The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission has released its final report on the 2018 ethics violations committed by former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper

The commission found Hickenlooper, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, violated the state’s ethics law, Amendment 41, while he was governor and on two separate occasions out of six they reviewed. They fined him $2,750 for those two violations. Hickenlooper has said he would pay the fines.

The first violation was for accepting meals and a limousine ride at the June 2018 Bilderberg Meeting in Turin, Italy; the second was accepting a private plane ride and VIP meals for the March 2018 commissioning of the USS Colorado in Connecticut. Both exceeded the state’s 2018 gift limit of $59, the commission found. 

It is the state “that should have paid for Gov. Hickenlooper’s travel to the commissioning of the U.S.S. Colorado, and no exception applies that would allow Gov. Hickenlooper to accept private air travel instead,” the report stated.

While Hickenlooper attended the event as an official state function, the private plane trip and several VIP dinners hosted by MDC Holdings, which owned the plane, was offered to Hickenlooper personally and not to other attendees, including several members of the Colorado General Assembly. Those gifts also were not related to the governor’s duties at the event, the report stated.

“If those gifts were gift to the state, they would have been provided to other state officials who were attending the commissioning on the same state business.”

The report also stated the commission believed there was a possible conflict of interest in accepting the gifts. “Those events were clearly opportunities for MDC representatives to interface with the governor and his chief of staff. Regardless of whether MDC had business pending before the state at the time of the flight and the MDC delegation dinners, the inclusion of Gov. Hickenlooper in the MDC delegation created a potential conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety.”

With regard to Bilderberg, the commission found unpersuasive Hickenlooper’s claim that because he didn’t know his payment for the hotel didn’t cover other conference costs, he had not accepted nor received something of value. That was meals at the conference and the limousine ride from the airport.

“Attendees at invitation-only events with no ticket price are not exempt from paying the readily ascertainable costs of benefits received in terms of meals and ground transportation,” the commission wrote. Hickenlooper was required to obtain a ballpark estimate of those costs from conference hosts and reimburse them for that amount where, as here, his attendance at the conference was undisputedly for personal purposes.”

The commission’s decisions on penalties were admittedly not precise since the complainant — the Public Trust Institute — offered no proof of the costs of any of the items for which Hickenlooper was found to have violated the law. So the commission decided to assess a $2,200 fine for the Connecticut plane ride and $550 for the limousine and meals at Bilderberg. Those penalties are valued at twice the estimated cost of those items.

But the report was not unanimous.

Commission Chair Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa, in a dissent, disagreed with the finding that Hickenlooper had violated Amendment 41 when he accepted the plane ride and VIP dinners at the USS Colorado commissioning. She called the commission’s finding inconsistent with previous decisions.

Krupa also pointed out that the Public Trust Institute claimed his accepting those gifts were a conflict of interest but had no proof that MDC Holdings had any business before the state, nor involved in pending legislation, nor any gubernatorial action regarding building and water permits (those are issued at the local level).

“In short, Gov. Hickenlooper rebutted each attempt to demonstrate that his travel to and participation in the commissioning of the U.S.S. Colorado was a gift that inured to him personally, and the majority still (her emphasis) found a violation.”

Krupa similarly had problems with PTI’s lack of evidence on costs or penalties for the Bilderberg Meeting. 

“It was apparent to me that Complainant had abandoned any claim that a penalty should be assessed,” Krupa wrote. “Complainant had attached website printouts to its complaint, apparently as an attempt to provide estimates of costs, but never substantiated those estimates or presented evidence regarding them at hearing.” Krupa said the commission should not have given PTI’s so-called evidence any weight.

Hickenlooper appointed Krupa to the commission in August 2018. 

Commissioner Yeulin Willett also dissented, believing the commission should have found a violation for the governor’s acceptance of a private plane ride for officiating at a wedding in Texas for Kimbal Musk. Hickenlooper wrote a $1,000 check to Musk to pay for the plane ride, Willett pointed out, but Musk never cashed the check.

“What I found here was a significant high-end gift to the highest statewide elected official, from an acquaintance, on an occasion primarily special to the giver,” he wrote.

Willett also disputed whether Musk was a personal friend — which is an exception under Amendment 41’s language on gifts — characterizing him rather as a civic leader and an acquaintance. 

Willett was named to the commission in 2019 by Chief Justice Nathan Coats of the Colorado Supreme Court.