Lawsuit challenges city's sale of COPs to back USOC deal

A Colorado Springs lawyer has filed a lawsuit claiming the city’s funding mechanism for a deal with the U.S. Olympic Committee is unconstitutional because it fails to put the matter to a public vote.

Lindsay E. Fischer filed the suit in 4^th District Court late Monday naming himself as the plaintiff and the city and the Colorado Springs Public Facilities Authority as defendants.

His 11-page complaint asks the court to cancel the deal and award him court costs.

On Aug. 11, the city council approved an agreement aimed at keeping the USOC in Colorado Springs for at least 30 years. The agreement includes an incentives package totaling $42.3 million dollars.

The agreement aimed to shore up an earlier agreement that had fallen apart in litigation between the city and LandCo Equity Partners, the developer of a downtown building to be used by the USOC.

To fund the arrangement, the city plans to issue $38 million in Certificates of Participation, a mechanism that courts have ruled does not require voter approval.

Fischer, however, said the flaw in the deal is a plan to use the Police Operations Center and Fire Station No. 8 as collateral for the COPs.

His suit focused on an arrangement whereby those two buildings will be sold to the Public Facilities Authority and then leased back to the city.

The two buildings are “essential assets,” he argued. No future city council will ever allow them to be lost. Thus if there’s no funds for the lease-back payments, future councils will be forced to dip into the general fund to hang onto the buildings, the suit alleges.

He also argues that using proceeds from the sale of the COPs to complete a building for the USOC at 27 S. Tejon St. is a “non-governmental purpose.”

“Until there is an election, the deal with the USOC is unconstitutional,” the suit states. “On this basis, it should be cancelled.”

“The USOC deal goes beyond the use of the COPs by the courts in creating a dodge around the election requirement,” he added.

Fischer is the attorney who represented businessman Ron Johnson in Johnson's complaint accusing Mayor Lionel Rivera of a conflict of interest for voting on the original deal with LandCo even though the owner of the development firm, Ray Marshall, had been a client of Rivera's.

The city ethics commission found no wrongdoing by Rivera.