NOREEN: City and USOC -- not a gold medal performance
It appears that abyss-diving has become the latest Olympic sport and Colorado Springs is in contention for a medal.
Oh yes, the troublesome deal City Hall made in 2008 to keep the United States Olympic Committee headquarters in the city has taken another turn for the worse. The USOC abyss got deeper and darker Monday, when new felony charges were announced against Ray Marshall, the chairman of the development firm LandCo, which was hired for the downtown USOC construction project that quickly ran aground.
Marshall and his partner James Brodie are scheduled to go on trial March 19. The new charges allege a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme, asserting that Marshall stole more than $1 million in grant money and spent it on other unrelated deals he had going.
Former Mayor Lionel Rivera, former Deputy City Manager Mike Anderson and City Council President Scott Hente were the principal figures on the city’s side of the negotiating table. After the deal started going south, City Hall generally gave assurances that everything would be all right.
As recently as August, Rivera said, “The money was used appropriately. Once we discovered things that we didn’t think were correct, we fixed them or we made LandCo fix them.”
The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s office obviously begs to differ. At times, an affidavit for Marshall’s arrest on the new charges sounds like an audit report, citing a “lack of city supervision” which allowed Marshall “unobstructed access to the funds.”
Rivera’s now-dubious statement was made a month after the city fired former Finance Director Terri Velasquez, who refused to sign off on a statement guaranteeing the El Pomar Foundation that money it donated to the USOC project had been spent the way the city had promised.
Velasquez filed a wrongful dismissal case against the city. It’s impossible to know how that will turn out, but her role in the affair looks better and better.
She has emerged, so far, as the only city official who questioned which way the money was flowing.
The USOC debacle has cost city taxpayers millions and continues to hurt City Hall’s credibility. It’s true the USOC deal did not occur on Mayor Steve Bach’s watch, but handling the residual mess is his responsibility. He signed off on Velasquez’s dismissal which still may be upheld, but it would be stunning if it turns out she has a good case.
Marshall is innocent until proven guilty. At minimum, it is doubtless that in hiring Marshall, the city put its money on the wrong horse, then gave it free rein.
City Hall is fond of blaming bad press for its credibility woes. But the media didn’t issue arrest warrants.
The media didn’t create the abyss. City Hall did.
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Listen to Barry Noreen on KRDO NewsRadio 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:35 a.m. on Fridays and read his blog updates at gazette.com
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