Twenty-seven members of the Colorado General Assembly are currently committing a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of between $1,000 and $5,000, though it’s unlikely any of them will be charged for it. After all, it’s a misdemeanor which a certain portion of the legislature commits annually and, to my knowledge, no one has ever faced a single consequence for it. What’s the crime? Failing to file their annual personal financial disclosures (PFDs) as mandated by the law.
This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s about good governance and transparency, and it’s enough of a hobbyhorse for me that I’m fairly certain my many hundreds of records requests for past and present disclosure reports played a role in eventually nudging the Secretary of State’s office to make the forms available online a few years ago. Despite the increased ease in accessing the reports, though, one old problem remains unaddressed: many lawmakers simply do not file them.
Transparency in government is a good thing. It’s one of those things we expect from modern, developed states. And there was a time when Colorado’s track record on government transparency was sterling: we were on the early edge of state transparency laws in the midcentury, and the 1967 passage of the original Colorado Open Records Act (or CORA) put us in the minority of states who passed open government laws prior to the Watergate scandal, which ultimately accelerated the adoption of reforms around the country.
Then things like digital technology and email and the internet came along, the information ecosystem became infinitely more complex, and those laws which had once been so forward-looking were suddenly lost in the rearview mirror. Today, Colorado’s systems for transparency and accountability – including the requirement that lawmakers file personal financial disclosures – are unenforced and largely unenforceable, leaving citizens to hope that their elected officials will abide by the relevant laws, even though nothing will happen to them if they don’t.
Candidates in Colorado have to file PFDs as well, and the Secretary of State’s office can fine them when those filings are late, just like the office exacts fines for other kinds of late campaign filings. No such penalty exists for the financial disclosures which incumbent legislators are required to file, though. The only penalty available in the law comes from misdemeanor charges, and it doesn’t appear that any lawmaker has ever faced those for this offense.
Credit where it’s due: after I spent much of 2022 whining about it, the legislature took the initiative in 2024 and strengthened the requirements around their own personal financial disclosures. Specifically, they eliminated a large and annoying hole in the system which previously allowed incumbent officeholders to file an update form consisting of a single checkbox. Now, the law requires lawmakers to submit the full disclosure form every year, by January 10.
Despite updating the law so recently, more than a quarter of the legislature is currently violating it. On the plus side, if I had written this column the day after the legal deadline of January 10, the share of lawmakers in noncompliance with the law would have been nearly two-thirds: only 39 of the state’s 100 lawmakers actually submitted the form on time this year.
Compliance with the disclosure law is not onerous, and it’s not complicated. Every year, every member of the Colorado General Assembly (and other elected officials around the state) is required to file an official Personal Financial Disclosure Statement no later than January 10. On the form, they must include a basic rundown of any income, assets, or debts belonging to themselves or their spouses.
The form is an important tool for transparency and accountability, allowing the public to understand and monitor legislators’ incentives, motives, and possible conflicts of interest in the lawmaking process. Financial disclosure by public servants and elected officials is a widely understood and accepted best practice: it has been mandated at the federal level since the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, and is even a requirement of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
And yet, despite disclosure being an international governing best practice, despite the form being relatively simple to complete, despite the requirements of the law being perfectly clear – despite all of that – more than a quarter of our state’s lawmakers are currently flouting the law’s requirements. Despite the law being important, clear, and easy to follow, a wide swath of lawmakers from both parties and both chambers are not following it.
There’s no real partisan dimension to the legislative scofflaws: of the 27 lawmakers currently failing to comply with their legal duty, 15 are Democrats and 12 are Republicans, representing 23% of legislative Democrats and 35% of legislative Republicans.
There is a divide between the compliance of the legislature’s two chambers, though. Of the 27 missing disclosure statements, 20 come from members of the state House, while only 7 come from members of the state Senate.
Of the eight members of legislative leadership – two per party per chamber – only two of them submitted this year’s disclosure form on time: state House Speaker Pro Tempore, Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, and state Senate President Pro Tempore, Sen. Dafna Michaelson-Jenet.
This bothers me, maybe more than it should.
Do the lawmakers who have failed to submit their disclosures simply not believe the law is important? Do they not understand its history and purpose? Or do they just think they are above it? That it doesn’t apply to people like them, despite specifically applying to people like them. Or can they just not be bothered? Are the legal requirements of their office just a series of inconvenient tasks being pushed further and further down the to-do list?
But it doesn’t just bother me; it also perplexes me. Compliance with the law is easy: the form literally has instructions on it, and the due date is the same every year. Have these people never heard of a calendar reminder? And it’s not as if legislators are left to their own accords: each caucus in each chamber has full-time staffers who are more than capable of reminding the legislators of their legal requirements (though, if I know anything about political staff work, I imagine the reminders were given and ignored).
Whether haughtily or incompetently, the legislators who still have not submitted the annual disclosure form are telling us something about themselves: if they cannot follow the basic steps involved in filling out and submitting the disclosure form, they demonstrably lack the capacity to make laws. They might be better off in other jobs, less rigorous jobs than serving the people of Colorado, and I encourage them to pursue any non-elected opportunities which come their way.
It might not seem like a big deal to you – it’s only one form, after all. But that’s precisely why it is a big deal: because it’s only one form, a form that these lawmakers are legally required to submit so that you and I can keep an eye on them, and more than a quarter of them still have not submitted it. They don’t owe this disclosure to the Secretary of State, even though that’s who they are supposed to file it with; they owe this disclosure to us, to their constituents, to the people, and they are in arrears.
I have been in politics long enough that I rarely expect elected officials to face meaningful consequences – too many people have too many incentives to take it easy on them. Given the power we have entrusted them with, our lawmakers should be held to a higher standard, but they are often held to a lower one. That’s why I was so thrilled last year to see a District Attorney actually bring charges against former state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, and why I was even more thrilled last week when justice was served and a jury convicted Lewis of crimes she did, in fact, commit.
It was a nice change of pace: well-deserved consequences for someone of title and stature. I don’t want to see legislators thrown in jail (Lewis got off with probation), but I would love to see them abide by the law, and by their responsibility to the people of Colorado.
If any ambitious prosecutors share that desire, I know where they can find 27 slam-dunk misdemeanor cases to make an example.
Want to check out lawmakers’ personal financial disclosures for yourself? You can find them using the Secretary of State’s Document Search function, selecting “Personal Financial Disclosure Effective June 2023” in the Document Type dropdown menu, and inputting any other information you desire.
