The night of the big prom has arrived. You’re in a new dress and have a fancy hairdo, and you can’t wait to see what your dashing date has in store: limo, dinner, dancing, perhaps an after-party.
He arrives in a tux, corsage in hand, and the two of you proceed to the festivities. You dance your first dance. As he walks you back to your table, he thanks you for a really awesome time and announces he needs to scoot to another party. “Good luck finding a ride home,” he adds.
Would you feel a bit shortchanged? Misled? Conned?
Of course you would. And that’s how many Coloradans are feeling after learning this week that their new state treasurer and secretary of state have second “dates” in the form of side jobs that they failed to fully apprise voters of before the election.
Both offices pay $68,500 annually. But Secretary of State Scott Gessler says he can’t support his family and elderly mother on that, so he’ll be working up to 20 hours a month for his previous employer, the Hackstaff Law Group.
State Treasurer Walker Stapleton has a consulting contract with his family’s California-based real estate company worth up to $150,000 annually. He’s apparently planning to work up to 50 hours monthly for the company, SonomaWest.
In 2009, Stapleton’s compensation from SonomaWest was $431,000. No doubt it blows to take an 84 percent salary cut. But no one forced the treasurer’s job on him. Au contraire. On his campaign website, Stapleton very specifically said he would be a “tireless advocate for Colorado’s taxpayers and a strong State Treasurer.”
Did he mean tireless . . . or just plain tired? Because if he’s working nights and weekends doing real estate deals, how much energy will he have Monday mornings to manage 25 Treasury employees and $6 billion in investments?
One other small point: Stapleton, a Harvard MBA, ran on a strict fiscal conservative platform, emphasizing the need to “rein in spending in our State.” Would it be too much to expect Stapleton to set the example by tightening his own belt a bit?
The conflict-of-interest issue is a whole separate kettle of fish. Gessler, especially, is in the hot seat because the law firm he’ll be doing work for specializes in election cases, and the secretary of state’s main job is to enforce campaign and election laws. Gessler has said he will disclose the names of all clients with whom he’s working, but that’s cold comfort considering the power of his position in state government.
Now, is Colorado stingy in the salary department? Probably. According to research by University of Colorado journalism instructor Sandra Fish, a colleague of mine at the Politics Daily website, the average salary for elected secretaries of state is $101,160 and the median is $95,200. Only the secretaries of state in Wisconsin ($65,079), Arkansas ($54,594), Georgia ($64,394) and Maryland ($67,345) make less than Gessler, according to the Sunshine Review website. It’s an issue lawmakers need to address.
Brett Johnson, Colorado deputy treasurer and Stapleton’s spokesman, did not return a call. If he had, I’d have asked him how voters can trust that Stapleton’s first priority will be the state’s business.
I don’t think most Coloradans want part-timers running the state’s highest offices — especially those dealing with the state coffers and elections.
But apparently, working a second job is entirely kosher. State Attorney General John Suthers is paid $80,000 a year, but he also has two outside teaching gigs that bring in $30,000.
Mike Saccone, communications director for the attorney general’s office, said the issue “is not the outside work — it’s the conflict of interest.” Gessler has asked the AG’s office to research the matter in his case.
Bottom line, we should probably raise elected officials’ salaries so we get the best and the brightest. In the meantime, we shouldn’t forget that public service is a calling, and a full-time commitment as well.
Mary Winter (mwinte@aol.com) of Denver, a former Rocky Mountain News writer, writes for the op-ed page twice a month.
