Another Polis administration bureaucrat is facing allegations of skirting Colorado’s ethics laws.
Dan Gibbs, the executive director of the state Natural Resources Department, provided a $496,000 contract to his wife’s employer, the Keystone Policy Center, to manage outreach surrounding wolf reintroduction in Colorado, according to a new ethics complaint.
The Keystone Center has deep connections in establishment Democrat circles. In 2019, they were hired by a group called “Boldly Forward,” one of Jared Polis’s nonprofit groups, which served as Polis’s transition committee when he was elected governor.
The team included “prominent Democrats like former Gov. Bill Ritter, Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, former Colorado State University President Al Yates, former Colorado Democrat Party Chairman [and Polis Chief of Staf]f Rick Palacio, and two former Democratic House speakers, Crisanta Duran and Andrew Romanoff.”
The Keystone Center reportedly “facilitated” Boldly Forwards’s transition work.
As it turns out, the Keystone Center’s work with Polis’s transition was just the beginning of what appears to be a profitable relationship with the Polis administration.
A complaint filed with the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission alleges Gibbs violated state law by providing the Keystone Center with the nearly $500,000 contract, and that Gibbs failed to disclose his wife’s employment on disclosure forms.
CO Parks and Wildlife, which is overseen by Gibbs, issued the $496,000 contract to the Keystone Policy Center to manage community engagement regarding wolf reintroduction following the passage of Prop 114 last year.
Gibb’s wife, Johanna Raquet Gibbs, served as a Senior Policy Advisor with the Keystone Policy Center until June of this year.
Keystone’s contract was awarded by Gibbs’s agency in April.
The complaint filed by the watchdog group Defend Colorado alleges Gibbs falsified conflict of interest disclosures in 2020 and 2021 stating that “his Department has not retained a consultant or contractor in which a member of his immediate family is employed.”
But wait, there’s more.
The Keystone Policy Center wasn’t even the lowest bidder for the contract on managing outreach surrounding wolf reintroduction.
The second-place bidder, CDR Associates, bid $270,000, which was nearly half the price bid by Mrs. Gibbs’s employer.
“Having an Executive Director of a state agency award a $496,000 contract to his wife’s employer, over a competing bid that was nearly 50% lower, and refusing to publicly disclose the conflict of interest, is a clear violation of state law and a blatant disregard of the public trust,” said former Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, who filed the complaint on behalf of Defend Colorado.
“There is a clear pattern of indifference for Colorado’s stringent ethics laws from highest level of state government.”
The complaint comes as the Colorado Cattleman’s Association reported this week the first livestock kill in decades following wolf reintroduction to the state.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association says a 500-pound heifer was found dead in Walden after being attacked and eaten by a group of wolves — the first confirmed wolf-kill in over 70 years, the association claimed Monday in a news release. […]
The organization said it’s encouraging CPW and other wolf-related working groups to “consider this wolf attack and the widespread impacts as a sentinel example of how livestock can be impacted by wolf introduction.”
Former Polis chief Rick Palacio is also facing allegations of unlawful self-dealing pertaining to a contract he reportedly authorized for his own consulting company while still working for the state.
Defend’s complaint against Gibbs can be accessed here.