Colorado Week in Review for May 29, 2022

Great reporting by CTR's Logan Davis on blatant corruption by two incumbent Republican state Senators.

Jerry Sonnenberg received a $21,000 loan for a business called "Jerry Sonnenberg" that does nothing and has no business filings.

He owns 5,000 acres of land in Logan County and two other states that he has never acknowledged (or paid taxes on?)

The Land Baron

There is a property empire hidden in Logan County, some forty miles south of the indistinguishable point where the ochre fields of Colorado bleed over into Nebraska. It consists of more than 5,000 acres of agricultural land in the county’s southeastern quadrant. On paper, it appears as fifteen separate parcels of land controlled by five separate owners. In reality, it was carefully assembled over the past decade by the man representing Logan County in the state legislature, Jerry Sonnenberg.

The problem is that Sonnenberg has never disclosed his ownership of a single acre of land in his annual personal financial disclosures. He has never even claimed a personal residence. 

Senator Sonnenberg has been lying about his personal finances for the last ten years. He has always been elected by comfortable margins in his SD65 races (when he even had an opponent); and he'll probably get elected now that he's termed out of the legislature and running for Logan County Commissioner (dist 3). He just continues to pose as this jocular, community-minded good old country boy.

I have to wonder what would happen if the local press exposed Sonnenberg's corruption.

The same applies to the other corrupt GOP Senator exposed by CTR's reporting, Paul Lundeen of Monument. Lundeen has multiple businesses that he did not report income from over the years. He was transparent about it – but nobody apparently cares.