{"id":52482,"date":"2025-11-13T17:18:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/?post_type=article&p=52482"},"modified":"2025-11-17T09:14:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T14:14:02","slug":"protecting-colorados-democracy-requires-nonpartisan-watchdogs","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/es\/articles\/protecting-colorados-democracy-requires-nonpartisan-watchdogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting Colorado\u2019s Democracy Requires Nonpartisan Watchdogs"},"template":"","class_list":["post-52482","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","article_type-blog-post"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":"Colorado must maintain a government that serves the people, not special interests.","featured_image":"","article_type":1103,"authors":"","related_issues":[2066],"related_work":false,"location":52},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":"","name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_wysiwyg":{"content":"On November 5, <\/span>Colorado Common Cause filed individual complaints<\/span><\/a> against seventeen state legislators alleging that an interest group, One Main Street Colorado, paid $25,000 for the legislators\u2019 resort hotel stay for a \u201cretreat\u201d where lobbyists presented to and mingled with them.<\/span>\r\n\r\nAt the core of our complaints is the Colorado Constitution\u2019s ban on giving gifts to legislators. This \u201cgift ban\u201d dates to 2006, when voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 41 by a 25-point margin. Colorado Common Cause <\/span>spearheaded the drafting of Amendment 41<\/span><\/a> and played a key role in getting it on the ballot and approved. Twenty years later, our mission remains the same.<\/span>\r\n\r\nAt the time, we <\/span>published a report with the Center for Public Integrity<\/span><\/a> on how much special interests and\u00a0 lobbyists spent to influence public policy. That amount had tripled in just one decade to $22.1 million per year. Lobbyists were spending $1.6 million annually on gifts, entertainment, and other expenses to influence legislators and the Governor, including hand-held computers, Broncos tickets, expensive meals, international travel, and other freebies.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThat was all legal, until Amendment 41 capped gifts to legislators and public servants ($50 then, $75 now), and created the Independent Ethics Commission (IEC) to investigate complaints and remedy violations. If a complaint is deemed non-frivolous by the IEC, respondents are given a chance to respond, and a public hearing is set.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe Colorado Sun <\/span>broke this story<\/span><\/a>, backed with screenshots, photos, and testimonials, after the Opportunity Caucus\u2019s Vail retreat in October. Later news coverage disclosed yet more photos and details<\/span>. <\/b>This moment marks an unprecedented discovery of alleged dark money gift-giving in Colorado legislative politics since the 2006 passage of Amendment 41 made these activities illegal<\/span>.\u00a0<\/b>\r\n\r\nThis is exactly the sort of threat to \u201cpublic trust\u201d that Amendment 41 prohibits, instructing public servants to \u201cavoid conduct that is in violation of their public trust or that creates a justifiable impression among members of the public that such trust is being violated; any effort to realize personal financial gain through public office other than compensation provided by law is a violation of that trust.\u201d<\/span>\r\n

\u2026<\/span><\/h4>\r\nThe work Colorado Common Cause does is multi-faceted.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThis year, we worked with legislative voting rights champions to draft and pass the <\/span>Colorado Voting Rights Act (COVRA)<\/span><\/a>. The COVRA will protect Colorado from federal threats to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and will make it easier to challenge restrictive local election practices and unfair systems of representation that make it harder for disenfranchised communities to have a fair say in who represents them. Each major election, we run nonpartisan voter protection efforts to monitor the process and work with election officials to solve problems in the best interest of voter accessibility, security and public safety. On Election Day 2024, we sent out 350 nonpartisan volunteers to 200 different voting locations, spanning 62 cities and 8 college campuses.<\/span>\r\n\r\nFor those who only know us for our more recent work, our complaints may seem unexpected. <\/span>Sin embargo, Common Cause is one of the United States\u2019 largest and most effective government watchdog groups. We take that responsibility seriously. <\/strong>Our complaint filings did not stem from any individual legislator or group, but from our commitment to the public interest.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nTo put an even finer point on this: as a nonpartisan good government watchdog, our allegations of wrongdoing did not stem from any electoral motivation, but because those named in our complaints are legislators.<\/span>\r\n\r\nBeyond Amendment 41, Colorado Common Cause has a rich history of fighting successfully for good government protections and reforms, including:<\/span>\r\n