A nonprofit group formally alleged Wednesday that more than a dozen Colorado lawmakers violated the state’s prohibition on gift-giving when they asked a prominent dark-money organization to help pay for an October mountain retreat.
Colorado Common Cause, a government watchdog group, made public its allegations in the first of several complaints set to be filed to the state’s Independent Ethics Commission this week. The documents will focus on members of the Opportunity Caucus, a select group of Democratic lawmakers, and their ties to One Main Street, a political group that does not disclose most of its donors but has spent extensively to elect what it describes as “pragmatic” Democrats over more left-wing opponents.
The complaints allege that the legislators violated a state constitutional prohibition on accepting gifts of more than $75 when the caucus’s leader sought — and received — a $25,000 donation from One Main Street to cover hotel rooms at a private caucus retreat last month in Vail.
“You can’t accept as little as $75 of purchases within a year,” Scott Moss, an attorney representing Common Cause, said in an interview Wednesday. “And hotel rooms at a luxury resort hotel that cost several hundred dollars a night are gifts that every public servant knows you just can’t accept.”
A complaint will be filed against every member who attended the event, Moss said, with the first two submitted Wednesday against the caucus’s chair, Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, and its one-time co-chair, Rep. Shannon Bird.
Bird, who is running for Congress, has not been a leader of the caucus since August, did not attend the retreat and “played zero role in planning it,” her campaign manager, Eve Zhurbinskiy, said in a statement.
“This complaint is baseless and dishonest,” Zhurbinskiy wrote.
In a statement Wednesday, Daugherty said the caucus was confident the complaint “will be dismissed as the political theater it is.”
“For several weeks, the state legislature’s Opportunity Caucus has been the target of coordinated attacks for following the standards and laws that have been in place for years,” she said. “Make no mistake, these are the exact same standards and laws that have been followed by every other legislative caucus. The people who oppose our focus on affordability and jobs with good pay — the basic kitchen-table issues facing Colorado families — will do anything to stop us.”
Colorado Common Cause asks the five-member ethics board to determine that the caucus’s members violated the state constitution and to assess any penalties it sees fit. If the commission agrees, the complaint proposes penalties that include fines, further investigation or the equivalent of a public reprimand.
The ethics commission must first meet and determine if the allegations are “non-frivolous” and should proceed. Though it has levied fines against some prominent officials in the past, including now-U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper over a trip he took as governor, the commission rarely imposes financial penalties, said Jane Feldman, the commission’s former executive director.
The complaints center on the October summit held by the Opportunity Caucus, an invite-only group of Democratic lawmakers established earlier this year. In September, Daugherty asked the head of One Main Street to cover the costs of lawmakers’ hotel rooms. One Main Street’s executive director, Andrew Short, then asked his group’s board to swiftly approve the funds, according to an email obtained by The Post.
Short previously confirmed to The Post that his group approved the request, which he described as a donation to the caucus. One Main Street is considered a dark-money group because it does not disclose most of its donors.
While the state constitution allows some exemptions to the $75 gift limit, Common Cause alleges that the October summit doesn’t fit any of those allowances. The group argues that the summit facilitated “private interests wielding undisclosed influence over legislators, by leveraging corporate donations to procure legislator time, attention, and goodwill.”
The complaint also accuses the caucus of being a front for One Main Street that allows the group to “secretly” influence lawmakers. It points to a caucus staffer who has a One Main Street email address, as well as to One Main Street’s financial support for caucus members’ campaigns and its help in establishing the caucus itself.
Short has told The Post that One Main Street and the caucus are distinct entities that operate and raise money independently.
The retreat was an “educational” event, caucus members have said, where lawmakers held private discussions among themselves and were given presentations by lobbyists and representatives from private organizations who attended. The event was a fundraiser for the caucus, and organizations that took part paid an entry fee.
The caucus has not disclosed how much it raised, how much it cost to attend or what the lawmakers intend to do with the money they collected.
The summit was first reported last month by the Colorado Sun. When its existence became public, the event prompted criticism from other Democratic lawmakers, who accused their colleagues of “hobnobbing” with prominent lobbyists.
On Tuesday, word of the coming complaints leaked, Moss said, and Common Cause was pressured not to submit the allegations to the ethics commission. Moss declined to identify which people or groups applied that pressure.
“There have been efforts at persuasion — that everyone should just let this go because that’s allegedly better for the Democrats,” he said. “I think that’s a very dangerous trap that the corrupt set — the idea that you have to let corruption go or it hurts the political party. You know what actually hurts the party? Looking corrupt.”
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