No news is bad news for man who filed ethics complaint

More than a week after requesting a progress report on the ethics investigation against Mayor Lionel Rivera, the local businessman who initiated the inquiry said his request has fallen on deaf ears.

Ron Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Central Bancorp, said Tuesday that he’s “disappointed” neither City Attorney Patricia Kelly nor members of the city’s Independent Ethics Commission has responded to his request for a status report.

“On the surface,” he said, “it does not appear to be a process that should take nearly this long to complete.”

City spokeswoman Sue Skiffington-Blumberg said the commission isn’t working under any timeline and that its next step is to provide a report to the City Council.

She said she hasn’t “heard anything” about the commission updating individual people, such as Johnson or his attorney, Lindsay Fischer, about the status of the investigation.

“I know that (the commission is) trying to be incredibly thorough,” she said.

“These are not issues to be taken lightly or necessarily done rapidly,” she added. “We have to trust that the commission is doing it appropriately and within the guidelines that council has given them.”

Johnson filed a complaint against Rivera in May, alleging the mayor had a conflict of interest in the deal to keep the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs.

In the complaint, Johnson accused Rivera of behaving unethically by negotiating a deal that went to Ray Marshall, one of the mayor’s former clients at UBS Financial Services, where Rivera works as a vice president of investments.

Marshall is chairman of LandCo Equity Partners, which was selected over three other development firms last year to build the U.S. Olympic Committee a new headquarters and other facilities. After much fanfare, the $53 million deal fizzled.