DENVER—The second-ranking Senate Democrat probably should have disclosed that his company had State Fair contracts before he voted to approve funds to repay fair loans but he likely didn’t break any laws, according to a legal opinion issued Wednesday.
The opinion was drafted by legislative lawyers at the request of Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, who owns Abel Engineering Professionals, which is the subject of an investigation.
The attorneys said they found no evidence or guarantee that Tapia or his company would have derived, as a result of the vote, a direct financial benefit that would have been greater than a benefit received by others in the engineering profession.
However, they said, Tapia should have avoided sponsoring legislation that benefited the State Fair because of a potential appearance of personal financial interest. They also said he should have disclosed his business relationship to the General Assembly.
The opinion, which is not binding, was delivered Wednesday to the legislative Ethics Board which is reviewing seven contracts worth $480,000 that Tapia’s company has received from the State Fair during the past seven years.
Tapia, the Senate’s president pro tem, asked for the investigation last week after reporters questioned a 2006 bill he sponsored to pay off state fair loans. He has said his company bid on the contracts, that he had no role in deciding which company won and believes he did nothing wrong.
During the time the contracts were awarded, Tapia was chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, which sets the state’s spending priorities, and Senate Appropriations, which decides which projects are funded.
Tapia said he voted on bills that later funded the contracts but said it’s the state, not the Legislature, that decides how the money is spent.
Larry Friedberg, spokesman for the Department of Personnel and Administration that reviews state contracts, told the four-member ethics panel that there was no evidence state contracting rules were bypassed in awarding the contracts to Tapia.
Friedberg said companies are chosen for the ability to do the work, ranked and given an opportunity to negotiate a contract. If no agreement is reached, other ranked companies are given the opportunity to negotiate.
Tapia said the Colorado General Assembly is a citizen legislature and almost all of the 100 lawmakers have other jobs that could have an appearance of a conflict of interest.
“If the ethics committee recommendation to me is that it’s not a conflict but it is the appearance of a conflict and I shouldn’t argue or vote for any of those bills, I’ll honor that,” Tapia said last week.
