisions should be somewhat self-explanatory, but readers can visit the webpage for Treasury divisions and learn a great deal of information about state finances and what these divisions manage.

The Treasurer is elected to a four-year term, and elected Treasurers are limited to two four-year terms in office. The candidate with the most votes wins. There are three candidates on the ballot, so technically it would not be necessary for a candidate to get 50% or more to win.

Dave Young, Democratic

Dave Young

Dave Young is the incumbent Treasurer, having been elected to the position in 2018 when he beat Republican Brian Watson by 52.2% to 44.9%. Incidentally, Watson was recently charged with securities fraud, but not yet indicted, for actions including those taken during the time period of the 2018 campaign.

Young lives in Greeley, and served as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from 2011 until being sworn in as Treasurer.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Colorado State University, and a Masters in Information and Learning Technologies from CU Denver. He taught math, science, and technology in Greeley Weld 6 School District at Heath Junior High in Greeley from 1975 to 1999. He was active with the Greeley Education Association for twenty years, and served as President for the Greeley Education Association for two years.

Young then worked for two years as an information architect with iXL, an international Web design firm. He also worked as a senior instructor for the Information and Learning Technologies program at the University of Colorado – Denver.

He was first appointed to the Colorado House of Representatives in 2011, to represent House District 50, encompassing Greeley, Evans and Garden City. He was then elected to three consecutive two-year terms in HD 50. After the 2013 floods, he was appointed co-chair of the state’s Flood Disaster Study Committee. In 2014, he was appointed to the state’s Joint Budget Committee, where members immerse themselves in the budget process and provide recommendations to the General Assembly, and also chaired the House Appropriations Committee.

Beyond the day-to-day operation of the Department of Treasury, Young is or has been involved with a number of other entities and efforts, including:

PERA: The Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) is in short the primary pension fund for state employees, including K-12 educators. Young, in the Treasurer’s position, is an “ex-officio” member of the PERA Board of Directors. PERA manages benefits for about 630,000 state employees, and manages about $59 billion in assets. According to Young’s website, he supports maintaining the availability of deferred benefit (DB) PERA plans for employees, and he’s working to improve PERA’s long-term sustainability.

Part of PERA’s role in managing its assets involves investing funds for returns, and it earned a 20.3% return in 2019, 17.4% in 2020, and 16.1% in 2021. In 2022, Young played an active role in supporting HB 22-1029, which was signed into law and required the state government to pay back a statutorily-required $225 million payment to PERA it skipped in 2020 due to the pandemic, with interest.

Retirement for Non-PERA Coloradans: According to Young’s website, almost a million private-sector employees in Colorado don’t have access to retirement accounts through their work. The General Assembly established the Colorado Secure Savings program in 2020 through SB 20-200, a program that includes establishing a fund to be managed in the Department of Treasury, along with a governing board. Young supported SB-200 and testified on the bill during legislative committee hearings.

Pay Taxes With Crypto: This might just be a side note, but the Department of Treasury is now able to accept tax payments in cryptocurrency.

Unclaimed Property: According to the department’s Unclaimed Property web page, the state has returned more than $600 million worth of unclaimed property to the rightful owners, and the Department of Treasury manages these unclaimed assets. Who knows – readers of this very post on the Treasurer’s race might have unclaimed property on this list!

Campaign Website: https://www.daveyoungforcolorado.com/

Lang Sias, Republican

Lang Sias

Lang Sias is a former member of the Colorado House of Representatives, having represented House District 27 from 2015-2019. An Arvada resident, he is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, the London School of Economics and Vassar College.

As a Navy FA-18 pilot, Sias is a veteran of numerous overseas deployments, including combat missions in Operation Desert Storm. He also served as an Instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, where he led the training program and edited the Navy’s premier aviation tactics journal.

Transitioning to the Air National Guard, Lang flew F16’s and commanded a unit of ground-based forward air controllers in Kirkuk and Hawija, Iraq during the Second Gulf War. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard after twenty-seven years of active duty and reserve service.

Today, he serves on the state’s Pension Review Subcommittee, a group made up of current legislators and others tasked with studying and making recommendations regarding the Public Employees’ Retirement Association. He works as an international 777 pilot for FedEx.

While in the state legislature, Sias was the ranking member on the House Business Affairs & Labor Committee. He also served on the House Education Committee, the House Public Health and health exchange oversight committees, and the legislative Sales and Use Tax Simplification Task Force. He also served on the Jefferson County School Safety Task Force. Readers can look up his bill sponsorship record on the Colorado General Assembly website through this link.

His elections history includes: losing a U.S. House election in 2010; losing the Colorado Senate District 19 general election in 2012; losing a SD 19 Republican primary in 2014; being appointed to House District 27 in 2015; winning an HD 27 election in 2016; and running in an unsuccessful campaign as Walker Stapleton’s gubernatorial running mate in 2018.

His top issues for the Treasurer’s race include:

• Inflation: He believes state and federal policies are stoking inflation, making Colorado increasingly unaffordable, and that we’re not paying enough attention to what we’re getting for our money.
• Investments: Sias intends to make investments that are safe, liquid, and generate yield that equals or exceeds appropriate benchmarks.
• PERA: He wants to make sure pensions are secure and that the burdens on school districts and taxpayers are reasonable.

Campaign Website: https://siasforcolorado.com/

Anthony Delgado, Libertarian

As of early October 2022, I have not easily been able to find a campaign website for Delgado or any information about his campaign except that he lists a Fountain, Colorado address with his Secretary of State’s filings. If I find additional information, I will update.

Richard’s Take

Vote Young. He’s had a long and honorable career in public service, including four years on the Joint Budget Committee and four years in the Treasurer’s position. If there have been serious problems with the way the Department of Treasury has operated during Young’s tenure, I have not seen reports. And sorry, there has been inflation but it’s a worldwide phenomenon – it’s not anywhere near the fault of the Colorado Treasurer, who has no role in setting prices or determining federal monetary policy.

Sias has also had an honorable career in public service, though he does not have as much specific experience in public finance and the entire range of state budgeting as Young. At the legislative level, the difference between being a member of the Joint Budget Committee like Young and serving as a state Representative is profound in scope when it comes to comprehensive understanding of the full state budget. JBC members live, eat, and breathe budget. Other non-JBC legislators certainly have to follow the budget process and know the major components, so being a state Representative is good experience, but Young has also served as a state Representative for longer than Sias.

In looking through Sias’ website and media statements, I just didn’t see enough truly new or original proposals to make me think that there’s a need for a new Treasurer. Young has impressive relevant experience, and we should return him to office.