The national conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks said Thursday it no longer believes it violated state law by failing to register as a campaign against the proposed suspension of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Officials with the group, co-chaired by former Texas congressman Dick Armey, made the statement one day after its vice president for campaigns, Molly Byrne, told The Denver Post her group had recognized a failure to comply and was in the process of registering as “No on Ref C.”
Such a filing would require the group, based in Washington, D.C., to publicly disclose where its gets its money.
The group’s understanding of Colorado election law has changed since that interview, Byrne said Thursday.
“Our knowledge … from this week has evolved. But we were never in violation of the law,” she said.
At issue is a state requirement that campaigns which spend more than $200 make periodic financial disclosures through the secretary of state’s office. Though FreedomWorks has spent more than $200 to oppose November’s budget-reform ballot questions, it does not have to register because its “Vote No” effort is not its major purpose, said Chris Kinnan, FreedomWorks’ director of public affairs.
“We’re in compliance,” he said. “We’ve never been out of compliance.”
But it’s difficult to know if Kinnan is right, said Richard Westfall, a Denver lawyer specializing in election law.
FreedomWorks’ analysis is an accurate reading of a secretary of state’s rule that requires registration only if both conditions are met, Westfall said. But it is inconsistent with Amendment 27 of the Colorado Constitution, which defines an issue committee as a group that either spends $200 in a campaign or has that campaign as its primary purpose, he said.
It is unknown whether the law might consider FreedomWorks a single-purpose entity within the state of Colorado, he said.
“Based upon what’s known now, I think it could go either way,” Westfall said.
It would be up to an administrative law judge to resolve disagreements between the constitution and the election rule, said Dana Williams of the secretary of state’s office.
If FreedomWorks does not register by Tuesday, the end of the current financial reporting period for issue campaigns, proponents of the November ballot measures said they will file an official complaint. That would trigger an administrative hearing.
“It’s bad enough to be an interloper and come into Colorado and tell us what to do,” said Katy Atkinson, spokeswoman for the “Vote Yes on C&D” campaign. “But when you’re an interloper that comes in, tells us what to do and breaks our laws on top of it, that’s going way too far.”
Atkinson’s committee filed its monthly disclosure Thursday. It raised more than $750,000 last month, including $250,000 from the Colorado Contractors Association, $150,000 from Denver Firefighters Local 858 and $100,000 from the Service Employees International Union.
FreedomWorks’ Kinnan was “not surprised to hear that the other side will file an unfounded complaint,” he said. “They want to avoid the issue at hand: Ref C will raise taxes on the people of Colorado. We’d rather focus on the more than $3 billion in higher taxes facing Colorado families if Ref C should pass.”
Staff writer Chris Frates contributed to this report.
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
