A bipartisan ethics panel made up of Senate lawmakers on Monday unanimously dismissed a complaint against Sen. Bob Gardner alleging the Colorado Springs Republican improperly used his office to influence the state court administrator.

The complaint filed by Chris Forsyth of the Judicial Integrity Project stems from a comment Gardner made in a Jan. 25, 2019, joint Judiciary committee hearing on the State Commission on Judicial Performance. During that hearing, Gardner commented that:

“I had, about five or six years ago, a colleague with whom I shared an office come to me and say I am appearing in front of the senior judge and the senior judge said this. And she showed me the transcript and she said, ‘And I don’t know what to do but I understand you’re in the legislature and so forth.’ Well, I was able to make a phone call to the state court administrator, but had my colleague not shared office space with a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she would have been faced with a recusal motion.”

The complaint, among other things, accused Gardner of violating Senate Rule 41, which deals with conflicts of interest and undue influence over a state official. But that rule also specifies that there must be some kind of gain, usually financial or private, to the lawmaker in doing so, and the members of the panel said they did not see evidence pointing to that after reviewing responses from Gardner and state Court Administrator Steven Vasconcellos.

In fact, members from both sides of the aisle pointed to Gardner’s actions as a model for being a citizen legislator.

“I think all that Sen. Gardner did was work outside of session in a responsible manner,” said Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster. “If the citizens of Colorado want to have legislators that don’t have overlap with private careers, then that’s a different decision … the citizens have again and again and again said, ‘We want a citizen legislature’ and that means you get to be a lawyer and you get to help other lawyers that you work with.”

Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, went one step further, adding she was “troubled” by the complaint against Gardner.

“In my work both prior to coming to this General Assembly as well as my work now as a senator, I have worked diligently to try to expand the public’s access to these institutions and these bodies and the assertion that making those entities more accessible is somehow undermining public confidence just seems inconceivable to me,” she said.

Gonzales, Winter and the panel’s two Republican members, Sens. John Cooke of Greeley and Paul Lundeen of Monument, appeared poised from their opening comments of the 24-minute meeting to dismiss the case.

The panel’s fifth member, Denver Democratic Sen. Chris Hansen, joined his colleagues to make the dismissal unanimous, noting he felt from the body of evidence the “clear answer” was that Gardner did not use his office to wield undue influence. But Hansen lamented at the beginning of the meeting that the response provided by Vasconcellos lacked specificity about how many similar queries he receives from lawmakers. Gonzales asked that question of Vasconcellos in a letter prior to the hearing.

“It sounds from their answer that the Judicial Department does not track the queries, even in terms of by the number of members of the General Assembly,” said Bob Lackner of Legal Services as he described a conversation he had with Vasconcellos about the response.

Still, both Winter and Lundeen pointed to a statement from former Court Administrator Jerry Marroney contained in Gardner’s response indicating he was contacted by “many legislators … about matters involving constituent concerns and other matters concerning the judicial branch” during his tenure of more than 17 years in the role.

“It would probably be inappropriate for someone on the Judiciary Committee to not interact with the state court administrator to make good policy,” Winter said after highlighting Marroney’s statement.

The decision to dismiss came in the panel’s second meeting on the complaint. The first, held last month, was intended to be organizational. Cooke and Lundeen were prepared to discuss the complaint and make a decision at the June meeting, but Gonzales opted for a second meeting because Winter was on vacation and barred from participating remotely.