April 25, 2007 04:25 PM UTC

Two Can Play At That Game

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The GOP will see Democrats’ ethics complaints and raise them one, the Rocky Mountain News reports:

A Republican lawmaker filed an ethics complaint against an education lobbyist on Tuesday, saying she was “deceptive” in an e-mail urging support for the governor’s property tax plan.

Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, is the lone lawmaker involved, although his letter to the Senate president and House speaker begins, “We are formally lodging a complaint.”

He named Lynne Garramone Mason, the lobbyist for the Colorado Education Association. CEA spokeswoman Deborah Fallin called the complaint baseless, and said it was nothing more than a political attack on Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

It is the second ethics complaint filed this year against a lobbyist. In both cases, the lobbyist is accused of using deception in attempts to pass or kill a bill.

In Mason’s case, she sent an “action alert” e-mail about Ritter’s plan to raise money for schools by stabilizing property tax rates. Mason said the plan would take the pressure off of “future cuts to K-12,” which Lambert said was false. He said that under the voter-approved Amendment 23 “it is impossible to cut K-12 funding.”

Lambert is wrong, said Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, who helped put Amendment 23 on the 2000 ballot before he was a lawmaker. Romer said Amendment 23 protects about 95 percent of school funding, but not special programs, discretionary spending, capital construction and such.

Mason also maintained that Ritter’s proposal is not a tax increase, while Lambert and nearly every GOP lawmaker argue it is…

If there’s a legitimate claim here, as there appears to be with the investigation proceeding against Colorado Concern erstwhile chairman William Mutch over robocalls targeting Democrats, then Republicans made a smart move by calling it out. Astute observers will remember the unexpected gift Sen. Deanna “Reparations” Hanna handed Republicans just as the scandal around then-Minority Leader Joe Stengel’s 24/7 per diem pay was exploding.

If there isn’t a legitimate claim against the CEA, on the other hand, then Lambert’s complaint will be quickly discredited as tit-for-tat nonsense and halted with much fanfare–which would be bad for the GOP’s credibility in general. And with Democrats running the show, Lambert had better have a more or less airtight case or that’s exactly what will happen.