What is the threshold for a Colorado Democrat to committ an ethics violation?  It was no problem for the state of Colorado to pay $10,000 for Governor John Hickenlooper to spend a weekend in Aspen (guess it doesn’t hurt to have one of the people on your “impartial” hearing committee host fundraisers for you).  Now, when it’s revealed Denver Mayor Michael Hancock accepted a $40,000 Super Bowl trip courtesy of large corporations, the Denver Board of Ethics reacts with which could best be described as a shrug.  As The Denver Post reports:

Responding to a citizen complaint, the board members voiced a consensus that no ethics violation likely occurred when the mayor, his mother and two staffers accepted the $40,000 trip to New York and New Jersey in February. [the Peak emphasis]

$40,000.  That’s more a lot of average Coloradans will make this year.  This isn’t simply a Mayor taking an opportunity to promote his city, this is a mayor abusing his position to have an extravagant trip paid for by corporations who have business interests throughout Denver.

… later disclosed that the cost would be covered by pledges from donors including Comcast, which has a Denver cable franchise, and CH2M Hill, an engineering company with many city contracts. [the Peak emphasis]

PeakNation™, we’re sure when a CH2M Hill contract comes up for renewal, or when they bid on a new city contract, Hancock won’t think at all about the lavish weekend in New York they showered on him; almost just as sure that the Broncos had a good Super Bowl.

The impartiality of this board is seriously called into question when it took an average Colorado citizen’s inquiry after reading about the trip in The Denver Post to even get the board to act this much:

Thad Tecza, a political science instructor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, sent an inquiry to the ethics board in February after reading a Denver Post story about Hancock’s privately funded trip to watch the Denver Broncos play in the Super Bowl. The board treated his inquiry as a complaint.

The lackadaisical nature that various Colorado ethic boards have treated complaints against Democrats show they are nothing but another Democratic tool dressed up in angelic, bureaucratic clothes.