April 06, 2007 03:50 PM UTC

Lobbyist Angry About Inclusion In Ethics Complaint

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Rocky Mountain News reports:

A lobbyist allegedly involved in deceptive phone calls to voters about a construction-defects bill will be investigated by a legislative ethics panel.

The legislature’s top leaders voted Thursday to proceed with a complaint against William Mutch, executive director of Colorado Concern, a consortium of business leaders. The decision was made after a half-hour, closed-door session…

Rep. Alice Borodkin, D-Denver, one of two lawmakers who filed ethics complaints on Monday about the calls, said Mutch told her he didn’t know who was behind them.

In her complaint, Borodkin singled out Mutch and Steve Durham, a lobbyist for the Colorado Association of Home Builders. The leadership, however, decided not to proceed with a complaint against Durham, who said he was pleased by the decision.

Durham said he was frustrated that he was named in the first place. “It’s hard to see how this complaint was filed in good faith,” he said…

“If I was wrong about Steve Durham, I am sorry, but he could have told me where the calls came from,” Borodkin said. “The seniors in my district who got the calls said home builders were mentioned.”

Quite a bit of speculation has focused on whether or not Durham was drug into the complaint as an oblique attack on one of his other employers, Amendment 41 persona non grata Jared Polis. We took the bait yesterday after enough tongue-in-cheek references to Durham’s work for Polis made it clear this was being factored for irony.

Lobbyists may think twice about working for Polis in the future if they are singled out for opportunistic attacks like this. Which would be unfair, but that’s politics…