DENVER – Fort Lewis College President Dene Kay Thomas will have to wait another month for the resolution of an ethics complaint filed about a fundraising trip she took with her husband to Dubai.
Thomas, through the state attorney general’s office, had asked the Independent Ethics Commission to dismiss the anonymous complaint at a hearing Monday.
Although some of the five commissioners seemed ready to be done with the case, the commission’s own rules got in the way of a quick resolution.
Commissioners set Sept. 3 as the date to hear the case against Thomas and her motion for a quick dismissal.
“This has been a very disruptive event for the college, and they appreciate being able to resolve it as quickly as possible,” said Michelle Merz-Hutchinson, an assistant attorney general who represents the college.
The April 17 complaint was filed by a limited-liability company called Lark’s Wing. It alleges that Thomas violated the state constitution’s ethics amendment and the college’s own rules on travel reimbursement during a February fundraising trip to court donations from a wealthy alumnus, Sheik Adel Aujan.
No representative of Lark’s Wing LLC was at Monday’s meeting.
Aujan threw a dinner in Thomas’ honor at a posh hotel, which the complaint alleges was a violation on the gift ban to state officials. However, the constitution allows officials to accept meals if they give a speech at the event, which Thomas did.
Thomas also brought her husband, Gordon Thomas, on the trip and did personal sightseeing.
Thomas has said she brought her husband along out of respect for local customs, which might have made it hard to gain an audience with the sheik as an unaccompanied woman. She conducted college business on every day of the trip, she has said.
The college Board of Trustees and its fundraising foundation have backed her up and said she did nothing wrong.
Merz-Hutchinson filed a motion to dismiss the case, but the ethics commission has no rules to deal with such a motion. Commissioners decided they could entertain it at their next hearing, but the state constitution requires them to do an investigation before they can act on the complaint.
The Independent Ethics Commission was created after voters passed Amendment 41 in 2006. It changed the state constitution to require that every complaint brought before the commission be investigated and dealt with at a hearing, unless commissioners dismiss the complaint as frivolous.
The commission already decided that the complaint against Thomas was not frivolous. The standard for determining whether a complaint is frivolous is “not very high” and only requires commissioners to determine from the face of the complaint whether it could have any basis in law, said Jane Feldman, executive director of the Independent Ethics Commission.
Commissioners seemed frustrated that the process could not move faster.
“We really ought to be resolving these complaints as quickly as possible, and the process ought not get bogged down,” said William Leone, a member of the commission.
The complaint seeks a $29,800 fine, which it says is twice the alleged personal gain for Thomas, including $10,000 for the dinner, $3,400 for airfare and $1,400 in per diem.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
