{"id":38267,"date":"2022-09-22T15:59:24","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gop-complaint-against-polis-for-letter-sent-with-refund-checks-likely-to-be-dismissed\/"},"modified":"2022-09-22T21:59:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:59:24","slug":"gop-complaint-against-polis-for-letter-sent-with-refund-checks-likely-to-be-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gop-complaint-against-polis-for-letter-sent-with-refund-checks-likely-to-be-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP complaint against Polis for letter sent with refund checks likely to be dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis makes a point during a news conference Oct. 28 in Denver. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Secretary of State\u2019s Office is moving to dismiss a campaign finance complaint against Gov. Jared Polis related to a letter his office included with TABOR refund checks set to Coloradans this summer.<\/p>\n

The head of the Colorado GOP, Kristi Burton Brown, accused Polis of illegal electioneering, claiming the letter was a thinly veiled pitch for his re-election, paid for by taxpayers. At the heart of her complaint was Polis\u2019 rebranding of the refunds, required under the Taxpayer\u2019s Bill of Rights, as \u201cColorado Cashback\u201d and using that term in his letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis letter blatantly misleads voters by refusing to say the word \u2018TABOR\u2019 or \u2018Taxpayer Bill of Rights.\u2019 Instead, the Governor uses his own campaign language of \u2018Colorado Cashback,\u2019 a phrase he coined during his campaign for re-election,\u201d Burton Brown wrote in the complaint.<\/p>\n

However, investigators in the Elections Division found the term originated in the governor\u2019s press office and was used to announce his effort \u2013 supported by state lawmakers \u2013 to move up the date of the refund payouts. Based on its continued use by Democratic lawmakers and the governor in his official capacity, they determined the phrase was not the product of his campaign.<\/p>\n

The investigation concluded that Burton Brown \u201cillustrated how Respondent Governor Polis did not embrace or use the term TABOR in association with \u2026 the refund checks but presented no evidence that \u2018Colorado Cashback\u2019 is campaign language, a campaign slogan, or a term that was coined by Respondent Candidate during his campaign, as alleged in the Complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

The motion to dismiss is now in the hands of the deputy secretary of state, who has 35 days to rule on it.<\/p>\n

The governor has long maintained the letter was a necessary communication to help convince voters their refund checks were genuine and not a scam. Lawmakers defended the use of the term \u201cColorado Cashback\u201d as a way to help the public understand and identify the refunds.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Burton Brown described the move to dismiss her complaint as politically motivated and charged that, \u201cThe fact remains that Jared Polis and the Democrats are pretending to support TABOR in a tough election year just to buy votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans voted to speed up the refunds but have complained all along that Democrats, who in the past have complained TABOR refunds starve education and other programs of needed funding, are being hypocritical in their embrace of the checks this year.<\/p>\n

Those familiar with campaign finance law were skeptical from the start that the GOP complaint would gain any traction. Attorney Mario Nicolais, who primarily represents Republicans, dismissed the letter as the kind of \u201cpolitics as usual\u201d election year effort that disillusions voters, but said it hadn\u2019t crossed the legal line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there\u2019s a difference between, \u2018Has he violated a law?\u2019 or \u2018Has he done something that seems a little cynical, but not unlawful?\u2019\u201d Nicolais said.<\/p>\n

CPR\u2019s Bente Birkeland contributed to this story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor referred to payments as \u2018Colorado Cashback,\u2019 not TABOR returns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2811,120,819,28,826,774],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-colorado","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-political-campaigns","tag-political-candidates"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38267"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}