Ethics Watch filed today a campaign finance complaint with the Colorado Secretary of State against the Lakewood Safe Streets Committee for receiving contributions and making expenditures while failing to file as an issue committee.

Ethics Watch’s complaint names Lakewood Safe Streets Committee as proponents of the so-called Lakewood Impound Initiative. Documentation obtained by Ethics Watch suggests that this group is an unincorporated association formed to accept contributions and make expenditures in support of a proposed ballot question for the 2009 Lakewood municipal ballot.  The ballot initiative would amend the Lakewood Municipal Code to require mandatory and immediate impounding of motor vehicles whose operators are not in possession of a valid operator’s license and to require persons who drive while not in possession of such a license to pay a land acquisition fee and post a bond. 

A document obtained by Ethics Watch shows that Daniel Hayes is treasurer of the committee, and therefore presumably is responsible for accepting contributions and making expenditures in support of the initiative.  At a recent petition challenge hearing, Hayes testified that he paid for circulators to attempt to obtain sufficient signatures to qualify the Lakewood Impound Initiative to the Lakewood City Council for the November ballot.  Yet the Lakewood Safe Streets Committee failed to register as an issue committee with the Lakewood City Clerk, as required by Colorado campaign finance laws, before accepting Hayes’ contributions to pay for the signature collection effort. 

“This behavior reflects a blatant double standard,” said Luis Toro, senior counsel at Colorado Ethics Watch.  “Lakewood Safe Streets Committee demands that everyone who drives in Lakewood carry their driver’s license at all times on pain of loss of their car and payment of thousands of dollars for bonds and fines.  And yet, the Committee acts as if above the law by ignoring the legal requirement to register with the city clerk before spending money to promote a ballot initiative.  The Committee should live up to the standard they would demand of others by immediately registering as an issue committee and paying the $50 per day fine for late filing.”

State law provides for a $50 per day penalty for late filings.  Since paid petition circulators operating on behalf of Lakewood Safe Streets Committee were circulating petitions as early as April 24, 2009, Ethics Watch has asked that the committee be fined $50 per day from the date it received its first contribution through the date it finally registers as an issue committee.  As of August 25, that fine exceeds $6,000.