EDITORIAL: Aurora’s ‘Strong mayor’ quagmire still begs investigation

As has been the case during the entire debacle of Mayor Mike Coffman’s ill-conceived “strong mayor” scheme, the stories told by those involved belie transparency, reason and integrity.

With the so-called citizen initiative being snuffed, it’s time for city officials to step from behind a cloak of secrecy and start answering questions.

The sordid tale began this spring when, seemingly out of nowhere, “citizen initiative” petitions began circulating in Aurora, seeking to ask voters this fall to increase term limits for city lawmakers. 

After weeks of investigation by reporters at the Sentinel and 9News, it turned out the mysterious petition drive didn’t come out of nowhere. It came out of Coffman’s bank account and a GOP dark money pool.

Coffman, a Republican, ponied up $10,000 of his own cash for the scheme and won about $100,000 from a dark-money group, favored by Republican interests, according to city and state records.

Within days of the petition drive being launched by a Colorado Springs petition-drive company beholden to Republican stalwarts and interests, it became clear the “citizen initiative” was an inside partisan effort, not to change city council term limits, but to entirely restructure Aurora’s government.

The measure was immediately championed by Colorado Springs Republican interests.

Although the petition summary was, as mandated by law, supposed to accurately reflect the proposal hawked at grocery stores, and illegally at post offices, it didn’t. What the petitions tried to conceal was a measure that would not only rewrite Aurora’s generations-long style of government, creating a unilaterally powerful mayor, it would guarantee that Coffman could seamlessly snag that job next year.

Rightfully so, lawmakers from both political parties on city council, and across the region, said it was an outlandish and unethical power grab by Coffman.  Once the details of the stealthy scheme were made public, Coffman continued to refuse to discuss his involvement in the plot and explain to voters why he pretended the scheme was the will of the people, and not the will of his wallet.

City clerk officials dubiously gave the measure a green light in August, saying the proposal, needing more than 12,000 valid signatures, would squeak onto the ballot by about 181.

Finally, in a 9News interview with reporter Marshall Zelinger, Coffman awkwardly admitted to creating and helping fund the racket, giving no logical or defensible reason for his deceitful actions. As the scheme collapsed under encroaching deadlines and a looming court challenge by a growing field of critics, disturbing questions and details surfaced as well.

Despite repeated requests, city officials have yet to satisfactorily explain how the city clerk’s office could ethically be required to take part in creating parts of the petition, and then be the city’s own arbiter of protests by citizens filing complaints about how the petition and measure was created and handled.

Numerous email exchanges requested by the Sentinel — among the Aurora city attorney, his employees, the city clerk, her supervisor, a city hall public relations employee and an advising outside attorney — were exchanged in September. The emails clearly involved the merits of public complaints about the petitions — created and approved by the same city employees “judging” their legality. Almost all of the email content was redacted by the city, citing “attorney-client” privilege.

It came as little surprise, or comfort, to open-government activists, that the city clerk ruled in her own favor on several questions of clarity and intent about the measure. More disturbing was new information revealed by the Sentinel that not only was this never an actual “citizen initiative,” but an Aurora city attorney was directed at one point to review the measure created by Coffman and his lawyer, give advice on the measure’s structure and content, and send comments back to them.

Not only was this free legal advice service provided to Coffman and his lawyer, no one else on the city council was apparently aware of it, and the city attorney never made his office’s involvement public — even as they had a hand in adjudicating citizen complaints about the form and structure of the measure.

At best, the ruse illustrates a sloppy city legal club that plays too loosely with mandates of transparency, the public’s business, accountability and a problem with poor political judgment. But the stunt also reveals a serious problem where secrets are kept under the guise of “attorney-client privilege” obfuscating facts and undermining honesty and due process, entrusted to city officials.

There’s no doubt that the vast majority of Aurora political leaders and apprised voters just want this farce to go away, just like it did. And given the political quagmire this ploy has become, there’s little doubt Coffman and others involved in the scheme want it to fade away now, especially on the eve of a mayoral election. But city lawmakers would only add to the injuries inflicted by the scam to just walk away from it, especially knowing the clandestine and undisclosed involvement of the city attorney’s office. 

At the very least, city lawmakers should create an independent commission to investigate how the measure was ever allowed to begin the petition process and which city employees were involved in creating and perpetuating the measure.

A better solution is for the state attorney general to investigate who in Aurora was involved in the scheme and how the public’s interests were undermined by a clubby, secret racket.

Clearly, city regulations, and possibly the city charter, need reforms to prevent not just slipshod caretaking of the rights of resident voters and protection from future scams, but to ensure city government is free from political machinations the city’s government is designed to prevent.