Tracy Baker.
Up until last week, no two words in Colorado could say so much about arrogance, malfeasance, scandal, lewdness, corruption and nefarious skulduggery.
Baker was the Arapahoe County clerk and recorder who in 2002 went from being just another pair of brown shoes to a perpetrator of one of the most outrageous episodes of sexual impropriety, arrogance and iniquity ever to smear a government office in Colorado. Baker carried on a torrid affair with a subordinate employee, whom he promoted, inappropriately, to a top-level position. He used county funds to carry on his affair, which was graphically and embarrassingly documented on the messages they traded on county computers and phones.
Ringing a bell yet? When confronted with proof of his wrongdoing, Baker first lied then rationalized his villainy. As the scandal festered and county commissioners worked to push him out, he dug in, refusing to backtrack or budge from his good-paying county job. As more sordid details of his carousing and misdeeds unraveled, residents in the county were prompted to recall Baker, since he was untouchable any other way.
Sound familiar? Now Colorado has two new words to exemplify arrogant odiousness: Terry Maketa.
Maketa is the El Paso County sheriff. A meticulous story last week by Dave Phillips at the Colorado Springs Gazette detailed a travesty much like Baker’s — times three. Maketa had long-standing sexual relationships with three sheriff’s department employees, sometimes spending county money on his trysts, and wrongly promoting and protecting these employees because of sexual favors. When confronted about his misdeeds, he denied it and threatened to sue the paper and just about everyone else. His story includes lies, deceits, threatening other employees, torrid sextings and at least one highly embarrassing skin shot of Maketa in the can at his family home telling one of his employee-lovers, “wish you were with me.” I doubt his wife did.
Just like old times. County commissioners there unanimously gave Maketa the vote of no confidence and demanded he step down. In the face of irrefutable evidence, as expected, Maketa told the employees he offended and the taxpayers he ripped off: “hell no, I won’t go.” He’s sorry now, and he said in a videotaped message that he’s getting better and better in every way, “every hour and every day.”
While the Baker scandal was mostly lurid and stupid, Maketa is a law enforcement officer. As of now, however, he’s a lying, cheating, bullying, stealing, apologetic law enforcement officer, who will stay on the payroll until his term expires at the end of the year.
And there ain’t nothing anybody can do about it.
Well, there is. Residents in the county need to collect 44,000 registered voter signatures in about, oh, a week or so to recall Sheriff Shirtless. That’s not going to happen. In fact, it’s so many signatures, that by the time they were collected and validated, county officials would be hard-pressed to force a special election so close to the scheduled one in November, and Maketa had previously announced he wasn’t seeking another term.
Clearly, Maketa knows all this, and so, he’s not budging. And there really ain’t nothing you can do about it — this time.
If there were a fairness fairy, she, or he, would collect the needed signatures by Friday, because it’s a damned shame that Maketa isn’t properly rewarded for his antics by having voters throw him out of office before he gets his star sued off. Absent that, Colorado needs a rip-cord law when elected officials go this wrong, and there is no doubt that there’s probably a county employee now or in the near future who thinks he, or she, won’t get caught.
This is a job for state lawmakers. They need to propose a rule that forces a referendum by creating a junta of sorts, allowing all elected officials in a county, or a bi-partisan, statewide smut tribunal and an okee-dokee by the governor, to make an election happen fast. There has to be a way to get these crooks off the public payroll. We have to get them away from valuable government employees, and keep the public from having to suffer through another creepy county clerk or insufferable sheriff happy pants. Their reputations and careers are dead, and their howling ghosts just stink up the place. Since we can’t reasonably impose an exorcism, at least let the afflicted have the dignity of a recall election.
Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com
Dave,
We have timing problem here, not a process problem.
We do not need new laws.
,dave