August 28, 2011 03:46 AM UTC

Full Meaning of Gessler Slashing Larimer GOP Fines Yet To Come

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic reports:

Editorial boards at the Fort Collins Coloradoan and at the Denver Post have admonished Secretary of State Scott Gessler for setting bad precedent when he decided that the scandal-plagued Larimer County Republican Party was merely negligent and not willful in allowing Chairman Larry Carillo to bilk party funds and ignore obligations to file campaign finance reports on $90,000 worth of contributions during the 2010 election season.

Gessler has made a career as a private attorney of opposing campaign finance regulations of all sorts and he has waged a steady battle against them as the state’s head of elections since he took office in January. With the Larimer GOP decision, he has provided a strategy outline for any political organization across the state looking to dodge responsibility for campaign finance wrongdoing. That strategy might come to be called the “Rogue Chairman Defense” or the “Carillo-Gessler Bail Out.”

The record of negligence in the Larimer case is not under dispute. There was no “good cause,” as Gessler put it in an op-ed, to fail to file six reports over the course of months. Throughout that time, the Secretary of State’s office was sending warning notices to the Larimer Party treasurer as well as to Carillo. That the treasurer, assigned specifically with the task of overseeing the chairman, had resigned and never been replaced was negligent. That the party never updated its staff listings to reflect the absence for communications purposes was negligent. That the party also failed to appoint an assistant treasurer was negligent. That this went on for years in an election cycle as money was pouring in and Carillo was skimming off the top is grossly negligent. What are the “good” reasons for that kind of falling down on the job?

Secretary of State Scott Gessler makes a wordy case how this large reduction in fines to the Larimer County Republican Party is justifiable, more or less by blaming the worst of it on former chairman Larry Carillo. But as we said before, and Tomasic notes above, you can’t lay these charges of years of fiduciary malfeasance on the chairman without reserving some blame for the Treasurer, or for that matter the roughly dozen people who were in a nominal oversight position over the chairman. Ex-Treasurer Terri Fassi resigned from her post, as did the previous Treasurer Matt Fries–but nobody ever asked questions about nastygrams piling up?

At the very least, what’s being excused by Gessler is more than simply being conned. This is excusing systemic negligence, and a situation that resulted in some $90,000 in political donations going unaccounted for during the 2010 elections. Wholly unrelated to the criminal actions of the Larimer County GOP chairman, this is just the latest in a long line of events that breed contempt for Colorado election law in general.

But for the moment, Gessler is probably fine absorbing the criticism he’s getting, deflecting with his little study showing how most violators are small entities who don’t have legal staffs–you know, we need to be benevolent to little guys who want to get involved in politics, right?

And to be completely fair, maybe Gessler really is the forgiving type when it comes to election law transgressions, and the Gessler era will be a wonderful period of learning and growth for everyone lucky enough to participate in the political process. After all, he was the GOP’s election law defense attorney. But between Gessler’s consuming determination to root out “at least 106” immigrants on the voter rolls, and his involvement with personally loyal attack groups like CoGAP to harass political opponents…well, you’d be kind of stupid to not fear the worst.

Either way, you’ll know the truth when a Democrat gets, or doesn’t get, the same treatment.