December 15, 2011 09:34 PM UTC

Gessler Very Predictably Loses on Primary Disclosure Rule Change

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Patrick Malone reports:

The legislative committee that reviews regulatory rules rejected changes Secretary of State Scott Gessler adopted that reduce the number of campaign-finance reporting periods in the run-up to primary elections. Nonpartisan lawyers from the Office of Legislative Legal Services found Gessler overstepped his authority to enact the rule.

“The secretary has effectively created new policy on a very controversial issue affecting the disclosure of campaign and political finance reports in the absence of any direction from the General Assembly,” said Bob Lackner of legal services.

Gessler generated the rule in response to legislation passed by the General Assembly this year that moves Colorado’s primary from August to June. The Legislature failed to pass companion legislation that would align campaign-finance reporting periods with the new primary date, so Gessler set the schedule by rule…

“In the end we picked what we think was the best interpretation of the statute as a whole,” [Deputy Secretary of State Bill] Hobbs said.

Other lawmakers on the committee disagreed and said the rule could have been better, particularly because it eliminates reporting of donations and expenditures for the month preceding the primary. In all, two biweekly reporting periods before the primary and one after it vanish under Gessler’s rule.

It’s true that the original predicament was created by a legislative mistake, failure to realign the dates for biweekly primary reporting to begin. But Gessler’s solution to simply eliminate the biweekly reports preceding the primary is no solution either–obviously, the legislature needs to correct the mistake, which they have plenty of time to do before the next primary season.

Which brings us to the key thing to understand here: “fixing the glitch” was never Gessler’s real motive. As he said in his official email a few days ago, and we discussed then:

I encourage you to make your opinions known about how the reporting schedule should be interpreted. The committee’s vote may have a big impact on how often people report before a primary. [Pols emphasis]

Once you understand the ease with which the legislature can correct the dates in question to retain timely, reasonable primary campaign finance disclosure, and do so in plenty of time to have rules in place that don’t drastically change the law, the next logical question is, why would Gessler propose eliminating biweekly primary disclosures instead of the simple fix?

The answer is simple: he’s an elections lawyer, and he doesn’t like disclosure. We’ve said several times now that Gessler seems bent on pushing every envelope of his authority, and exploiting any loopholes or legislative mistakes (see above) to further a partisan agenda. This situation, taking a legislative mistake and using it in bad faith in an attempt to eliminate campaign finance reporting prescribed by law, is a textbook example of the fox guarding the henhouse.

It’s very important, going forward, that the legislature doesn’t give him any more opportunities.