Sometimes you lose the battle but win the war.
Hopefully, that happens to The Committee to Recall Dale Sparks.
Sparks is the Federal Heights mayor who worked at a strip club busted in April for prostitution and other vice charges. The committee that circulated a petition for a recall election fell nine names short, after city officials disqualified 67 of 437 signatures.
Still, the recall committee’s push to expose information about a police sting at the Bare Essence strip club showed citizens plenty of nakedly improper conduct. A newly released police report shows that Sparks ratted out an undercover cop to a strip club manager and the club’s owner during a weeks-long sting.
“Mayor Sparks admitted that he did go to ‘Tasha,’ the owner’s significant other, point out Detective Murphy and tell her (Tasha) that he (Murphy) is with North Metro Task Force,” Federal Heights Police Lt. Rodger McLaughlin wrote in an investigative summary.
The club’s disc jockey told police that he “overheard the mayor telling the owner that on Wednesday there were some North Metro cops in the club.”
“Our investigation revealed … that Mayor Sparks compromised the identity of undercover police officer(s) and sought information (from public officials) about a possible investigation,” McLaughlin concluded.
That’s ugly stuff for the city of 12,000 just north of Denver. A special prosecutor handling seven vice charges in Federal Heights municipal court now weighs whether to charge Sparks with “interference” with police or “complicity” in a crime under the city code. Adams County prosecutors say they won’t be charging Sparks in three prostitution cases in state court because state law doesn’t precisely cover what he did.
“But,” added Adams’ chief deputy district attorney, Tom Quammen, “that doesn’t mean we approve.”
The Federal Heights council has asked the city’s special prosecutor to consider charging Sparks for violating the city’s ethics policy. Sparks failed to file a required written notice that he worked at a business that posed potential conflicts of interest.
The mayor, meanwhile, ponders whether to honor a request by his council colleagues. Last week, they voted 4-2 to ask him to resign. Sparks refuses to speak to me, but has told council members he still hasn’t made up his mind.
Sparks did manage to vote last Tuesday in a parliamentary maneuver that demoted Mike Vallero, the mayor pro-tem who made the motion for Sparks’ resignation and who would have succeeded Sparks as mayor.
In November, Vallero won election as Federal Heights’ mayor pro-tem with three votes in a three-way race. He never got a simple majority of the seven-member council required by the city charter. This was not an issue until last week, when Vallero publicly pushed Sparks to resign. Then, Councilwoman Joyce Thomas challenged Vallero’s election and in a 4-3 secret ballot replaced him as mayor pro-tem. Moments before, Thomas had voted not to ask for Sparks’ resignation.
“You won this battle, Joyce,” Sharon Richardson, a furious former council member and recall leader, told Thomas. “You will not win the war.”
Recall leaders hope to pack the council chamber for tomorrow night’s meeting to keep up pressure to do what’s right. As it was with Sparks’ strip club job, so it is with Thomas’ backdoor mayoral election. What helped Thomas hurt a city already suffering from what can be generously described as a “Dukes of Hazzard” image.
“I feel like I got cut off at the knees,” Vallero said.
It’s embarrassing, city resident David Solano told the council. “The people I work with think of Federal Heights as a trailer-trash town,” Solano said.
News that Dale Sparks worked at a strip club and ratted out a vice cop investigating prostitution did nothing to drive away delusions of double-wides.
Now, vindictive politics have let the disgraced mayor punish the guy who called him out and left a Sparks supporter as Sparks’ potential successor.
“Come on,” city resident Patrick Hutchinson pined in disbelief after watching Thomas’ election. “We’re not in high school anymore.”
No, we’re in Federal Heights, a city that will remain a laughingstock until its people demand leaders as worried about public service as they are about saving face.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
