A campaign finance violations case levied against a Colorado Springs nonprofit will go before Colorado’s administrative courts after the deputy secretary of state this month denied a motion to dismiss the complaint.

Civic nonprofit Colorado Springs Forward “violated (the state’s) constitutional provision against corporate donations directly to candidates” when it made prohibited campaign donations last year to two El Paso County Commission candidates, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall said in an order he issued Aug. 12 .

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Beall instructed the state Election Division to file a formal complaint by Thursday with the Office of Administrative Courts, which handles campaign finance proceedings.

Lynette Crow-Iverson, chairwoman of the Colorado Springs Forward nonprofit board, said Monday it was an “honest mistake” that the prohibited contributions were made. She criticized Beall’s decision not to dismiss the case after the Elections Division’s weeks-long investigation found the violation was cured after both candidates returned each $5,000 contribution in full.

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“The second we were made aware of the violation we immediately notified the candidates and rectified it,” Crow-Iverson said.

Last September, the nonprofit made prohibited campaign donations of $5,000 each to commissioners Holly Williams and Cami Bremer, who are running for reelection in districts 1 and 5, respectively.

Colorado law prohibits corporations from contributing to candidates or political parties. Additionally, the $5,000 contributions were over the $2,500 campaign donation limit a county candidate may receive under state law.

Williams and Bremer returned the contributions ahead of the June 28 primary election and the Elections Division requested Beall dismiss the complaint against the nonprofit. Both candidates won their primary races.

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, Katie Kennedy, the political action committee’s registered agent, told Secretary of State officials in a letter. This likely caused confusion about the source of the contributions to the candidates’ campaigns, she said.

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The prohibited donations “were made in error by volunteers for an organization that had not made a contribution to state candidates since 2016 and did not realize that the contributions were prohibited,” Kennedy wrote.

Former El Paso County Republican Party Treasurer John Pitchford 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.

The Secretary of State’s Office dismissed the complaints against Williams and Bremer.

Among his reasons now for not dismissing the complaint against the nonprofit, Beall said Kennedy’s “assertions are not plausible on their face.” The checks were signed by Phil Lane, the registered agent of the Colorado Springs Forward nonprofit. Lane, who is also the CEO of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum, signed the checks “as an officer of the corporation, not a ‘volunteer,'” Beall wrote.

The state’s investigation also found the nonprofit Colorado Springs Forward, through an independent expenditure committee, made two donations of $180,000 each to Springs Opportunity Fund in support of electing certain school board candidates last November.

Beall said those contributions show the nonprofit understands how to legally spend money to support political candidates.

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“The nonprofit corporation was obliged to ensure that its staff — volunteer or paid — followed all applicable rules,” he wrote. “… The nonprofit corporation knew, and knows, how to engage in legally permissible political advocacy and … its failure to do so here should be viewed as an intentional attempt to avoid discovery of its improper conduct.”

Reached by phone last week, Kennedy said she was not authorized to speak on the matter.

Lane did not return The Gazette’s requests for comment Friday.

Crow-Iverson said Monday that differences in allowable donations to county and city candidates may have also caused more confusion. In Colorado Springs there are no limits on the contributions a political candidate or committee can receive, according to the city’s campaign finance webpage. City candidates may also accept contributions from corporations and labor organizations.

“It was just a pure accidental mistake,” she said. “(Lane) didn’t realize there was a difference … at the time he was writing the checks.”

Had Williams and Bremer not returned the $5,000 contributions, Beall wrote, it “would have raised grave questions as to the implication of quid-pro-quo corruption between the nonprofit corporation and the candidates, the very purpose of the prohibition against direct corporate contributions to candidates.”

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum that Lane operates received $500,000 in federal coronavirus pandemic relief funds through El Paso County four months before Williams and Bremer received campaign donations from the Colorado Springs Forward nonprofit.

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Both candidates previously told The Gazette the donations made to their campaigns last fall were not related to the county’s grant to the museum. The relief funds came from a portion of the county’s nearly $140 million allocation under the American Rescue Plan Act.

In an email sent to local media this month, Pitchford said the donation “in itself, is unremarkable due to the fact that COVID-19 had shut down the Olympic Museum.” But Lane’s issuance of illegal campaign donations to Williams’ and Bremer’s campaigns just months later “gave the appearance of a quid-pro-quo,” Pitchford said.

Crow-Iverson said the allegation was “utterly ridiculous.”

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“There is no connection between the two issues. That was something we never considered nor thought about. To suggest there’s a link is completely inappropriate and inflammatory,” she said.

The Elections Division has not yet filed a complaint with the Office of Administrative Courts, records show.

When it is filed, it will initiate an administrative hearing process, Secretary of State Office spokesman Jack Todd said.

Most campaign finance complaints filed with the administrative courts are resolved through settlements, Todd said. Hearings, if they do occur, are open to the public.