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:
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.
Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., the parent company of the Columbine Courier, Canyon Courier and High Timber Times, filed paperwork Wednesday in Jefferson County District Court alleging the county commissioners violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law.
The lawsuit, which alleges the commissioners met July 5 with county workers to discuss the board's future budget options without posting adequate prior notice, asks for a district judge to rule that the county did in fact violate the law by failing to post public notice of the event, as required by the Open Meetings Law...
Two of the three Jefferson County commissioners have since acknowledged that the policy-setting board violated the Open Meetings Law by failing to post public notice of the July 5 meeting.
Democratic Commissioner Kathy Hartman and Republican Jim Congrove each acknowledged after the meeting in question that the board should not have met without posting notice.
Republican Commissioner Kevin McCasky has vehemently denied that he, or the board, did anything wrong. He previously told the Courier it was "inappropriate for the press to be here."
When asked how the public could be certain the commission is not making important decisions when it holds meetings but fails to notify the public, McCasky responded: “You can never know that.”
The trouble is, the law says differently. Unambiguously. To prevent exactly the kind of high-handed, illegal blowoff McCasky gave the Canyon Courier. McCasky has clarified once and for all which side of the law he's on...
We've been talking for months now about the web of scandals lining up to take apart the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners. It's been a story about a singularly corrupt elected official, commissioner Jim Congrove, aided and abetted at every step by fellow commissioner Kevin McCasky in a bizarre set of improprieties, treachery, and retaliation against all critics.
Note that we've always factored McCasky in a supporting role--an enabler of Congrove's legally dubious activities as opposed to the instigator. But it seems McCasky is quite capable of disregarding the law on his own, even in cases where Congrove wouldn't dare. As the Canyon Courier reports:
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has completed its inquiry into Jefferson County officials who authorized the use of public funds to pay for a private investigator to spy on citizens and former county employees.
The agency has scheduled a “closed-door meeting” to be held July 16, in which investigators will present their findings to the Adams County district attorney’s office. Adams DA Don Quick was named a special prosecutor in the matter in late March, because of the inherent conflict of interest that Jefferson County DA Scott Story would face by potentially prosecuting elected officials who control his office’s budget.
It seems not more than a few weeks go by these days before we hear another damaging story involving Jefferson County's so-called "Three Kings of Corruption," former Treasurer Mark Paschall and County Commissioners Kevin McCasky and Jim Congrove.
A former Arvada bank worker has filed a civil lawsuit naming County Commissioner Jim Congove, a private detective who is a personal friend of Congrove, and the entire Board of County Commissioners as defendants.
Lori Stille, formerly an employee at a Washington Mutual branch office in Arvada who worked as a personal financial representative for Congrove from 2002 to March 2005, filed the suit Thursday in Jefferson County District Court...
...[Daril] Cinquanta's role as a private investigator is currently at the heart of an ongoing Colorado Bureau of Investigation probe into why the county used public funds to pay Cinquanta to do spy work. The county paid Cinquanta nearly $7,500 in taxpayer funds over a 16-month period to conduct surveillance on a still-unknown number of citizens and county employees. Stille's lawsuit specifically alleges that Congrove used the public funds to "cover the costs of the investigations."
A special prosecutor has been named in the case, and is awaiting the results of the CBI investigation before deciding if any of the commissioners at the time should face criminal charges, potentially for a misuse of public funds. Commissioner Kathy Hartman was not in office when the county was employing Cinquanta, which it stopped doing late last year.
The list of corrupt activities just continues to grow for these jokers. McCasky signed off on Congrove's private investigations and once had a mute button installed to cut off public comments at county commissioner meetings. Congrove is always rumored to be on the verge of indictment, and Paschall is awaiting arraignment for allegedly attempting to solicit a kickback from a county employee.
There's more on the latest troubles after the jump from The Courier.
The widespread corruption within the Jefferson County government has been gaining more attention in recent months as one official after another ends up in the crosshairs of a criminal investigation. But Colorado apparently isn't the only state with a problematic Jefferson County. Check out this post from "Doc's Political Parlour" in Alabama:
In case you missed it last week, John Archibald of The Birmingham News wishes more people were outraged at the shenanigans in Jefferson County:
What do Jefferson County residents do when they find they've been robbed blind by debt, misspending, waste, bribery, corruption and stupidity? Nothing. They sit like lumps, still wondering if the county will build that dome.
As much as these things have been reported, you don't hear of the citizens' revolt that you might expect.
It's hard to say who has the more corrupt Jefferson County: Colorado or Alabama. The latest news from Colorado's Jefferson County is after the jump.
