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.
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.
Over the last several months we've been chronicling the strange saga that is Jefferson County Republican politics, and yesterday the editorial board of The Denver Post weighed in with their opinion"
Congratulations, Jefferson County. Your county commissioners have once again made Jeffco look like a backwater.
In this episode, commissioners almost certainly violated Colorado law by failing to give public notice of a meeting they held on the 2008 budget.
Commissioners Jim Congrove, Kathy Hartman and Kevin McCasky should have known better. The explanation from Congrove and Hartman, boiled down to its essence, was "oops." McCasky was unrepentant, saying he didn't think the news media had any business being there.
If this were the first time elected Jeffco officials had run afoul of the law, it'd be one thing. But the county has a tradition of flouting laws and civilized behavior...
...The gaffe threatens to be another episode in Jeffco's sorry government traditions. Who can forget the Pinky T episode? Commissioner Rick Sheehan's wife was caught sending raunchy faxes to a government critic in an effort to get the gadfly to publish the libelous material. Sheehan resigned in disgrace and cost the county more than $60,000 in legal bills.
Also, a special prosecutor is investigating allegations that the county used public money to spy on private citizens after Congrove and McCasky urged former county attorney Frank Hutfless to hire the investigator.
The other notorious image that haunts Jeffco is Mark Paschall in jail-issued orange togs. The former treasurer was indicted earlier this year in an alleged kickback scheme.
The citizens of Jefferson County have been putting up with dysfunctional government for far too long. They deserve better, and no one should be surprised if they voice their displeasure at the ballot box.
Sheehan is no longer around, nor is Paschall, but the rest of the so-called "Kings of Corruption" - Commissioners Kevin McCasky and Jim Congrove continue to rule with a paper mache fist.
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.
Former Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall, one leg of the triumverate titled the "Three Kings of Corruption" (along with Commissioners Kevin McCasky and Jim Congrove), finally appeared in court today, as The Canyon Courier reports:
Former Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall appeared in court Friday where he told a district judge he was not guilty of attempting to solicit a kickback from a former political appointee.
Paschall stood quietly while his attorney, David Lane, entered the plea for the high-profile Republican.
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.
Paschall is accused of having solicited a kickback from a $25,000 bonus he offered to a former political appointee shortly before he left office after losing the 2006 election to fellow Republican Faye Griffin.
He remains free on bond until the trial.
Reportedly there is an audiotape that exists of Paschall soliciting the kickback, so things could get pretty stick for him.
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.
