Legislator Fined For Late Report

Even lawmakers can make mistakes when it comes to government paperwork.

State Sen. Peter Groff’s candidate committee has been fined $100 by the Secretary of State’s (SOS) Elections Division for filing a delinquent report, a recent document shows.

A memo dated April 30 says the Denver Democrat’s committee made a delinquent filing for “the report period ending on 3/31/2007, due April 16, 2007.”

Currently, the SOS Web site displays the most recent document submitted by Groff as a gifts and honoraria disclosure form filed April 25…which discloses no gifts of any sort for the most recent reporting period. The disclosure forms were due by April 16 and were the subject of a Colorado Confidential story written here.

If the gifts and honoraria document is what the SOS is fining the committee for, then its even more perplexing, as lawmakers who haven’t accepted gifts do not need to send in disclosure forms, according to a representative with the SOS.

Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.