Ethics Watch flunks council members for missed deadline

An open-government group is chiding a handful of Colorado Springs City Council members for failing to file their annual financial disclosure statements on time.

Chantall Taylor, director of the nonpartisan Colorado Ethics Watch, said council members missing last Thursday's deadline "shows a disregard for the public's right to information" about their elected officials.

"You know, these disclosure deadlines, they're only annual, so there's really no excuse for filing late or filing incomplete," she said. "I think it really sends the wrong message to the public that they just don't take the public's right to information about their government seriously."

Under the Fair Campaign Practices Act, council members are required to report "gifts, honoraria and other benefits," including the amount or value of the gift and who gave it.

Anyone who "willfully fails to file the report ... is guilty of a misdemeanor," according to the form.

But City Clerk Kathryn Young said a gentle reminder is usually all it takes.

"They probably just forgot," she said.

The three council members who ran for re-election in April - Darryl Glenn, Jerry Heimlicher and Scott Hente - had to file the forms before the election.

For the rest, the deadline was last week and only Vice Mayor Larry Small made it, filing eight days early.

But the other four - Mayor Lionel Rivera and council members Tom Gallagher, Jan Martin and Randy Purvis - either filed their forms late or, in Gallagher's case, still haven't filed.

"It slipped my mind," Gallagher said. "I need to go fix that. Thank you for waking me up."

Purvis said the deadline slipped his mind, too.

After Young reminded him in an e-mail Monday afternoon that his disclosure statement was due, he said he "ran over" to the City Clerk's Office to file it.

"I intended to give it to her last week," Purvis said. "She sent me the forms about a month ago and I meant to give it to her last week at the council meeting and just spaced it out."

Martin said it took her longer than expected to go through her calendars to compile an accurate report.

"I attend a lot of events, and I needed to gather all my information," she said.

Martin reported her gifts in aggregate, which Taylor said was too ambiguous.

"An evasive disclosure is tantamount to no disclosure at all," Taylor said.

Martin said she attended about 36 events and thought it was "kind of excessive" to try to list each separately.

"But I certainly can provide details if anybody's interested," she said.

The mayor also missed the deadline, but only by a day. He reported receiving $718 worth of gifts from the U.S. Olympic Committee, which he donated to Home Front Cares.

The USOC also gave the mayor $1,184 worth of tickets to sporting events at the Beijing Olympics.
Rivera paid for his 2008 trip to Beijing.

"I didn't think it was appropriate to ask the city to pay for my cost to go there even though I was going in my official capacity as mayor," he said.
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