We've seen the lengthy list of those opposed to Amendment 48, the "personhood" amendment. But the YES campaign's website also has its own list of supporters. Some of the names on the list, like right-wing Rep. Kevin Lundberg are no surprise, but other names on the list are a little surprising given a) how extreme this measure - and thus its supporters - can be portrayed, and b) the likelihood that it will be badly beaten at the polls.
Take a look after the jump and tell us who surprises you most.
This is a major setback for our infamous Republican commissioners here in Jefferson County, whose Byzantine cronyism and culture of payback against citizens has embarrassed us for too long.
Check out the latest from the Columbine Courier:
A judge has approved the addition of County Commissioner Jim Congrove and former assistant county attorney Duncan Bradley as defendants in a federal lawsuit involving alleged wiretapping and character defamation.
Mike Zinna, a longtime county gadfly who has been involved in several lawsuits against the county, has alleged for two years that Congrove, Bradley and private investigator Daril Cinquanta, while he was working for the county, illegally intercepted Zinna's e-mails and phone calls. Zinna says they used the materials to defame him on a website, www.coloradowackoexposed.com. Records show the site was established by Robert Cook of Lakewood, who Zinna alleges is a friend of Congrove. The site apparently was a response to the website Zinna operated skewering Jeffco public officials, www.coloradoexposed.com.
The county tried to prevent Congrove and Bradley from being added as defendants, but an Oct. 6 ruling did just that. A status conference has been set for Nov. 25 in federal court in Denver...
"I think the judge's ruling speaks for itself," Zinna said. "There exists in this case substantial forensic computer evidence and sworn statements from at least seven individuals, all of whom are friends or co-workers of the accused in this case. Furthermore, a significant portion of the (Colorado Bureau of Investigation's) independent investigation substantiates the wiretapping allegations."
Congrove, whose second term as commissioner will end in January, said he couldn't comment on the matter "until it's all over with."
Kevin McCasky, the third county commissioner, said: "I am not a party to this case; however, this individual that is bringing the suit has never prevailed in any suit against the county or any of our employees. I don't expect him to prevail in this one, either."
"How can I be expected to prevail when county attorneys are wiretapping my house?" Zinna said. "... Jefferson County attorneys have outspent me 10-to-1 trying to stall this case, and now we're finally going to trial."
Most readers will agree the general narrative about the government in Jefferson County over the last few years has been a little problematic image-wise, what with the elected officials wearing jailhouse orange, the county-paid private investigators, the secret mute button commissioner Kevin McCasky installed in their meeting room's public microphones, et cetera.
But we don't think we're nearly imaginative enough to come up with what the Columbine Courier reported this week:
Former Jefferson County Attorney Frank Hutfless "joked" in 2006 about having a county critic who is suing Jeffco killed, according to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report.
Hutfless made the remarks about longtime county critic Mike Zinna on two separate occasions to County Administrator Jim Moore, according to the report. Moore was interviewed by the CBI on Feb. 21, 2007, as part of the agency's investigation into whether Commissioner Jim Congrove improperly used county funds to hire a private eye to investigate county critics and county employees. The report was part of the investigation turned over to the Adams County District Attorney's Office, which declined to pursue charges in the Congrove case.
The first alleged "joke" occurred Feb. 22, 2006, after a contentious county commissioners' meeting Zinna attended. After the meeting, another meeting was held, attended by the then-commissioners - Kevin McCasky, Jim Congrove and Dave Auburn -and Hutfless and Moore. Hutfless told the group he had spoken to a law firm that could "take care of" Zinna, and that he would get a proposal. Hutfless further said that " 'the company can do anything including having a person shot,' " the CBI report reads. [Pols emphasis] Moore told the investigators he didn't take the comments seriously...
The second "joke" came on March 1, 2006, when Hutfless stopped by Moore's office and told him he had spoken to a California law firm about Zinna, and the firm wanted $14,000 to conduct a "threat assessment."
Hutfless then allegedly told Moore, according to the CBI report, "that he had friends in California that have 'Mafia ties,' and he could 'make one phone call and have Zinna taken care of.' " The report then outlines how Hutfless told Moore about two people who had been relocated to different countries by Mafia friends. They were "given $10,000 and a plane ticket, and told it was either this way or the other way."
" 'It happens all the time; no one ever knows what happens,' " the report said Hutfless told Moore. " 'People just disappear; how easy it is to fly someone out over the Pacific Ocean dropping them out of an airplane; there is no trace.' " [Pols emphasis]
Now, it's important to note that nobody seems to remember this conversation, except for the Colorado Bureau of Investigations:
Earlier this month, a special prosecutor decided there wasn't enough evidence to file criminal charges against Congrove for allegedly hiring a private investigator with public money.
Adams County District Attorney Don Quick said in a 71-page report detailing a lengthy state investigation into allegations involving Congrove that some of Congrove's actions were "very troubling."
Former Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall goes on trial this week on charges that the Republican official solicited a kickback from a former employee. As the Rocky Mountain News reports:
The former state lawmaker faces two felony charges for allegedly asking a top aide last year to give him a $9,000 cut of a $25,000 bonus he had approved. Paschall, 53, was indicted by a Jefferson County grand jury in January...
...Kathy Redmond, a longtime acquaintance whom Paschall hired as his administrative coordinator in 2003, alerted authorities after she said he tried to get her to go along with the kickback scheme.
Redmond and other county officials will be witnesses at the trial, which is expected to conclude by the end of the week.
The evidence includes a taped conversation in which Paschall appears to have solicited the money. In the tape, Paschall told Redmond that the bonus would amount to $18,000 after taxes and he expected her to give him half, according to the indictment.
Redmond told Paschall that she wanted "no part of his offer" and warned he would be criticized for paying her a bonus that amounted to almost half her annual salary, the indictment said.
Redmond's bonus was nearly half of $50,000 in bonuses Paschall doled out as he left office.
A fiscal conservative who promised to keep an eye on taxpayer dollars, Paschall was defeated for a second term in August 2006.
Paschall is one of three Republican officials in Jefferson County also known as the "Three Kings of Corruption." Along with Commissioners Kevin McCasky and Jim Congrove, who have a litany of abuses in their own right, the three officials ran amok for years at the Taj Mahal with little media coverage to keep them (relatively) honest until more attention has been paid in recent months.
Former Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall, one leg of the so-called "Kings of Corruption" in Jeffco (along with Commissioners Kevin McCasky and Jim Congrove) is apparently going to have his day in court after all. As The Canyon Courier reports:
Former Jefferson County treasurer Mark Paschall has either not been offered a plea bargain, or he has failed to agree on one with prosecutors by the court-imposed Aug. 5 deadline for filing such an arrangement.
According to court records, Paschall has not reached an agreement on pleading guilty to anything less than the lead charge of attempted felony theft.
He also faces one count of compensation for past official behavior for allegedly soliciting a kickback from a $25,000 bonus he offered to a former political appointee after he lost his bid for re-election last November.
Paschall will face a jury trial set to begin on Oct. 16 in Jefferson County. The trial is expected to last up to four days.
We've written before about the scandals that have plagued the Jefferson County government, but one Republican official just doesn't seem to understand how bad he looks in trying to hide everything he does.
Commissioner Kevin McCasky once installed a mute button at county commissioner meetings in order to cut off public comments that he doesn't like, and he has given The Canyon Courier the middle finger when it comes to obeying by the open meetings law.
A Courier story in November 2006 reported that all three then-county commissioners were violating Jeffco’s policy, and possibly Internal Revenue Service rules, by failing to keep records of the time they spent in county-owned vehicles.
Shortly after that story was published, the county acknowledged a “breakdown in communications” had led to several violations, and promised a complete revamp of the vehicle policy “early in 2007."...
...On Monday, the county had not complied with most of the records request, made under the Colorado Open Records Act on July 30. Although the law requires the county to at least set a date when the records will become available to the public within three days of receiving a request, the Courier has received no such answer.
However, Democratic Commissioner Kathy Hartman, who promised publicly during her campaign for office last year that she would fully document her time in county vehicles and while on county business, appears to have lived up to her word.
Hartman personally sent the Courier her vehicle records, which include very detailed information on where she spends her work time, who she meets with and how much she has been reimbursed by the county for miles driven in her personal vehicle while on official business.
Republican Commissioner Kevin McCasky said Friday he would not disclose his detailed logs at all, saying they were not public records.[Pols emphasis]
There's a good long article in Westword this week about Canyon Courier reporter Heath Urie and his efforts to make officials in Jefferson County more accountable. If you've been following the rampant corruption among Republican elected officials in Jefferson County - from Commissioners Jim Congrove and Kevin McCasky to former Treasuer Mark Paschall - this is an interesting read:
Reporter Heath Urie has faced plenty of obstacles while covering Jefferson County for the Columbine Courier newspaper, and he's convinced that many of them were placed before him improperly. "When it comes to open-records laws and open-meetings laws, they are clueless," he says, "and it's frustrating as hell."
Rather than simply grousing about the situation, however, Urie, in concert with Landmark Community Newspapers of Colorado, the Courier's owner, is trying to improve it. On July 23, the parties filed a complaint in Jefferson County District Court against Jeffco's Board of Commissioners — Republicans Jim Congrove and Kevin McCasky, and Democrat Kathy Hartman — over a July 5 meeting that Urie and company believe was staged in violation of the Colorado Open Meetings Law...
...On one occasion, he remembers being given the boot because the commissioners were supposedly seeking legal advice, only to subsequently overhear them talking about how best to handle persistent critic Mike Zinna during public-comment segments. (One person suggested letting Zinna have his say only after the room had been cleared.) On another, Jeffco officials refused to provide documents about commissioners' work schedules, ostensibly because doing so might help terrorists pinpoint their locations — a laughable assertion rendered even sillier by the fact that Jeffco gave the same material to the Courier two years earlier.
The story goes on to chronicle what appear to be conscious decisions to evade public meeting requirements, but at least Congrove and fellow Commissioner Kathy Hartman (the only Democrat on the board) had enough sense to realize the violation later. But McCasky, who once had a 'mute' button installed behind his desk to shut off public comments at meetings, remains absurdly defiant:
In contrast, McCasky, who spoke with Urie at meeting's end, firmly believed the commissioners had done nothing wrong. "He took the attitude that we had no business covering a meeting talking about the budget with county employees," Urie reports. "He said he'd seen Supreme Court decisions that gave him the right to meet with any of the commissioners at any time without public notice as long as they weren't making a decision or they didn't have the potential to make a decision," much in the same way they could consult over the phone or via e-mail. To Urie, this philosophy "raised a lot of red flags. If that's what he's telling us, how many conversations are going on in the building that are leading to decisions or influencing decisions that we don't know about?"
Along with the Westword story, The Denver Post weighed in on the matter over the weekend. The spotlight is finally shining on the Republican "Kings of Corruption" in Jefferson County.
