Democrat state lawmakers on Monday blocked the state auditor from investigating the inappropriate, possibly illegal, use of federal 9/11 funds to pay former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s hefty legal bill in an ongoing ethics investigation.
The bicameral Legislative Audit Committee defeated the proposal strictly along party lines, even though state Auditor Dianne Ray was sitting right there, and said she could easily add their inquiry into an already ongoing audit.
Easy peasy, she said, we’d like to know anyway why the state was still holding onto money from a federal grant program that ended in 2003, and where all that extra money has been going.
Just as GOP lawmakers also want to know why Hickenlooper’s lawyer, Mark Grueskin, was redacted from the so-called transparency database of state financials.
But Democrats held fast that no audit for wrongdoing should be performed, because those seeking the audit are Republicans, and the money was used to defend a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate so it’s all just political hogwash.
Audit Committee Dems went so far as to insist it’s beyond their powers to seek audits.
Seriously folks, we can’t make this stuff up. Check out the explanation from state Sen. Rhonda Fields of Aurora in Colorado Politics:
“To ask the auditor to investigate a governor in reference to funds is seriously inappropriate,” (Rhonda) Fields added. “We’re not the police, the FBI or the sheriff’s department,” and she suggested that lawyers should investigate such matters.
Republicans aren’t asking for a special counsel to investigate Hick, they just want an audit to see how state government has been spending federal grant money.
It seriously looks like the Democrat-controlled state government has some things they really want to hide. And as long as they hold power, we’ll never know the extent of the problem.