Mayor faces ethics complaint over USOC

An investment adviser with ties to a developer who felt snubbed after he lost out on the $53 million deal to keep the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs has filed an ethics complaint against Mayor Lionel Rivera.

Ron Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Central Bancorp Inc., claims Rivera, a financial consultant at UBS Financial Services Inc., had a conflict of interest by negotiating on behalf of the city.

Johnson said the mayor managed accounts controlled by LandCo Equity Partners and its chairman, Ray Marshall, who was ultimately selected as the developer on the project.

"I have personally seen a statement of an entity that Mr. Marshall had ... with the mayor's name on the top," Johnson said Thursday.

"It was a brokerage statement," he said. "Unfortunately, I cannot provide that to you, nor can I tell you where I saw it."

The mayor did not return a call for comment.

But in a recent interview, he dodged questions about his relationship with Marshall.

Rivera said a lawsuit filed by Marshall in March prevented him from commenting. In addition, he said, he can't talk about his clients.

"I can't make any comments about my employment related to UBS or any comments whatsoever," Rivera said last month. "I just can't. That's just one of those things in my industry that I'm not allowed to do."

Johnson said Jeff Smith, chairman of Classic Cos., is a minority stockholder in some of the businesses he heads. Classic is a partner with Nor'wood Development Group in Palmer Village, which was among the bidders for the USOC headquarters project.

In a strange twist, Smith is Marshall's uncle.

In an April 11, 2008 story in The Gazette recapping the USOC deal, Smith said then-USOC Chief Executive Officer Jim Scherr had told him in November 2007 that the sports organization liked Classic and Nor'wood's plan to construct a headquarters building in southwest downtown. Classic and Nor'wood own several properties in southwest downtown, where the companies want to develop a residential and commercial project known as Palmer Village.

"We were giving high fives," Smith said last year, recalling his conversation with Scherr.

A day later, however, Scherr and the USOC backpedaled and decided to go with LandCo and Marshall, Smith said last year. Smith said he was told the USOC liked the LandCo project because the company already had obtained regulatory approvals and had a construction loan in place.

"How would you feel if you worked on something for five years, and in the last 90 days, it goes in a different direction?" Smith said last year.

Despite his relationship with Smith, Johnson said he didn't have an ax to grind.

"I can assure you Jeff and the other partners at Classic have no idea I've written this letter," he said, referring to the ethics complaint he filed this week with City Attorney Pat Kelly.

Johnson said he filed the complaint because he wants the secrecy around the USOC project to stop. He emphasized that he filed the complaint as a citizen and not as Central's president and CEO.

"I don't believe that the original decision and I strongly don't believe whatever subsequent decision is made to extract themselves from this mess should be made in private," he said, referring to the City Council.

"So, if this complaint is in anyway a lever to try and move that debate into a more public forum, I'm going to push on that lever," he said.

Johnson also said he filed the complaint because he e-mailed Kelly twice asking her to explain why a conflict didn't exist between Rivera and Marshall, but he never heard back.

"I really wanted the city to explain to me how they satisfied themselves that a conflict was not inherent in the negotiation and execution of the contract with LandCo," he said.

"I'm in the financial business, and you can't take two steps without a disclosure or somehow making sure that you're not afoul of even the appearance of a conflict," he said.

Johnson asked Kelly to forward the complaint to the Independent Ethics Commission, a council-appointed board that reviews complaints.

"I want the city to put my concerns to rest," he said.

-

Call the writer at 476-1623.

-

Gazette reporters Rich Laden and Wayne Heilman contributed to this report.