The Secretary of State’s Office is asking El Paso County Commissioners Cami Bremer and Holly Williams to rectify alleged campaign finance violations over donations they received from a nonprofit. 

Colorado Springs Forward, a civic nonprofit, donated $5,000 to each of the commissioners running for reelection in September, which was prohibited under state law, letters from the Secretary of State’s Office to the candidates said. The checks were also over the $2,500 campaign donation limit that a candidate can receive under state law.

The nonprofit had a related political action committee known as Colorado Springs Forward State Political Funding Committee, that could have legally donated to the campaigns and likely caused confusion about the source of the contributions for the candidates’ campaigns, the registered agent for the committee told state Secretary of State officials in a letter.

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John Pitchford, the former El Paso County Republican Party treasurer, filed an initial complaint over the donations in February focused on the committee he thought was the donor based on campaign finance records. He later filed complaints against the commissioners for accepting the prohibited donations from a nonprofit among other violations when additional information came to light through the secretary of state’s investigation. 

220510 Notice of Initial Review and Opportunity to Cure Cami Bremer 2022-21.pdf

“Everyone has to be concerned about how people finance their campaigns, otherwise the cheaters would prosper,” he said. 

The problem may have started with Colorado Springs Forward. The person who wrote the checks did not realize they were prohibited, said Katie Kennedy, the registered agent for Colorado Springs Forward State Political Funding Committee in a letter to the Secretary of State’s Office.

220510 Notice of Initial Review and Opportunity to Cure Holly Williams 2022-20.pdf

Phil Lane, who signed the checks, is listed as a board member of Colorado Springs Forward and is the CEO of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. The museum received $500,000 in federal coronavirus pandemic relief funds through El Paso County months before the candidates received campaign donations. Lane did not respond to repeated request for comment. 

Both Williams and Bremer said in interviews they tried to refund $2,500 when they realized that the donations were over the limit. Those checks were never cashed, the candidates said. The candidates later wrote refund checks to Colorado Springs Forward for $5,000 when they were notified of the error in February, after the original complaint was filed, and the copies were provided to the Secretary of State’s Office. 

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Williams said she was quick to return the overage because she is committed to following campaign finance law. “When I found out there was a mistake, I rectified it,” she said.

Pitchford’s complaint to the Secretary of State’s Office alleges both candidates falsely reported the refunds.  

Both candidates said the donations made to their campaigns in October were not related to the county’s $500,000 grant to the Olympic & Paralympic Museum last June. The relief funds came from a portion of the county’s nearly $140 million allocation under the American Rescue Plan Act.

Williams said she was initially unaware Lane had signed the donation checks. Bremer said her only communication with him about the donation was in a thank-you letter she sent along with a return check for $2,500 that was never cashed.

Furthermore, Bremer said, people are free to donate to political campaigns they support.

“What community members do in … their free time is not my business. We are in a very active community of many philanthropists, doers and projects,” she said. Sometimes people who have professional relationships with candidates decide, in a private capacity, to donate to them, she said. 

“No way did this (donation) have anything to do with another project of Lane’s,” Bremer said.

The problem would have been more apparent to the candidates if the Colorado Springs Forward committee had been terminated years ago when it became inactive, but because it still existed it “confused the source of the contributions,” Kennedy wrote in an April 11 letter to the Secretary of State’s Office. 

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“While Colorado Springs Forward did not represent that the contributions made were from the political committee, it is understandable that the Committee to Elect Holly Williams and the Committee to Elect Cami Bremer accepted the contributions with the honest assumption that the funds were from a permissible source,” she said.

Kennedy wrote the letter in response to the complaint filed against the Colorado Springs Forward committee in February. The Secretary of State’s Office moved for that complaint to be dismissed because it found insufficient evidence the committee had accepted donations or spent money that it failed to report. 

With the additional information from the investigation into the committee, Pitchford filed complaints against the individual candidates’ campaigns. 

The candidates have until May 24 to show state election officials how they worked to rectify the violations. State officials will take into account the extent of noncompliance, the purpose of the law violated and whether its purpose was achieved despite the missteps and whether the action was an intentional attempt to mislead the electorate or election officials.

In the upcoming Republican primaries, Bremer is facing Dave Winney, a former secretary of state candidate, and Williams is facing Lindsay Moore, a former school board candidate. Winney and Moore have not yet filed campaign finance reports. 

Pitchford said he supports Winney and Moore, but is not involved in their campaigns and has not donated to them.