Thousands of Dollars Went to Millionaire Jared Polis for Party, Flowers
Face The State Staff Report
A Fort Collins legislator ordered an audit of the Colorado state Board of Education Tuesday after he discovered that officials resisted providing specific documents detailing questionable spending practices by individual board members.
According to a source familiar with the case, Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, a member of the state's joint budget Committee, ordered an audit of board expenditures Tuesday out of frustration with department officials. According to the source, department officials were not forthcoming with documents that sufficiently detailed spending by board members. "First, they furnished joint budget committee staff the figures only in aggrigate. They were not broken down by individual board member and by specific expense as Mr. Johnson had specifically requested, and when pressed for more specifics, they gave him the run around," the source added.
On Dec. 10, Rocky Mountain News reporter Chris Barge filed an official request for records about the allegations and met with CDE staff regarding the spending abuses. His newspaper has not published a story filed on the topic. But Johnson persisted, telling the legislative audit committee that he believes the legislature should pay attention to the potential cover-up. Johnson then pressed forward with ordering a legislative audit.
Upon a Tuesday legislative hearing initiating the audit, Associated Press reporter Steven Paulson contacted education officials to pin down spending specifics. Paulson asked for expense account details for the past three years from all board members, plus the current and past education commissioners. Like Johnson, FTS's source maintains, Paulson was told by education officials that complete spending records of individual board members were not readily available.
Education officials changed their tune, however, as news of the audit became public and Paulson signaled a story was imminent. CDE has begun to confront the open records request. In an email obtained by Face The State late Tuesday, CDE spokesman Mark Stevens suggested board members and department employees should cooperate with Paulson's investigation.
"Dear Board Members," the email reads, "Today we've been working with reporter Steve Paulson from the Associated Press on an open records request he filed this morning seeking expense account detail for the past 3 years for all board members plus the current and previous commissioner."
The email continues, "We have provided electronic spreadsheets of the expenses (the same as we recently provided to several other reporters). Mr. Paulson seems particularly focused on the fact that we cannot readily produce itemized receipts for each of the line item expenses for three years." (Full PDF)
In the email, Stevens admitted that he talked to Paulson about charging him for the information -- a requirement that outraged Paulson, according to FTS's source.
Later in the day, Paulson complained about having to pay for the information to lobbyists and legislators at the state Capitol. "We made it clear [that obtaining the requested documents would be] entirely possible to produce, just that there might be an expense involved for the hours of labor required, given the fact that he asked for three years worth of records,” Stevens wrote. “By the way, state board member expense records are kept chronologically and would need to be exhumed from all such files here. We offered to pull 10 requests of his choosing - and to do so with no charge."
By late Tuesday, Paulson's AP story on bloated expense accounts appeared online. In it, Paulson reports that board members spent "as much as $60,000 on individual expenses in the past fiscal year, including nearly $26,000 by one member alone." In addition, he reports that the board "listed another $82,000 for combined board expenses on such things as meals, cell phones, picture frames, meeting rooms and Christmas cards."
The board's biggest spenders, according to Paulson, were Board chairman Pamela Jo Suckla, R-Slickrock, who was reimbursed $25,851 in expenses during that time, and Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, a current candidate for the Colorado Senate, who claimed $11,316 during this same period.
Also of note, according to Paulson's report, the board spent $3,500 for a retirement party when Jared Polis (D-Boulder), "a millionaire who is running for Congress, left the board." According to Polis' press contact, Dayna Hanson, "Polis paid for the party and the costs shouldn't have shown up as a state expense."
Suckla defended her spending to Paulson, saying it was necessary since she must commute further distances than other board members for meetings, and as a result, must stay in hotels more frequently. According to Paulson, "[Suckla] said members have to stay at hotels like the tony Broadmoor in Colorado Springs because that's where educational conferences are held."
There are seven members of the state Board of Education, each elected from a congressional district. The board is required by law to meet at least quarterly and its members serve without compensation. However, they are entitled to be reimbursed for "actual and necessary" expenses. In 2007, the board met officially nine times.