May 17, 2008 06:11 PM UTC

The Creepiest Jeffco Corruption Story Ever

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Most readers will agree the general narrative about the government in Jefferson County over the last few years has been a little problematic image-wise, what with the elected officials wearing jailhouse orange, the county-paid private investigators, the secret mute button commissioner Kevin McCasky installed in their meeting room’s public microphones, et cetera.

But we don’t think we’re nearly imaginative enough to come up with what the Columbine Courier reported this week:

Former Jefferson County Attorney Frank Hutfless “joked” in 2006 about having a county critic who is suing Jeffco killed, according to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report.

Hutfless made the remarks about longtime county critic Mike Zinna on two separate occasions to County Administrator Jim Moore, according to the report. Moore was interviewed by the CBI on Feb. 21, 2007, as part of the agency’s investigation into whether Commissioner Jim Congrove improperly used county funds to hire a private eye to investigate county critics and county employees. The report was part of the investigation turned over to the Adams County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to pursue charges in the Congrove case.

The first alleged “joke” occurred Feb. 22, 2006, after a contentious county commissioners’ meeting Zinna attended. After the meeting, another meeting was held, attended by the then-commissioners – Kevin McCasky, Jim Congrove and Dave Auburn -and Hutfless and Moore. Hutfless told the group he had spoken to a law firm that could “take care of” Zinna, and that he would get a proposal. Hutfless further said that ” ‘the company can do anything including having a person shot,’ ” the CBI report reads. [Pols emphasis] Moore told the investigators he didn’t take the comments seriously…

The second “joke” came on March 1, 2006, when Hutfless stopped by Moore’s office and told him he had spoken to a California law firm about Zinna, and the firm wanted $14,000 to conduct a “threat assessment.”

Hutfless then allegedly told Moore, according to the CBI report, “that he had friends in California that have ‘Mafia ties,’ and he could ‘make one phone call and have Zinna taken care of.’ ” The report then outlines how Hutfless told Moore about two people who had been relocated to different countries by Mafia friends. They were “given $10,000 and a plane ticket, and told it was either this way or the other way.”

” ‘It happens all the time; no one ever knows what happens,’ ” the report said Hutfless told Moore. ” ‘People just disappear; how easy it is to fly someone out over the Pacific Ocean dropping them out of an airplane; there is no trace.’ ” [Pols emphasis]

Now, it’s important to note that nobody seems to remember this conversation, except for the Colorado Bureau of Investigations:

A CBI agent called Hutfless and asked him about the comments, and Hutfless said he was frustrated over Zinna at the time and “probably did make those statements out of frustration.”

“I don’t recall saying anything like that,” Hutfless said May 13 in a phone interview with the Courier. “If they were made, it wasn’t with any kind of serious intent.” He added that if he did make the comments, they were made with “tongue in cheek.”

When asked if it was appropriate for a Jefferson County official to even joke about having a critic and litigant killed, Hutfless said, “Probably not. If those kinds of things were said, it probably wouldn’t be.” He further denied having any friends in the Mafia or knowing how to have someone “relocated.”

McCasky said May 13 that he never heard Hutfless make the comments during the Feb. 22, 2006, meeting, and never heard anything from Moore…

“I’m not going to speculate as to what I would have done two years ago on this matter without the facts,” McCasky said. “I don’t have any facts in front of me.”

“In no way, shape or form would the Board of County Commissioners, in any stretch of the imagination, condone or support any kind of talk like having anyone killed or anything like that,” McCasky said May 14.

Yeah but we are talking about it, aren’t we? Huftless no longer works for Jefferson County, but during his term there he was involved with the shadier aspects of commission dealings at the highest levels. If you’re wondering at this moment how many other nagging problems the county had that Huftless might have proposed Mafia-related solutions for, you’re probably not alone. And we don’t want to get alarmist about this, but it doesn’t seem to have merely been a one-time joke: apparently Huftless had a quote for the, ah, “services.” If you absolutely, positively need somebody rubbed out, the going Sicilian rate is $14,000.

We can understand why this wouldn’t exactly be open session material.

Apropos, the Courier notes:

It’s unclear whether that meeting was legal under the Colorado Open Meetings Law. Public meetings – at which at least two public officials converse about public business – require at least a 24-hour public notice, according to state law. “Frank Hutfless interpreted the law, and he believed he could give legal advice to the Board of County Commissioners without the meeting being posted,” McCasky said May 14.

Apparently, the most horrible “joke” imaginable coming from a public official (and that is the most charitable spin you can put on this) comes under the heading of legal advice. It’s cool, we’ve seen enough Al Pacino movies to get this part.

In Colorado, we complain about corruption in government a little (sometimes even going a little overboard), but mostly we make jokes about things like this being routine in Chicago or New York or whatever, confident that nothing of the kind actually happens here…