By David Migoya | Denver Gazette
In a bipartisan rebuke of how a years-long scandal has been handled, a Colorado Senate committee on Monday made the rare move of not approving the gubernatorial reappointment of the top two members of the state’s Commission on Judicial Discipline.
Just months after voters statewide overwhelmingly chose to change how Colorado disciplines judges, the state Senate Judiciary Committee voted — 4-3, with two Democrats joining the panel’s two lone Republicans — to offer an unfavorable recommendation to the full Senate on the reappointment of Mindy Sooter and Jim Carpenter, the chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the 10-member commission.
It was the committee’s last official act as the legislative session rushed to a close on Wednesday.
The full Senate is expected to take up the nominations before the close of the session. The full Senate could affirm the nominations anyway, but senators generally vote for committee recommendations, especially when that recommendation comes from the panel’s chair.
If the Senate does not vote to reappoint Sooter and Carpenter, their term would end on June 30, and Gov. Jared Polis would have to make new appointments, subject to Senate approval in the fall.
The committee put off its vote until after it heard testimony last week from the commission’s former executive director warning of “a scheme of ongoing public corruption and public fraud” that’s percolated since a contract-for-silence scandal erupted in 2019. That scandal led in early 2021 to allegations that it was then-Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats who approved the contract to a former Judicial Department official who was being fired for financial irregularities.
Part of the scandal, according to Christopher Gregory, former executive director of the discipline panel, included the public silence around a voluminous anonymous complaint filed in October with three state commissions and the FBI alleging a far-reaching conspiracy designed to conceal years of alleged lying, retaliation and misuse of public funds.