State lawmakers rejected a bill Tuesday aimed at requiring Colorado legislative caucuses to disclose their funders.
Members of the Senate’s State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee killed the measure by a vote of 3-2.
Senate Bill 168, sponsored by state Sen. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, and Rep. Yara Zokaie, D-Fort Collins, would have required all legislative caucuses to regularly file public reports detailing their fundraising and spending.
The impetus for the bill grew out of a controversial retreat at a Vail hotel in October hosted by the Colorado Opportunity Caucus, which has declined to reveal who paid for the lawmakers’ getaway with lobbyists. The caucus is made up of moderate Democrats at the Capitol and doesn’t disclose all of its donors, though at least one of their funders is a nonprofit that has tried to defeat liberal Democrats in primaries.
The state’s Independent Ethics Commission is investigating whether 16 Opportunity Caucus members violated the state’s gift ban by attending the Vail retreat. Colorado Common Cause, a liberal-leaning nonprofit that advocates for an open government, filed ethics complaints against the lawmakers.
Democratic Sen. William Lindstedt of Broomfield is one of the lawmakers facing an ethics complaint. He voted against the measure in committee Tuesday, joining the two Republicans on the committee in voting no.
Lindstedt said he preferred Weissman’s original bill that had the same intent, Senate Bill 108, which would have required very similar transparency measures from legislative “groups.” Weissman rewrote the bill after he said some lawmakers expressed concerns that the original bill could apply to nonprofits that lawmakers work for but are unrelated to their legislative work. The goal was to target only legislative caucuses.
“Having legislation around this is kind of constitutionally dubious,” Lindstedt said Tuesday, explaining his no vote. “I’d like to see a proper entity created in the Secretary of State statute with reporting requirements, TRACER (the state’s online campaign finance filing and disclosure system), all the things that go into candidate committees or any other political committee to be reported . . . I think the other bill that went away, the broadness of it was an inherent strength, because it covered just a much broader set of behavior.”
The Republican lawmakers said the reporting requirements might discourage lawmakers in the minority from joining caucuses.
“When there’s a real chance your name ends up in public, some people just decide it’s not worth the risk,” said Republican Sen. Rod Pelton of Cheyenne Wells. “That’s a chilling effect, and it affects the minority specifically.”
The original bill was sponsored by Opportunity Caucus Chair Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, D-Arvada, and the caucus’ top House member, Rep. Sean Camacho, D-Denver, along with Weissman and Zokaie. It seemed to be a peacemaking effort among Democrats, who have been sparring over the Vail retreat and the Opportunity Caucus’ refusal to reveal its donors.
The caucus has received funding from a group, One Main Street Colorado, that has been heavily involved in Democratic primaries. Weissman and Zokaie have faced primary challenges from One Main Street-backed candidates.
The original bill applied to “any caucus, committee, club, organization or group” of one or more lawmakers, which could be interpreted to include organizations far beyond legislative caucuses. The second iteration applied to legislative caucuses with two or more lawmakers “who organize themselves according to a common interest, ideology, issue, identity, or for any other reason.”
But the original bill stalled without a hearing in the committee for months. Negotiations about how to rewrite the bill appear to have fallen apart.
Weissman and Daugherty requested that the original bill be postponed indefinitely Tuesday, a maneuver that effectively kills it for this legislative session.
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