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Amendment 41 hindered fundraiser, police official says

April M. Washington, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 9, 2007 at midnight

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When a fellow police officer's 15-year-old son committed suicide, Doug Abraham wanted to help.

Abraham, police chief of the University of Colorado's medical center, took up a collection, but he worried about running afoul of Colorado's new ethics law.

In the end, each staff member could give only $50, and that wasn't enough to cover his friend's expenses, Abraham told a Denver district judge Tuesday.

"There was a limit on what we could do to help," he said.

Abraham was among a handful of government employees and lobbyists who testified Tuesday on the impact of Amendment 41.

A deputy attorney general defended the new constitutional amendment, saying it has not created the hardships opponents have described.

A group of Coloradans, called the First Amendment Council, filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to halt the enforcement of the new gift ban. Testimony is expected to wrap up today.

The lawsuit is one of several filed after voters last November approved Amendment 41, which, among other things, bans elected officials, government workers, state contractors and their families from accepting gifts of more than $50 in a calendar year.

Former lawmaker Danny Williams testified that some legislators are so afraid of being targeted with an ethics complaint that they don't want to be seen in public with a lobbyist.

"Amendment 41 has chilled the desire of a legislator to be seen with a lobbyist because they don't want to become a poster child or end up in the newspaper because of a false complaint," said Williams.

But Deputy Attorney General Maurice Knaizer argued that the new law doesn't stop lawmakers or government employees from freely associating, nor does it create an atmosphere in which elected officials are guilty before proven innocent.

Complaints must be filed with an ethics commission, which has the power to throw out frivolous complaints, he said.

"There is nothing under Amendment 41 that prohibits a lobbyist and lawmaker from going out to lunch, as long as the lawmaker pays for his or her meal," he said.

Tuesday's testimony comes a day after an ethics expert testified that the new government gift ban goes too far, is flawed and has had a "chilling effect" on the free flow of information.

Douglas County employee Marcia Ivarson testified she worries her daughter may not be able to accept a scholarship to attend Johnson and Wales University.

Attorney General John Suthers has said an open-ended scholarship given to a government employee's child based solely on high school performance is banned under Amendment 41.