The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission and its executive director Thursday shot down a suggestion from one of its new members that it look at adding additional staff as it heads into the 2020-21 budget cycle.

And the ethics panel also discussed ethics complaints filed last year against U.S. Senate candidate John Hickenlooper.

Commissioner Yeulin Willett, a former Republican state representative from Grand Junction who was recently appointed to the panel  by Chief Justice Nathan Coats, asked if the commission was “underselling” itself by not seeking more staff.

It’s an issue that’s been raised many times before. The lack of funding and staff has been cited by the executive director, Dino Ioannides, as one reason for not making live video streaming of the commission’s meetings available to the public, even though that’s a standard for most of the state’s major boards and commissions.

The commission also does not post a phone number on its website so that interested members of the public could call in to listen to the meetings.

Ioannides pointed out during Thursday’s meeting that the legislature has looked at the issue of additional funding and staff before, most recently through legislation that died in the 2016 session to restructure the commission, including adding an administrative staff position.

The bill also sought to remove the ethics commission from the state Judicial Branch, which includes Colorado’s courts, and to allow the commission to hire its own legal counsel for “prosecutorial” purposes. 

The commission’s 2016 chair, Bill Leone, strongly objected to the legislation, claiming he was blindsided by the measure, although he had discussed it at length with a reporter for the Colorado Independent months before. 

Additional funding and staff could allow for more training for the state’s 31,000 public employees governed by Amendment 41, the ethics law adopted by voters in 2006, backers have argued.

“The more training you do, the more complaints are filed and more advisory opinions requested,” former ethics commission Executive Director Jane Feldman told Colorado Politics last year. “Training leads to questions that could lead to more guidance for the people governed by Amendment 41.”

According to the commission’s 2018 annual report, 12 trainings have been done in the last three years, including just one in 2016. 

Ioannides told the commission that his workload varies; it’s sometimes akin to “drinking from a firehose,” and other times lean, he said.

“It’s hard to predict the workload since it is driven” by outside concerns, whether it’s requests for advisory opinions or complaints, Ioannides said, although he acknowledged that if he did more trainings that could drive more of that activity.

He dismissed the call for additional administrative staff, stating he would struggle to find enough for that person to do. Whether the commission would take up the issue of a “prosecutorial” arm, such as legal counsel that could do investigations, for example, is a policy decision for the commissioners, Ioannides said.

The commission’s chair, Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa, then moved on to other business without further discussion.

Thursday’s commission meeting included two new commissioners: Willett, who replaced long-time commissioner and former state Rep. Matt Smith, who served on ethics panel for its entire 12-year history; and former Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson, who replaced former commission chair April Jones, who stepped down in June. Johnson was appointed to the five-member panel in May by state House Speaker KC Becker, D-Boulder.

The commission still lacks a fifth member, who must be a representative of local government.

Meanwhile, the commission’s highest-profile pending complaints — two filed against former Democratic governor and U.S. Senate candidate John Hickenlooper — are on hold while the commission decides what to do with an investigative report first completed by Ioannides in June.

The complainant was former Republican Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, who filed the complaint last year on behalf of his Public Trust Institute. The complaints are tied to travel and hotel stays that Hickenlooper took in 2017 and 2018.

Willett said during the meeting Thursday that the investigative report needs more work. 

The commission voted to authorize Ioannides to work with Espinosa Krupa, who has been designated the hearing officer on the complaint, to finalize the report, which will then be released to both parties.

The report has not yet been made public.