“Voters have a right to know who is speaking in the run-up to the elections with regard to candidates and ballot issues,” Assistant Attorney General Andrew Huff told District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena on Wednesday, according to the Billings Gazette. “That’s a major part of all of these disclosure frameworks. They allow voters to get the information they need, to know who is making expenditures and contributions.”

ExxonMobil oil in the Yellowstone River in Montana.

An attorney for ATP, Jim Brown of Helena, told the judge, “We have the right to make sure constitutional laws are being applied and the commissioner (of political practices) followed the correct process and applied correct Montana laws.” Judge Sherlock reportedly will rule on the case at a later date.

ATP’s Colorado ties run deeper than first being registered in this state in 2008 by Republican operative Scott Shires. The group ran notorious campaign fliers targeting state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass, in the 2010 election, prompting calls for tougher state campaign disclosure laws aimed at 501(c)4 groups. And it filed suit challenging Colorado’s renewable energy standard, which is one of the most aggressive in the nation and has been repeatedly championed by Schwartz.

Last year, then Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth ruled that WTP’s campaign of anonymous fliers targeting Democrats and some moderate Republicans seeking state legislative offices “raised the specter of corruption” and should be the subject of a formal complaint by the attorney general’s office. The Montana AG wants Judge Sherlock to reject the group’s attempts to have the complaints thrown out and to allow the cases to go to trial.

Last summer, in the wake of a massive ExxonMobil pipeline failure that spilled oil into the Yellowstone River, ATP Executive Director Donald Ferguson flew to the site of the spill to defend the company’s actions and decry environmentalist complaints.

One of the property owners impacted by the spill was a moderate Republican who still has a complaint pending against WTP for fliers mailed out during her 2010 bid for the state legislature.

Unsworth, in his report on the group last year, cited its actions in a 2008 Garfield County commissioner race in Colorado, where two Democrats were defeated by an influx of oil and gas money. WTP sent out mailers in that race, and Shires was fined for campaign finance violations and defended by former conservative election attorney Scott Gessler, who is now Colorado’s secretary of state.

Scott Gessler

Gessler revealed the proposed changes when asked by the Post how he would view requests to reduce the nearly $100,000 in fines amassed by the Larimer County Republican Party for failing to file disclosure reports – a story broken by the Fort Collins Coloradoan this week.

Larry Carillo, former Larimer County Republican Party chairman, told the Coloradoan he just didn’t open certified letters from the SOS because he assumed they would just tell him he needed to file reports, something he was clearly unwilling to do.

“If someone is willfully blowing it off, yes, that merits a higher fine,” Gessler told the Post. Gessler represented a group called the Colorado Independent Auto Dealers Association that had its fines for failing to file reports dropped from more than $504,000 to just under $8,500 – a story that came up during his campaign last fall but failed to gain traction with voters.

And Gessler also represented a group called the Colorado League of Taxpayers, incorporated by Republican operative Scott Shires, that was hit with a more than $7,000 fine for failing to register its electioneering activities in a 2008 Garfield County commissioners race that pitted oil and gas interests against two Democrats who ultimately lost. Fines in that case grew to more than $8,000 and went unpaid for years.

Shires was the original registered agent for Western Tradition Partnership, a conservative, pro-energy nonprofit active for years in a slew of elections across the West. But Gessler’s law firm, which earlier this year he tried to continue working for even while serving as secretary of state, took over the registration of Western Tradition, which was sharply criticized for its campaign tactics during the past election cycle.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Colorado State Senator Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, said she missed an opportunity to head off the controversy now surrounding newly elected Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Carroll had been weighing whether or not to introduce legislation that would have set strict disclosure laws for the secretary of state’s office in particular and tightened state worker conflict-of-interest laws in general. She didn’t introduce that bill but that doesn’t mean a legislative response to the Gessler controversy is off the table, she said.

“We’re a little bit late on bills, and at this point the election is done. [The legislation] would have helped us out… on what a candidate would need to disclose, on qualifications for the candidate. It [can't] fix the immediate problem,” Carroll told the Colorado Independent. For now “[Gessler] is going to have to put his role as a public officer ahead of any private financial consideration. If he can’t do that, he shouldn’t be in public office.”

News outlets have been reporting since Friday on Gessler’s plan during his term as Secretary of State to moonlight as a contract attorney for the Hackstaff Law Group, the state’s most high-profile and unabashedly partisan elections and campaign finance firm. Gessler was a founding partner in the firm, which was called Hackstaff and Gessler until the firm bought out Gessler’s stake the day before he was sworn into office. Gessler told reporters that he is taking a steep pay cut as Secretary of State and that the $68,500 annual salary paid by the state isn’t enough to support his family.

Gessler has been, in effect, the public face of the Hackstaff firm for years. As the lead attorney arguing cases on behalf of so-called hard- and soft-money conservative political advocacy and attack groups, he has battled regulations overseen by the Secretary of State aimed at increasing campaign finance disclosure and limiting the power of big-money to influence elections.

Sen. Carroll said that, at this point in the session, House and Senate leadership would have to agree to allow a lawmaker to introduce a late bill to address Gessler’s moonlighting plans.

“I haven’t heard of anything yet but, depending on what happens with this, if leadership decides they want a late bill, it could happen. I just don’t know of any right now.”

A generalist secretary of state

There are two main issues of concern, Carroll said about Gessler’s plan to contract with Hackstaff. There is first the question of whether or not Gessler is dedicated to his job as secretary of state.

His philosophy about the value of many of the laws the office he now heads has to enforce has been demonstrated over the course of years, she said. Now, in his first days as secretary of state, he seems already to be saying he will take a casual or at least a generalist approach to enforcing those laws.

“There is disclosure about devoting your full resources, disclosure about whether you intend to treat it like a full time job. That’s one question. If he wants to deliver pizzas on the side or teach classes on the side, or work in a nail salon on the side, that is fine as far as conflict of interest, though it may take away from his job as secretary of state.”

The other issue, the issue of divided financial investment, is more weighty.
 
“There is no way that when you are getting your paycheck from a firm that has active matters pending before the secretary of state’s office that that’s not inherently a conflict of interest. I’m a little alarmed by someone whose conflict analysis doesn’t catch that this is a problem, even after it’s brought to his attention.

“This is beyond a conflict,” she said. “You just simply can’t be funded by a partisan firm as the chief elections officer of the state– a firm that is running hard-side and soft-side election activities. [You can't do that] for pay as the secretary of state. [Gessler] is a walking conflict of interest. I am a little stunned by someone who doesn’t think there’s a conflict there.
   
Carroll said lawmakers surely recognize that there’s a problem surfaced in the Gessler news that needs to be solved.

“Unfortunately, you legislate to the lowest common denominator. You wouldn’t think that you would have to but when you are [talking about the person tasked with] running all of the lobbyist disclosures and all the elections and campaign finance for the state of Colorado, democracy is at stake. This isn’t a place where you want conflicts of interest to be tolerated.”

A strong philosophy and the clients to prove it

The Colorado Independent this year reported on the case mounted by Gessler in defense of Clear the Bench Colorado, for example, a conservative group founded by political pugilist Matt Arnold to oust liberal state Supreme Court justices. The twisting-turning legal wrangle pitted government watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch against Hackstaff-Gessler in an influential case that had to do with the way the state categorizes advocacy groups and thus determines contribution limits.

The Independent also reported that Hackstaff-Gessler was representing the pro-oil-and-gas dirty-tricks group Western Tradition Partnership in the group’s work this past election. Hackstaff-Gessler registered Western Tradition Partnership sub-group Western Tradition Partnership Education Fund, the group behind campaign attack mailers that targeted Democratic state Sen. Gail Schwartz. The group never properly disclosed its role in creating and distributing the mailer.

As the Independent reported earlier, Hackstaff-Gessler also defended the man behind Western Tradition Partnership, Scott Shires, in a case where Shires failed to file electioneering communications reports for a group called the Colorado League of Taxpayers that campaigned on behalf of pro-oil and gas Republicans in the 2008 Garfield County commissioner’s race. A judge fined the Colorado League of Taxpayers more than $7,000 in that case. That fine – still unpaid – now tallies more than $8,000.

Hoping for the best

The story about Gessler’s plans to moonlight broke on Friday and the media has delivered a steady stream of stories on the subject ever since. The public seems to be weighing in against Gessler’s plan and the web of legal confidentiality agreements that would shield the details of the work he does for Hackstaff as he serves out his term as Secretary of State.

Liberal activist group ProgressNow initiated an email petition campaign over the weekend and by Monday it had gathered 2,600 signatures.

Gessler has signaled he may be rethinking the plan. He said his wife might have to get a job to help make ends meet.

“At this point I am frankly hoping that he realizes that this is a terrible mistake and that, if he needs a second income, then to at least get it in something that is not an inherent conflict,” said Carroll.
 
“I think that this has clearly put everybody on notice of what the responsibilities of the secretary of state office are and what [candidate] disclosures are necessary prior to an election.”

–
Additional reporting by Joseph Boven

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Scott Shires

“WTP’s failure to register as a political committee and publicly disclose the true source and disposition of funds it used to oppose candidates for the Montana Legislature [in 2008] frustrates the purpose of Montana’s Campaign Finance and Practices Act [and] raises the specter of corruption of the electoral process and clearly justifies an action seeking a civil penalty,” Commissioner Dennis Unsworth wrote in a 43-page report (pdf).

“Western Tradition Partnership has always obeyed all applicable campaign finance laws and regulations,” WTP Executive Director Donald Ferguson replied on the group’s website. “In response, WTP intends to file an action against the Commissioner of Political Practices in order to vindicate its First Amendment free speech rights.”

While his decision was based on WTP’s actions in a 2008 Montana State Legislature race, Unsworth in his report repeatedly references WTP’s involvement in a 2008 Garfield County commissioner race in Colorado in which the two Democrats were hit with fake newspapers and a barrage of mailers and narrowly lost to their Republican opponents.

WTP registered agent Shires, a GOP consultant with a long history of questionable campaign practices, still has not paid a Colorado Secretary of State’s Office fine for improper electioneering in that race under the banner of another political organization. Unsworth references Shires’ past history and that unpaid fine in his report.

WTP’s Ferguson, however, questions the timing of Unsworth’s findings.

“The timing of the opinion is interesting,” Ferguson wrote. “Earlier this week, WTP won its case against the Commissioner on whether Montana could prohibit corporations from directly expending funds on independent expenditures. Further, this opinion was released less than two weeks away from the Nov. 2, 2010 election date.”

While Unsworth found insufficient evidence of any coordination between WTP and any particular candidate, he said the group’s tactics continues to taint the current election cycle.

“We were able to get to these ’08 complaints and it appears to be similar activity to what they’re doing this year,” Unsworth told the Colorado Independent, “so I’m hoping that the decision will be helpful to at least call them on this charade that they’re not working elections, that they’re just talking about issues.”

WTP is also the subject of a complaint by a Republican who lost in a Montana state House race this summer.

Western Tradition Partnership Montana ruling

The Western Tradition Partnership website.

Sherlock, according to the Journal, wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in January took precedence over Montana’s law, which the state held was still constitutional. Democratic Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock said he would appeal Sherlock’s ruling to the state Supreme Court.

“The First Amendment was intended to protect citizens from the government, not to shield politicians from criticism,” Western Tradition Partnership Executive Director Donald Ferguson wrote on the group’s website Monday. “The court has restored fairness and balance to elections by allowing employers to speak freely about the radical environmentalist candidates and issues that threaten your right to earn a living.”

Western Tradition Partnership, a 501(c)4 first registered in Colorado by Republican operative Scott Shires in 2008, made headlines recently with an unflattering mailer targeting state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass, for her support of a bill aimed at reducing coal-fired power plant emissions on Colorado’s Front Range.

Western Tradition was very active in a now-infamous Garfield County commissioner election in 2008 in which its registered agent, Shires, was fined more than $7,000 for improper electioneering under the banner of another group, the Colorado League of Taxpayers. He still owes the state more than $8,000 in fines, the Colorado Independent revealed earlier this month.

Several campaign complaints against Western Tradition Partnership, some dating back to 2008, are currently being investigated by the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices.

“We’re working on a complaint against an outfit called Western Tradition Partnership and Scott Shires’ name comes up,” Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth told the Colorado Independent Monday. “We have a decision on allegations against Western Tradition Partnership’s activity in Montana in 2008 that is just about complete.”

In one of those cases, Great Falls attorney Benjamin Graybill, arguing on behalf of Montana state Senate candidate Brad Hamlett, alleges that a flyer attacking Hamlett didn’t include proper “paid for by” disclaimers and that the group responsible for the mailers, the Coalition for Energy and the Environment, did not file required finance reports. That group was identified as a project of the Western Tradition Partnership.

Western Tradition Partnership and Shires both have long histories of controversial and questionable campaign practices in Colorado, and WTP also is the subject of campaign complaints this year in Montana.

Blindsided by the group in her Republican state House primary this summer, Debra Bonogofsky filed a complaint similar to Hamlett’s 2008 complaint. Unsworth, however, said it will be a while before the state rules on current allegations against the group.

“We’re still working on ’08,” he said. “We just can’t keep up with the work, the complaints. We’re just completely overwhelmed. The legislature cut our legal budget back to next to nothing and we’re just hobbling along.”

While Western Tradition Partnership was first registered in Colorado to an Aurora address connected to Shires, it now lists a Washington, D.C. address on its website. Executive director Ferguson lists a phone number with a Virginia area code.

Scott Shires

Shires’ efforts in the Garfield County race, which saw an unprecedented infusion of outside cash for a local race because of the ongoing battle between oil and gas interests and environmentalists, prompted a successful Colorado Ethics Watch complaint against Shires’ Colorado League of Taxpayers. Defeated Democrats complained bitterly about GOP tactics in that race, but the Secretary of State’s office admitted enforcement options were limited.

Shires has a lengthy record of questionable campaign activities in Colorado. He also registered the conservative nonprofit Western Tradition Partnership, which was active in the 2008 Garfield County race and recently has been taking heat for a mailer in the state Senate District 5 race attacking incumbent Democrat Gail Schwartz.

Shires, according to his bio on the Shires Financial Group website, is a “retired lieutenant colonel from the United States Army, where he served in the Army Rangers.” He did not return a phone call and email requesting comment. Shires also is the chief financial officer for a gun importing business called Colorado Gun Sales. Former Colorado Republican Party attorney John Zakhem also works for the “direct importer and supplier of Swiss firearms,” retained, he said, to provide legal services on “corporate matters.”

Colorado Gun Sales founder and president Michael Meier said he was not aware of Shires’ checkered political past.

“I know he was involved with the Republican Party; that’s all I know about that side,” Meier said. “That’s one of the things I notice a lot in politics. Everybody tries to dig anything they can find on the bad side and sometimes a lot of it gets exaggerated or blown out of proportion. That’s why I don’t to have anything to do with politics in general. It’s pretty crazy.”

The Shires-registered Western Tradition Partnership opposes “radical environmentalists,” backs energy interests and generally pushes a conservative agenda, including on matters of religion, guns and the Second Amendment.

Debra Bonogofsky, a small businesswoman in Billings, Mont., told the Colorado Independent she was blindsided by a Shires-led smear campaign in her Republican primary race for the Montana state legislature this summer. She said one of the tactics used was a slanted candidate survey she refused to fill out.

“These groups, they blackmail you. It’s like extortion,” Bonogofsky said. “They send you these surveys, and if you don’t send them back and fill them out the way they want you to, then they send out these mailings saying you’re anti-gun, you’re anti-this, anti-that, and they blackmail you.”

“My campaign is about what I can offer the people of my district,” Schwartz said in a release sent out Friday. “The deplorable, hate-filled mail that distorts the public record comes from a variety of independent organizations and federal law appears to allow it. I absolutely do not condone such mail. I believe that it undermines the integrity of our political process, offends basic standards of decency, and degrades our ability to engage in civil discourse.”

Western Tradition Partnership is headed up by GOP operative Scott Shires and was active in the 2008 Garfield County commissioners race that attracted vast sums from the oil and gas industry as well as from environmental groups. Two defeated Democrats in the race complained bitterly about last-minute attack ads, mailers and fake newspapers.

Joyce Rankin, campaign manager to Schwartz opponent Bob Rankin, said she was unaware of the Western Tradition Partnership mailing. She said the Rankin campaign will begin sending out its own mailers in the district but that “they’ll be positive and stick to the issues.”

The problem of non-profit outside money spent in elections has escalated this year, the ads produced and aired with the money growing increasingly erroneous and prevalent. The campaign finance-free speech Supreme Court case Citizens United vs FEC last year brought increased attention to the expanding web of thinly unregulated billions being spent to influence U.S. elections. In Colorado, the midterm 2010 elections have drawn money from corporations and nonprofits across the nation. One recent ad produced by Washington-based anti-abortion Americans United for Life targeted Colorado Democratic Rep. John Salazar. The ad brimmed with factual errors, including referring to “Ken Salazar,” Rep. John Salazar’s brother, throughout.

Sen. Schwartz’s full release:

“I appreciate the frustration you as a voter have with the barrage of media and mail you are receiving. I have publicly committed to running a clean campaign for re-election. I have a mail plan that includes several pieces of mail, and I am responsible for the content and cost. My signature is on every mail piece from my campaign and also includes the following statement: Paid for by the Committee to Elect Gail Schwartz. My mail contains statements about my work, my record, and my personal story. It does not attack or even mention of my opponent. The distortion of my physical appearance adds another level to the distortion of facts that WTP actively engages in.

My campaign is about what I can offer the people of my district. The deplorable, hate-filled mail that distorts the public record comes from a variety of independent organizations and federal law appears to allow it. I absolutely do not condone such mail. I believe that it undermines the integrity of our political process, offends basic standards of decency, and degrades our ability to engage in civil discourse. That is why I publicly announced a clean campaign. A long term solution for this problem must be sought at a federal level. I would welcome such reform.

I stand on my record of sound public service to you and the future of Colorado.”

Thank you,

Senator Gail Schwartz

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The Western Tradition Partnership website

That “smear campaign,” orchestrated by shadowy, right-wing political groups with Colorado ties, doomed her in conservative Montana and led to her 249-vote defeat in the June 8 primary to Republican Dan Kennedy.

Bonogofsky is now running a long-shot campaign as a write-in and has filed several complaints with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, but she doesn’t expect any real penalties against groups that have long histories of dubious last-minute electioneering practices.

“The truth doesn’t mean anything to these people – they say what they want, they distort things, they twist things,” said Bonogofsky, who is pro-choice and a proponent of responsible energy development but says her biggest sin was refusing to fill out right-wing questionnaires. “They’re perverting and subverting our election process.”

One of those questionnaires came from the nonprofit Western Tradition Partnership, formed by Montana political activists but registered to GOP operative Scott Shires in Aurora, Colo. That group denies advocating for any particular candidate in any particular race, insisting its campaign surveys legally gauge for the voters where candidates stand on the issues.

Shires has been fined and censured by Colorado officials in past elections, including the 2008 Garfield County commissioners’ races, which saw Democrats targeted by the oil and gas industry. Shires’ Colorado League of Taxpayers was fined $7,150 for spending $2,400 on mailers in that race without filing proper electioneering reports with the Colorado Secretary of State.

Nearly two years later, Shires still hasn’t paid his fine. “At this point, collections hasn’t been able to get that money yet,” Secretary of State spokesman Rich Coolidge said. Democrats waylaid in that Garfield County race lamented the lack of enforcement and investigation by state officials. Bonogofsky fears the same thing will happen to her in Montana.

“It usually takes them on average a couple of years to get to a complaint because they don’t have the staff and they don’t have the funding to do it any quicker,” Bonogofsky said of Montana election officials. “The legislature needs to actually give more funding to the commissioner of political practices, and I know both parties are complicit in this and so they haven’t done it, and this stuff needs to be stopped. It’s just not right.”

Bonogofsky not only traced Western Tradition Partnership– which has been active in a number of recent races in both Montana and Colorado– back to Shires, but she also found that a number of Montana print and radio ads were purchased by a business called Direct Mail and Communications.

A firm in good standing in the Montana Secretary of State’s business database, Direct Mail lists as its business address 12237 E. Amherst Circle in Aurora, Colo. That’s also the registered address for Western Tradition Partnership and the address for several other nonprofit political groups and companies run by Shires, including Mountain Banc Mortgage and the Shires Financial Group.

Shires did not respond to an email sent to the contact link for Shires Financial Group, and two phone numbers associated with the businesses and political groups have been temporarily disconnected.

As happened to the Democratic candidates in the 2008 Garfield County races, Bonogofsky was hammered on energy development issues in her recent primary. Western Tradition claimed her opponent “knows Al Gore and his economy-killing carbon taxers can’t ram their agenda though without filling government posts with heavy-handed bureaucrats and mandate-happy politicians.”

Bonogofsky, who owns a tire company in Billings, said she isn’t opposed to coal mining and oil and gas drilling but wants it done responsibly so that property owners are protected from environmental impacts.

“[Far right groups are] into private property rights but yet they will discard those for the energy coalition,” Bonogofsky said. “They don’t care about the farmers and ranchers out here in eastern Montana who don’t want their livelihoods taken by the coal companies, but yet they’re big private property people and they don’t want to see that they’re hypocrites about all this stuff.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Trési Houpt

The race was significant in the most productive natural gas-drilling county in the state because if one Democrat had joined fellow Dem Trési Houpt on the board, a number of key policy decisions favoring environmental and public health protections might have gone against the industry.

“Garfield was really ground zero in ’08,” said David Flaherty, CEO of Magellan Strategies, a Republican polling firm that conducted phone surveys in Garfield County leading up to the 2008 election. “If a Democrat had been elected, there definitely probably would have been some different policies passed or considered by the board of commissioners there.”

Tom Jankovsky

Had either Democrat Stephen Bershenyi or Steven Carter been elected in 2008, Houpt said things clearly would have been different the last two years, although she quickly added she’s forged a good working relationship with Samson, who has shown a real willingness to listen to public concerns about the impacts of gas drilling.

“There certainly are differences in priorities with the parties, and both John and Mike have been very up front about this,” Houpt said of the failure of Democrats to claim at least one seat in 2008. “Maybe there would have been support for the FRAC Act or the moratorium in the Divide Creek area – just a more cautious approach to energy development.”

The FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, sponsored by Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, D-Denver, seeks to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption granted the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing during the Bush administration.

There are serious concerns about the potential for groundwater contamination during the “fracking” process, but the Garfield County commissioners by a 2-1 margin voted not to support the legislation. Houpt backs the bill.

The West Divide Creek drilling moratorium was requested by Silt resident Lisa Bracken, who says cancer-causing chemicals and methane continue to seep into the creek near her property. She wants the commissioners to push the state to re-impose a previous drilling moratorium until the situation can be resolved.

Bracken, too, says Samson is a Republican who seems sincere about demanding responsible drilling practices and more state oversight. Still, the board declined to take up Bracken’s moratorium case with the state.

“[Samson], like myself, expects oversight from the state that was promised from the state,” Bracken said. “Martin is different story entirely. He does not seem to get what’s going on. He just seems to be adamant party-line, ‘drill, baby, drill,’ that kind of mentality that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Jankovsky’s campaign recently paid Magellan to conduct a phone survey on the race. He said Houpt is too liberal and there needs to be more of an emphasis on the high-paying jobs the industry brings to the county, adding, “oil and gas will probably be one of the defining issues of the campaign.”

Saying he’ll bring a more balanced approach to the board of commissioners regarding oil and gas issues, Jankovsky added he still hopes voters will be able to set partisan politics aside.

“It is a local election, and I hope people look at that from Tresi’s philosophy and my philosophy and not even so much looking at as what parties we represent, although people will do that,” Jankovsky said. “But it is a local election, so I hope people will look at us as candidates.”

Both Houpt and Jankovsky expect outside influences will try to sway voters in the nearly 3,000-square-mile county of more than 55,000 residents that stretches from Glenwood Springs in the east all the way to the Utah state line.

In 2008, the nonprofit Western Tradition Partnership, founded in Montana but with offices in Denver, spent money on mailers in support of Martin and Samson, both of whom denied any coordination with their campaigns and denounced outside influences.

Another 501(c)4 that campaigned in the race, Western Heritage, was funded by $10,000 each from current Republican gubernatorial candidate and former congressman Scott McInnis and Paul Rady, CEO of Antero Resources, a Denver-based drilling company pursuing a 200-well project in GarCo’s Battlement Mesa community.

A third nonprofit, Small Town Values, reportedly spent more than $7,000 on advertising for Samson and Martin. The group was registered to former Colorado Republican Party legal counsel John Zakhem.

Two 527 groups, so named for a section of the IRS tax code, insinuated themselves in the election, with both coming back to GOP strategist Scott Shires – an operative with a long history of questionable campaign tactics that have led to legal action. Shires failed to register one of the groups – the Colorado League of Taxpayers – and was fined $7,150 in the case.

Environmental nonprofits under the umbrella of the Western Organization of Resource Councils reportedly spent $15,000 campaigning in support of Democrats Bershenyi and Carter. WORC includes grassroots activist groups like the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance and Battlement Concerned Citizens, which are working to limit the impacts of Antero’s drilling plan in Battlement Mesa.

Garfield County exercises limited land-use authority over that drilling proposal because it maintained standing after approving the original PUD for the former Exxon company town that’s now home to more than 5,500 people. Once Antero submits a drilling plan, the county will begin a special-use permit hearing process.

Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens says residents are nervous about the current political environment.

“The current political makeup [of the board], based on the recent decisions we’ve seen regarding the [Safe] Drinking Water Act and pit liners, it seems to us that their concerns are more with protecting the industry than safeguarding the citizens,” Devanney said.

“Our trust is that the commissioners, regardless of their political affiliation, are going to do what’s best for the citizens of Garfield County. We do recognize that the energy industry is very politicized and they’re going to do whatever they can to influence local regulators, and all we can do is try and do our best to influence them as well.”

Last spring an administrative law judge found that an Aurora election issues committee called the Colorado League of Taxpayers violated Colorado campaign finance laws by failing to report nearly $2,400 spent on mailers opposing Democrat Steve Carter’s bid for Garfield County commissioner in 2008.

Secretary of State Bernie Buescher

The judge fined the nonprofit $7,150 (pdf) for admittedly failing to file a report on its electioneering communications spending with the Colorado secretary of state’s office by the required Sept. 29, 2008, deadline. Now, more than 14 months after the violation, the group, traced to Republican political operative Scott Shires, still has not paid its fine.

The Colorado League of Taxpayers case is just one of many examples of issues and candidate committees on both sides of the political spectrum that have failed to pay campaign finance penalties to the state totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But it’s a particularly glaring one because of Shires’ history of previous violations and because it came in a local election once thought to be immune from infusions of outside political money. The oil and gas industry spent heavily on that county commissioner’s race in 2008, funneling cash through several 527 groups (named for a section of the tax code) and 501(c)4 nonprofits.

Both Democrats campaigning on tighter environmental restrictions for the then-booming natural gas industry were defeated by Republicans who lamented the outside money and denied having anything to do with what some observers later deemed “a stolen election.”

How to bear down on deadbeats

Now the secretary of state’s office, headed by Buescher, a former Democratic state representative from Grand Junction, is trying to get tougher on collecting from the deadbeat issues and candidate committees and weighing options.

“Among the discussions that we’ve had is what about legislation that would impose personal liability on the registered agents?” Deputy Secretary of State Bill Hobbs told the Colorado Independent Wednesday. “Now, that’s not something that we could do — that would take legislation — but that is one of the things that seems to have some good support as maybe one of the ways to improve the enforcement and be able to hold people accountable.”

Hobbs cautioned that he has not seen language for any such bill proposed for the upcoming legislative session in January, nor has he heard of any individual lawmakers willing to take on such a reform measure. He did say, however, that campaign finance bills seem to be floated every session and that this particular issue is on the radar of several lawmakers.

Buescher, who was surprisingly and narrowly defeated last year by Collbran Republican Laura Bradford in a state house race involving 527 money, is also concerned about the issue of unpaid fines, Hobbs said.

“He’s very much aware of it and he would be supportive of something in that area as well,” Hobbs said of Buescher, who was the presumptive speaker of the house before losing to Bradford. “He understands the problem and probably would be supportive of legislation. We don’t have any specific language in front of us, and the devil could be in the details.”

No enforcement mechanism

Those details include limitations imposed by Colorado voters when they passed the campaign finance Amendment in 2002. The amendment dictated that campaign finance violations should be a citizen complaint-driven process, the cases decided by an administrative law judge rather than a partisan, elected secretary of state.

In the case of the Colorado League of Taxpayers, it took the political watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch filing a complaint, and Carter, the Democrat victimized by illegal electioneering, says that’s a flaw with the system.

A retired judge and private-practice attorney in Rifle, Carter did not return a call requesting comment for this story, but last summer he told the Colorado Independent that the law needs to be changed “so that it’s not just a complaint-driven procedure, but where there appears to be violations of campaign finance laws, the secretary of state or a grand jury can investigate it if they want to. There’s no enforcement mechanism unless there are groups like Ethics Watch that want to do it just because they stand for clean elections.”

Under Amendment 27, Hobbs said his office is compelled to turn over any citizen complaints to a judge within three days, and if a judgment is rendered and a fine is levied, the secretary of state then treats any unpaid penalties just as it would any other fines – ultimately turning them over to state collections after a certain period.

The Colorado League of Taxpayers fine has not been turned over the collections yet, according to secretary of state spokeswoman Stephanie Cegielski, because the state collections department is in the midst of a computer system conversion that will put in place an online tracking method for all the various state agencies that rely on collections.

While personal liability for agents forming issues committees would make it easier for the state to collect unpaid fines, Hobbs warns there could be unintended side effects.

“There will be probably a little bit of concern that would be discussed or raised about what’s the chilling effect on agents if merely being an agent for a citizens group of some sort exposes you to personal liability for inadvertent violations of what can be pretty complex campaign finance laws,” Hobbs said. “It’s not going to be a black and white thing.”

Court fees and partisan politics

Luis Toro, senior counsel for Colorado Ethics Watch, said the secretary of state’s office may have to take the point on this because a citizens group filing suit against an issues committee to compel it to pays its state fines would expose that group to having to pay attorney’s fees if it loses.

“There’s clearly some authority for the secretary of state to take action,” Toro said. “Maybe the secretary of state and the attorney general could work together to file an enforcement action on one of these cases and then see what happens. [Amendment 27] says the prevailing party’s attorney’s fees in a private case; it doesn’t say that about a secretary of state enforcement action.”

But Hobbs said a citizens group would only be exposed to paying opposing legal fees if it loses a clearly frivolous enforcement case. He added there was a reason voters made campaign finance a citizen complaint process versus leaving up the secretary of state when they passed Amendment 27.

“The secretary of state is a partisan elected official, and by shifting the enforcement to administrative law judges, the idea is to put the issue of whether or not there has been a violation in front of an impartial, nonpolitical decision-maker,” Hobbs said. “Inevitably, almost all of the complaints involve partisan politics, frankly.”

Attempts to reach Shires for comment yesterday were unsuccessful.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.