A Salida elected official who was the subject of an ethics complaint had strong words for the state’s Independent Ethics Commission this week, telling commissioners their process needs reform.

In July 2020, Salida resident Michelle Parmeter filed an ethics complaint with the commission and against Salida City Councilmember Harald Kasper, alleging he had violated the public trust in a 2019 vote regarding zoning issues.

According to the complaint, the city purchased land adjacent to property Kasper owned, and Kasper voted in favor of the city’s purchase of that land for recreational purposes. Parmeter said, without proof, that the purchase increased the value of Kasper’s land. She also objected to several rezoning decisions by the city council, including one for an affordable housing development near where she lives, and asked the commission to overturn those decisions (which is outside of their authority).

Amendment 41 bars public officials from “breaching the public trust for private gain.”

In 2020, the commission decided the complaint was not frivolous and moved it to the investigative phase. 

In his response, Kasper said the rezoning decisions were part of the city’s effort to find land for affordable housing, and that Parmeter disliked those decisions because she lives next door to where that housing would be built. According to Kasper, in a July 2019 city council meeting, Parmeter’s husband, a doctor, said they were not concerned whether teachers, police officers or waiters could find a place to live and more concerned that the affordable housing would cost the city doctors and lawyers who live near the development. As to the land purchase, it has been part of the city’s planning documents since 2013, Kasper noted, and the council’s 4-1 decision to okay the purchase would have been approved without his vote. 

He also noted that the complaint didn’t actually identify any ethics violations he could have committed.

The commission held a hearing on the complaint on June 15, and dismissed it, in part because the zoning issues raised by Parmeter were not within the purview of the commission. As to the land purchase, the commission’s investigation found that the sale did not increase the value of Kasper’s nearby property and noted that Parmeter did not present any evidence to the contrary.

Kasper, however, had something to say about the process, and chewed on the commission on Tuesday over the amount of time it had taken to resolve as well as the damage caused to his reputation.

He called the experience of the ethics complaint “surreal. Thank God we agreed on the outcome.” However, the complaint by Parmeter was “intentional abuse of this process by a disgruntled citizen,” one who was allowed to file a complaint without any evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

“She has won,” Kasper said. “She has achieved what she set out to do,” to cause him pain for the audacity of serving on the city council “and not bow to her tantrums.”

Kasper said he spent thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees, and asked for a written response from the commission to the complainant, telling her that abusing the ethics process is in itself unethical.

Common sense also dictates that the burden of proof should be on the person who filed the complaint, Kasper told the commission. But since the state does not want to put the burden on the accusing citizen, “the responsibility should lie with the commission, to shorten the process and unload the burden on the accused,” Kasper said. 

Kasper also suggested that the process needs to be changed to throw out “ludicrous claims,” and if they fail to do so, the commission becomes a nuisance, he said.

Commissioner Vice-Chair Selina Baschiera responded that she would take Kasper’s comments into consideration.

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Baschiera later raised Kasper’s comments in a discussion of the commission’s budget and staffing for the fiscal year 2022-23.

The commission has had just one staff person, Executive Director Dino Ionnides, for the past several years. He’s responsible for all administrative duties, doing the  investigations, training for covered agencies at both the state and local level and dealing with  logistics for meetings. The commission had an additional staffer some years ago who handled outreach and training, but budget cuts eliminated that position.

Since then, the commission has been reluctant to seek more staffing, even turning down an offer from the Joint Budget Committee for that purpose about six years ago.

But given the deluge of complaints in 2020 (likely the result of publicity around the ethics investigation into then-Gov. John Hickenlooper), Baschiera seemed open to the possibility of adding another staffer.

“I’m concerned about the length of our process,” Baschiera said, adding that she wondered about whether they should hire an investigator to help with the workload, given the volume of complaints in recent years. It’s part of a consideration for the time individuals spend when they come to the commission, she explained.

The idea of hiring an investigator also appealed to Chair Elizabeth Espinosa-Krupa. Such staffing would free up Ionnides to focus on training, she said. 

To date in 2021, the commission has received 20 complaints, dismissing 19 of them as frivolous. The 20th is in a “preliminary investigation” status and has not been ruled on yet. 

In 2020, the commission received 80 complaints, dismissing all but five. The previous year, 26 complaints were received, with all but two dismissed as either frivolous or outside the commission’s jurisdiction.

Ethics commission dismissed complaint against Delta County official but decision is on appeal

Finally, the commission reviewed an appeal on a previous dismissal of a complaint against Delta County Administrator Robbie LeValley. JoAnn Kalenak of Hotchkiss, who publishes the Delta County Citizens Report, appealed the commission’s decision to dismiss the complaint last month, which was tied to county purchases of beef from LeValley’s ranch. The commission rejected Kalenak’s appeal Tuesday.