There’ll be no official penalties for Colorado Concern lobbyist William Mutch stemming from his deceitful robocalls to targeted house districts over a homeowner’s protection bill in the legislature this spring, as the Rocky Mountain News reports:
State House and Senate leaders have accepted an ethics panel’s recommendation not to punish a lobbyist, even though fact- finders concluded that he engaged in deceptive practices.
Colorado Concern, an alliance of business leaders, arranged -robo “survey” calls in March, during which people were told that trial attorneys were pressuring elected officials to favor a “trial lawyer home tax” that would permit attorneys to collect fees when houses were sold or rented…
House Majority Leader Alice Madden, another member of the committee, said that while Mutch may have been exercising his First Amendment right, the incident raises concerns about trusting him in the future.
Madden pointed out that the investigative panel’s report describes Mutch’s behavior as “deceitful” and “reprehensible.”
“When you talk to a lobbyist you have to know they’re telling you the truth,” she said. “It would be difficult to have to deal with him.”
Which, absent the will to enforce the rules as they could have (we still believe that Mutch did violate the truthfulness rule governing interaction with legislators, however indirectly), is the best one can hope for. Maybe he’ll be back next session, or maybe he’ll discover the advantages of lobbying in, say, Kansas where nobody knows him. After this disgraceful spectacle, that’s what we’d recommend.
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I hate this decision. It basically green lighted the tactic. Things are going to get ugly.
Don’t gloat GOP, D’s aren’t unilaterally disarming, and innovations are adopted bythe other side in the next cycle.
I don’t think this green lights the tactics. No one at the Capitol wants to start emulating Mutch’s tactics, especially if they get the kind of press Mutch received throughout the session.
I think that lobbyists should be required to disclose all the insurance companies that pay, including re-insurers. I had a really bad bad experience with Lloyds of London defense including over 25 attorney bills for otherwise unrecorded ex parte conferences, active witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice by interfering with the admission of evidence and records. I read that Lloyds/Beazley is now selling contractor’s liability and architect’s liability insurance.
There is a current big scandal outside Chicago where a big development of expensive homes blow down in the wind. They had to erect permanent steel scaffolding to hold them up. This was just regular weather for the region.
Why did Lloyd’s sell insurance in Colorado when it is not registered with DORA?
These international insurance companies are whom you have to watch? Did you know that hundreds of them have started in Bermuda and are advertising themselves as a way to avoid liability? They don’t have the regulatory structures in Bermuda and they lobby to soften the regulatory structures in the states.