Colorado’s attorney general and secretary of state are passing out buckets of money to their campaign contributors without any competitive bidding or oversight in how the money is spent.
The Colorado Springs Gazette blew the lid off the scandal, and reports:
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold sent $2.8 million in federal emergency COVID-19 mitigation funds — almost half of the CARES Act cash allocated to her office — to a politically well-connected, Washington D.C.-based public relations and lobbying firm to produce a set of TV ads to educate Colorado voters about the 2020 election procedures.
Attorney General Phil Weiser directed around $250,000 to no-bid contracts for a handful of his campaign contributors or their firms, from a pot of money controlled by his office that’s intended to help protect consumers from fraud.
The politicians are helping themselves and their political allies to what are called “custodial funds” that bypass the state legislature before landing in the bank accounts of state agencies.
Amendment 78 on the November ballot addresses how custodial funds are spent. It proposes to take the spending power away from these agency heads and hand it over to state lawmakers to hold public hearings and add input and transparency into the spending decisions.
Wow. This is is exactly why we need Amendment 78.
“A spokesperson for Weiser confirmed that $262,000 in no-bid contracts went to firms headed by a handful of attorneys who made large campaign contributions to Weiser’s campaign.” https://t.co/Mp6qlSzLhd #copolitics #coleg
— Michael Fields (@MichaelCLFields) October 21, 2021
Griswold blew nearly half of the $6.6 million in COVID cash she got from the federal government on The Glover Parker Group, a Washington, D.C.-based communications consulting firm founded by former White House and Democratic campaign officials Carter Eskew, Michael Feldman, and Joe Lockhart.
There are a lot of firms out there with expertise producing voting PSAs.
And Griswold turned to the… Glover Park Group?
As in, Finsbury Glover Hering?
With her office’s custodial funds?
Someone is greasing the wheels #copoliticshttps://t.co/11KcYKgWo7 pic.twitter.com/q9bXkJ0Nfg
— Kyle Kohli (@CompassKyle) October 21, 2021
The PR firm produced campaign commercials featuring Griswold telling voters how to cast ballots.
Follow the money and check out the entire report linked here.
@JenaGriswold spent millions of dollars of federal funds on a no bid contract for english and spanish TV ads that she starred in.
The ads were produced by The Glover Parker Group – a well known Democrat political firm based in D.C.
This is why we NEED Amendment 78. #copolitics https://t.co/EErMWbjyPC
— Joe Jackson 🇺🇸 (@Joe_Jacksonn) October 21, 2021