Colorado lawmakers who save e-mail addresses from constituents and others can send campaign-related messages to those accounts, according to a 2008 legal memo.
Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, one of three Republicans running for governor, last year asked for clarification about using the e-mails for campaign purposes.
The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Legal Services concluded in a six-page memo that using constituent e-mails during a campaign would not violate a Colorado law that bans state agencies from contributing to campaigns.
Several Democrats who had not signed up for Penry’s campaign e-mails recently received messages from him on their official state Capitol e-mail accounts. They surmised he got their addresses because they signed up to receive updates from , operated by Senate Republicans.
Penry, of Grand Junction, oversees the minority office.
Mike Britt, Penry’s campaign manager, would not say whether Penry used the SenateNews e-mail database.
“We’ve received lists from all kinds of different sources,” Britt said Wednesday. “And there is no reason for us to release that kind of information to the Democrats and their liberal allies.”
Penry is not the only candidate to send campaign information to either workers at their government addresses or to people who had made an inquiry: Two of his rivals, Republican Scott McInnis and Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, have done the same thing.
The “legal memorandum” to Penry was issued Oct. 17, 2008.
“It seems reasonable to conclude that the information in any such a database generated during a legislator’s public tenure and service belongs to that legislator to utilize for his or her purposes, regardless of whether it was compiled by the legislator or staff during business hours,” the memo says.
The memo also noted that lawmakers traditionally pay for their own e-mail servers.
Colorado Ethics Watch has filed an open-records request with Senate Republicans, asking for e-mail lists maintained by the office, and any correspondence showing the lists were sent to anyone outside of the office.
Legal Services replied to Ethics Watch that there is no correspondence and that e-mail addresses, by law, cannot be given out.
Chantell Taylor of Ethics Watch said Wednesday she had not reviewed the 2008 memo but said she believes Penry used a list compiled by , and the memo appears to cover only databases established by individual lawmakers.
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327 or lbartels@denverpost.com
