Taxpayers will cover the legal bills for 15 Democratic state lawmakers who face ethics complaints related to a dark money-funded weekend retreat held in Vail last month.
The Legislature’s Committee on Legal Services, a bipartisan panel, voted unanimously Thursday to hire attorney Mark Grueskin of the firm Recht Kornfeld to represent the Democrats. He will be paid $250 an hour for his work.
The Committee on Legal Services regularly approves publicly funded legal counsel for lawmakers who are sued or face other legal issues in their official capacity. Work on any future appeals for the 15 Democrats, should they arise, will have to go back to the committee for approval.
“My vote is rooted in a simple principle that everyone deserves access to counsel,” said state Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat who sits on the Committee on Legal Services and has been critical of the Vail gathering. “That principle does not waver one inch from my deep conviction that corporate dark money groups and the ultra wealthy exert far too much influence over our political system.”
The Democrats who requested taxpayer-funded legal representation are: Sens. Lindsey Daugherty of Arvada, Marc Snyder of Manitou Springs, Judy Amabile of Boulder and Dafna Michaelson Jenet of Commerce City, and Reps. Sean Camacho of Denver, Tisha Mauro of Pueblo, William Lindstedt of Broomfield, Michael Carter of Aurora, Jacque Phillips of Thornton, Meghan Lukens of Steamboat Springs, Matthew Martinez of Monte Vista, Katie Stewart of Durango, Rebekah Stewart of Lakewood, Karen McCormick of Longmont, and Cecelia Espenoza of Denver.
Democratic Sen. Kyle Mullica of Thornton, who also faces a complaint, did not request publicly funded representation. Mullica declined to comment Thursday on his decision.
All 16 are members of the Opportunity Caucus, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that doesn’t disclose its donors and is what The Sun refers to as a dark money group.
The ethics complaints, filed earlier this month by Colorado Common Cause, a liberal-leaning nonprofit that advocates for an open government, allege the 16 lawmakers violated Colorado’s prohibition on elected officials receiving gifts when they attended a retreat in Vail where they mingled with lobbyists at a ritzy hotel over the Oct. 4 weekend.
The Opportunity Caucus organized the gathering.
The state’s Independent Ethics Commission voted Tuesday to advance the complaints and will now investigate the allegations.
Colorado Common Cause dropped its complaint against a 17th lawmaker, Democratic state Rep. Shannon Bird of Westminster, on Thursday. Bird did not attend the Vail retreat and resigned as chair of the Opportunity Caucus in August.
Earlier this week, the Opportunity Caucus called the complaints factually inaccurate, but did not provide a list of inaccuracies.
The gift ban is an amendment to the Colorado Constitution approved by voters in 2006 that says a lawmaker who is a scheduled speaker or participant at an event is allowed to have a nonprofit organization pay for their “reasonable expenses,” but only if the nonprofit receives less than 5% of its funding from for-profit organizations.
The complaints allege that another dark-money nonprofit organization, One Main Street, provided $25,000 to the Opportunity Caucus to cover the cost of the hotel rooms at the event and also provided funds for food and drinks. The complaints allege that since One Main Street does not disclose its donors, none of the lawmakers who attended the Vail event could ensure that only 5% of the group’s funding is from for-profit organizations.
The Opportunity Caucus and One Main Street have declined to provide a list of their donors when asked by The Sun. By law, they don’t have to disclose their funders.
The Committee on Legal Services has approved taxpayer-funded legal counsel for state lawmakers facing alleged gift ban violations in the past, Ed DeCecco, who leads the Legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Committee on Legal Services, told the panel.
The committee agreed to fund an attorney for then-state Rep. Kim Ransom, R-Douglas County, who faced a gift ban complaint in 2016. The Independent Ethics Commission found there was no violation of the gift ban in Ransom’s case.
In 2017, the committee agreed to fund an attorney for then-state Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, in a gift ban case. The Independent Ethics Commission found Marble violated the gift ban. She appealed to the Denver District Court, which sent the case back to the commission.
The commission declined to retake the case, DeCecco said.
Two Democratic members of the Committee on Legal Services – Camacho and Sen. Dylan Roberts of Frisco – recused themselves from Thursday’s vote. Camacho and Roberts both attended the Vail retreat at the center of the ethics complaints.
Roberts does not face an ethics complaint because he did not stay overnight, according to Colorado Common Cause.
