About 1 in 6 judges across Colorado this year does not have their personal financial disclosure statements on file with the Secretary of State’s Office, despite a law that requires it every January, a Gazette review has found.

In the worst examples, nearly two dozen judges who sit on a Colorado district or county court bench, some of them the chief judge of their judicial district, haven’t had a disclosure on file for several years – the only way the public could know if a judge might have a conflict of interest in the cases they oversee – The Gazette found.

Records show that despite a yearly six-page emailed reminder to all judges by the Judicial Department to submit the reports, 56 of the state’s complement of 358 judges – including members of the Colorado Court of Appeals – did not have the disclosures on file last year or a prior one.

And a handful of the judges haven’t had a disclosure on file at all since being named to the bench, including two from Denver’s district court who voters nevertheless retained following high marks from the judicial performance commission there.

Two different district court judges – each with four years of missing disclosure filings until told by The Gazette about them – sit on judicial discipline commissions whose job it is to punish jurists for their misconduct.

The reasons judges gave for their lapse in filing varied, according to emails several sent The Gazette in response to a request for comment or explanation. They ranged from “it was an oversight” and “there must be some mistake” to “I have no excuse” and “I’m boring!”

Others emailed that they would check the newspaper’s findings for themselves and get back to The Gazette, then did not respond again.

Better than half of the judges emailed by The Gazette, however, simply did not reply at all.

Following The Gazette’s inquiries, at least one chief judge, Don Quick of the 17th Judicial District in Adams County, flagged judges in his jurisdiction with an email to “make sure that you are in compliance with the cited statutes” for filing their disclosure documents. Quick included a copy of the Judicial Department’s reminder that was sent in December to all judges statewide, according to a copy of the July 27 email obtained by The Gazette.

As many judges scrambled to update their filings after The Gazette told them of the shortfall, one judge made it clear that no excuse was valid.

“I’m not sure what occurred; however, it is my responsibility to follow-up and make sure that I have complied with my obligations,” 10th Judicial District Judge Thomas Flesher wrote The Gazette after he was told his 2023 filing was missing. “Certainly, one of the purposes of these requirements is to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and I would never want to impact the system in a negative way.”

Two district court judges told The Gazette that personal problems got in their way: One’s mother had fallen gravely ill, and the other had a medical problem that laid them up for weeks. Both conceded that neither was an excuse for not filing the documents at a later date.

The number with unfiled disclosures is even higher when the more than four dozen senior judges – jurists who have technically retired but remain on the bench in a limited capacity – are added. Although still deciding cases that run from felonies to family court, nearly all haven’t had a disclosure on file with the secretary of state since retiring – one of them more than 16 years ago, The Gazette found.

What’s more, seven senior judges had already stopped filing their financial disclosures with the state long before they were even retired – one of them by five years, The Gazette analysis found.

The newspaper’s investigation lays bare a toothless law – it’s a misdemeanor to willingly not file the disclosures – with little enforcement. The Secretary of State’s Office says its job is merely to compile the filings and make them available for public inspection, but not to remind anyone of a failure to submit them.

Similarly, the Secretary of State’s Office does not routinely confirm the receipt of any filing unless asked to. In at least one case – that of Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Boatright – a filing from 2014 remained missing for more than nine years until The Gazette, and then Boatright, asked about it and it was later found.

At least three judges – County Judge Kelly Waidler of the 18th Judicial District, District Judge Mark MacDonnell, the chief judge of the 16th Judicial District, and District Judge Sharon Holbrook of the 17th Judicial District – learned that although their disclosures were filed on time last year, they were sent to an incorrect email address and never officially recorded. The Secretary of State’s Office said it is incumbent on the judges to check and any mistake is still in violation of the requirement to file.

A fourth judge, newly minted District Judge Kim Cortez-Rodriguez in the 12th Judicial District, learned she’d been entering the wrong email address – by one letter – since 2018, shortly after Gov. John Hickenlooper appointed her to the county court bench there. Gov. Jared Polis gave her the district court position last year.

“Your question took me surprise, as I had believed I had filed disclosure forms for all of those years,” Cortez-Rodriguez told The Gazette in an email. “I discovered that a filing error on my part … meant that the disclosures had not been received when I believed they had been.”

The state Attorney General’s Office said it’s responsible for prosecuting any violators, but a complaint must first be filed by the Secretary of State’s Office.

A secretary of state spokesman said that office “investigates campaign and political finance violations based on complaints. Only after receiving a complaint does the Department investigate and take action as appropriate.”

Colorado law requires an array of elected and appointed officials ranging from the governor to members of the Public Utilities Commission, as well as judges, to annually disclose their financial holdings at the Secretary of State’s Office to identify potential conflicts of interest, whether there are any material changes to that information from one year to the next or not. The filings are public and available on request. The Gazette asked for the date each judge in the state last filed a disclosure.

“Coloradans have a right to expect that all officials subject to the law will comply with it in a timely way,” said Rep. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s disappointing to hear of these gaps in compliance by some judicial officers and I hope that going forward judges who have missed these filing requirements will hold themselves more closely accountable to filling out the annual disclosures on time.”

Advocates for government accountability and transparency say the apparent lack of enforcement is a problem for a law that’s been on the books for 50 years.

“This is something the voters of Colorado said they wanted to improve government transparency, but the enforcement aspect of it seems to be really lacking,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “The point of this is to ensure these public officials and judges don’t have conflicts with the cases and issues that come before them and the public knows of it.”

Discipline Commission judges

While a majority of the judges had missing disclosures only for this year, nearly two dozen of them have multiple years of missing filings, The Gazette found.

One judge, Arapahoe County District Judge Bonnie McLean of the 18th Judicial District, hasn’t had a financial disclosure on file since 2019, the Secretary of State’s Office said.

Appointed to the bench in 2014 by Hickenlooper, McLean sits on the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, which, except for judges in Denver County courts, has jurisdiction over any district or county court judge accused of misconduct, including failing to file the disclosures.

When contacted, McLean simply said her “filings are currently up to date” and offered no other explanation for why they had lagged for so long.

The Secretary of State’s Office confirmed her recent filing.

Another, Denver District Court Judge Jay Grant of the 2nd Judicial District, similarly had not filed any disclosure since 2019, records show. He is a member of the Denver Judicial Discipline Commission, which oversees misconduct cases involving Denver County court judges.

Appointed to the bench by Hickenlooper in April 2016, Grant said he simply misunderstood the disclosure law.

“My understanding of the rules pertaining to the filing of financial disclosures when my financial circumstances had not changed was in error and I will be remedying the situation shortly,” he wrote in an email to The Gazette.

And Boulder District Court Chief Judge Ingrid Bakke – best known for overseeing the ongoing murder case against accused King Soopers shooter Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa – hasn’t had a disclosure on file since 2016, the largest gap among active full-time jurists statewide, The Gazette found.

Bakke was appointed to the bench in 2010 by Gov. Bill Ritter and named chief judge of the district in 2017.

She told The Gazette she was “looking into the matter and hope to get back to you next week.”

She didn’t.

Jefferson County District Judge Todd Vriesman of the 1st Judicial District, who the secretary of state says hasn’t had a disclosure on file since 2018, simply told The Gazette that “there is an explanation,” but offered none.

Instead, he noted he was in a jury trial the next two weeks and referred the newspaper to a spokesman for the Judicial Department.

Spokesman Robert McCallum told The Gazette that Vriesman instead was “unaware of any issue but would research the matter” following the trial.

Vriesman’s been on the bench since 2014.

Two appellate judges

Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Rebecca Freyre was sure she filed her financial disclosure for 2021 and to prove it provided The Gazette with a copy of a document dated Dec. 27, 2021 – which the secretary of state said was actually filed with their office on Jan. 10, 2022, satisfying the requirement for that year.

“I have reporting requirements as both a judicial officer and as a trustee on the PERA board,” Freyre wrote in an email to The Gazette, noting that her role with the Public Employees’ Retirement Association of Colorado also requires the annual filing. She insisted she had filed it properly.

“Yes, this is my one for 2021,” she emailed about the December 2021 document. “I filed it early because I knew there would be nothing to report in the final days of the year, and I was scheduled to be out of town. I didn’t want it to slip through the cracks.”

Two days after she was contacted by The Gazette, Freyre had an email exchange with the Secretary of State’s Office in which it became clear she had made no actual filing for 2021.

“I cannot locate my annual filing,” she told that office in the exchange, a copy of which Freyre provided to The Gazette. “So, either I neglected to file it, or I filed it and lost my copy during a computer issue I had while working from home, in which I lost everything saved to my desktop.”

She filed her 2021 disclosure on July 20 – two years late.

“Lots was happening during our COVID lockdown,” she told The Gazette when asked how the filing deadline was missed.

The secretary of state confirmed there was no reprieve during the pandemic from the requirement for government officials to timely file the disclosure documents.

Similarly, the Secretary of State’s Office said it doesn’t have the 2016 and 2020 disclosure filings for Appellate Court Judge Elizabeth Harris.

When contacted by The Gazette, Harris said she appreciated being told and would check for herself.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I thought I was in compliance but will check with the Secretary of State’s Office to be sure and will correct any problems if there are any.”

She did not return additional messages from The Gazette asking about the outcome of her inquiry.

Despite the violations, both judges – Harris and Freyre – were named to a special tribunal of seven appellate jurists who sat in judgment of former Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats over allegations of misconduct. Both signed his unprecedented public censure, the first of a Colorado Supreme Court justice.

The state discipline commission would not comment about The Gazette’s findings or whether it intended to begin an inquiry. The commission’s work, by law, is secret.

“As it always does, the Commission will review any issues or complaints according to its rules and procedures,” was all Executive Director Christopher Gregory offered in an email.

Senior judges different

Colorado law requiring the disclosures says anyone “who willfully fails to make any filing required” by the statute “is guilty of a misdemeanor” punishable by a fine ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

Colorado laws are straightforward, although a 2013 analysis of the level of disclosure in the 50 states found it was only one of eight to earn a passing grade – barely.

The Center for Public Integrity found that although Colorado requires judges to report their sources of income and financial holdings – three states do not – it requires no perspective or dollar amounts, only that they exceed $5,000.

Colorado requires each judge to file the disclosure or a single-page form that simply says there is no change to their financial situation and the prior year’s disclosure still applies.

The law says “each justice or judge of a court of record” must file the disclosures by Jan. 10. Newly appointed judges must file by the January deadline after their appointment, which does not necessarily coincide with the date they’re sworn in.

There is no exception in the law for the state’s senior judges – there are currently 50 of them – yet nearly all haven’t filed with the secretary of state since their retirement, and some for even longer.

Four of the 50 actually filed a financial disclosure with the secretary of state since signing on as a senior judge, although just two of them did so this year, records show.

The only specific exclusions senior judges enjoy that other judges do not, according to the Colorado Code of Judicial Conduct, is no need to abstain from serving as an arbitrator, mediator, or appointment to a fiduciary position.

Yet all the senior judges instead filed disclosures with the state court administrator’s office because the contract each sign to take on the role requires it.

When asked by The Gazette how that is, the Judicial Department would not cite any law, rule or directive that exempts the senior judges from having to file them with the secretary of state.

“The disclosures that senior judges file with the State Court Administrator’s Office are available to the public,” spokesman Jon Sarche said in an email. “The Judicial Department does not provide statute or rule interpretation to judges, attorneys or any other parties, unless it’s an interpretation by a court in a matter properly brought before the court.”

A former chief judge who is eligible for the senior judge program insisted they should continue to file their financial disclosures with the secretary of state “in the full interest of transparency and judicial integrity.”

“I don’t care if you’re only a senior judge for five minutes or a district judge for a whole year, the law is very clear they should be filed with the secretary of state’s office,” former Pueblo County Chief District Judge Dennis Maes said in an interview. “Why is anyone playing games about this? A senior judge can have the same conflict of interest as any other judge. It’s disingenuous to suggest they are a different kind of judge. They’re a judge, period. The public should easily know where to find these records. It’s ridiculous to file them anywhere else. That’s not transparency.”

A key difference in filing with a different office is the cost to the public in acquiring them.

In one instance, The Gazette was required to pay the Judicial Department more than $53 to obtain 26 pages of disclosures filed by two senior judges the past two years. (One of them had provided the department a 2020 tax return despite indicating it was for 2022.)

The same types of record requests from the secretary of state carried no expense.

‘I’m boring’

Most senior judges still sit on cases ranging from felonies to family court, according to a Gazette review of cases they’ve handled since 2021, just like any other judge on the bench. And some treat it that way, but most don’t.

For example, former 3rd District County Judge Jeffrey Romeo sat on more than 70 cases in Broomfield County in 2021, records show. Despite joining the senior judge program in 2017, Romeo continued to file financial disclosure statements with the secretary of state through 2022 but doesn’t have one on file this year.

Romeo did not respond to a Gazette email asking why he continued to file when so many senior judges had not.

Another, retired 10th Judicial District Judge Scott Epstein, has sat on more than 30 cases in Arapahoe County in 2022, records show. He last filed a disclosure with the secretary of state in 2006 before becoming a senior judge in 2007.

Epstein said he can’t say whether the law requires senior judges to file with the secretary of state or not.

“I cannot comment on interpreting the cited provision,” he wrote The Gazette. “I can advise that, to my knowledge, I have complied with the disclosure provisions as required.”

The Gazette found that seven current senior judges not only haven’t had a disclosure on file with the secretary of state since their retirement, they’re also missing several years of disclosures from when they were still a full-time judge before that.

Former 8th Judicial District Chief Judge Stephen Howard, for example, retired in January 2021 and joined the senior judge program nine months later.

But records show the last disclosure he filed with the secretary of state was in 2016.

Howard initially told The Gazette in an email that he’s kept no records of his filings, “but I am almost certain that I completed and submitted disclosures each year.”

He added: “I am a very boring person (I have lived in the same house since 1986) and I believe my 2017 and later annual reports simply said there were no changes from the previous year.”

In a subsequent email, Howard deferred: “I never personally filed a single disclosure. I have always relied on administrative staff to complete any filings. I really don’t know what else to say.”

The other six senior judges emailed by The Gazette about their missed filings while full-time judges did not respond.