The Colorado Observer has reported that Senator Evie Hudak has corrected errors in reports she filed in January, returned the required $1,250 to contributors, and replaced her campaign treasurer in May in the hopes of avoiding over $17,000 in fines. Last week, a complaint was filed against her campaign citing that she had failed to identify occupations and employers for donors giving $100 or more in her January report. She told The Observer: “I’m pretty sure everything is fixed. We’re following all the rules now.”
Actually, nope.
Unfortunately, for Hudak, she cannot seem to get ahead of all of her campaign finance errors as Observer staff found an unbelievable 18 additional errors, such as failure to accurately aggregate donations for top donors, and reporting incorrect occupations, such as known-lobbyist, Steve Balcerovich, who claimed to be a business consultant.
But, this isn’t Hudak’s first rodeo in terms of financial foibles. A 2008 Colorado Statesman article revealed that Hudak had the “second highest personal expenses on the seven-person [State Board of Education], claiming $11,316 last year.” In fact, the mailer that the Statesman cited also revealed that Hudak was “reprimanded by the bipartisan Joint Budget Committee for the expenses, and that she was ‘wasting money that could have gone to education.'” Ouch.
Even worse, the mailer provided examples of her lavish Board of Ed lifestyle, which included dining in exclusive restaurants, arranging for limo service in Washington, D.C., spending four nights at an expensive hotel in Telluride, and getting room service on the taxpayers’ dime at the tony Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.
Even back then, Hudak was making excuses for her poor management (and use) of funds, saying that “many of them were necessary in order for her to attend events around the state and country, and to be an active member of the board.”
With Colorado’s persistent high unemployment, we think that voters might not find her lavish lifestyle as endearing in 2012 as they did in 2008. And, after the collapse of the financial markets, we think voters' patience with financial misreporting will have grown thin. But, of course, all of this pales in comparison to her lack of transparency, and willingness to be a union pawn.