Colorado lawmakers funded an office to handle complaints against judges. No one set it up.

In the wake of an alleged blackmail and harassment scandal that roiled the state judicial branch, the Colorado legislature in 2023 created an independent office to help ensure it didn’t happen again.

But two years later, the ombudsman office still doesn’t exist — and it’s not clear why.

The apparent oversight came to light this week when a legislative budget staffer — looking line by line for things to cut from the state’s operating budget to close a $1.2 billion shortfall — discovered an oddity: a $400,000 budget for an agency that had no employees, hadn’t made a budget request and didn’t appear to exist anywhere but on paper.

“This independent agency does not exist,” Craig Harper, the legislative budget staff director told the Joint Budget Committee this week. “There’s no staff. There’s no one (that has) been hired.”

The unhired ombudsman is now a target of state budget cuts, presenting a rare opportunity for the JBC to reduce spending without cutting back on existing services or harming government operations.

But doing so would eliminate a key accountability measure the legislature overwhelmingly agreed was needed.

The idea for an ombudsman came from a 2022 interim committee, set up in response to a Denver Post investigation. The paper uncovered allegations that a former court administrator had awarded an employee a $2.5 million contract in 2019 in order to keep her quiet about sexual harassment and other misconduct by judges.

The committee found widespread distrust in the judicial discipline process and considered a series of reforms — including an independent ombudsman to ensure that employees had a safe space to report misconduct anonymously without fear of retaliation. Voters in November approved another recommendation of the committee that would become Amendment H, establishing an independent board to hear ethics complaints against state judges.

The interim committee never formally endorsed the ombudsman office, but the legislature did in the following spring, voting 88 to 11 in favor of House Bill 1205.

“It became pretty evident pretty quickly, when we started seeing complaints and where needs were not met by folks that had complaints, we needed to come up with a real world solution for people to be able to not feel threatened,” former-Rep. Mike Lynch, a Republican from Wellington, who co-sponsored the bipartisan bill, said in a 2023 committee hearing.

The measure created a five-person selection board, made up of two Republican lawmakers, two Democrats and a judge appointed by Gov. Jared Polis. The board was supposed to begin meeting in January 2024, with a deadline of March 2024 to hire an ombudsman.

The board appears to have been appointed, though legislative staffers disagree on who the members were. By the House Democrats’ account, Rep. Jennifer Bacon and Sen. Julie Gonzales were tapped to represent legislative Democrats, while Republicans appointed Rep. Rose Pugliese and Sen. Bob Gardner. Pugliese, however, told The Sun through a spokesperson that she wasn’t aware of the appointment, and House Republicans provided a letter dated July 2023 showing that Lynch was actually their appointee.

Whoever the members were supposed to be, the board never actually met — let alone hired anyone.

“Our understanding is that the Selection Board has never met,” Suzanne Karrer, a spokesperson for the judicial branch told The Sun in an email. “The Judicial Department remains ready to collaborate with the Office of Judicial Discipline Ombudsman if an ombudsman is appointed.”

Budget committee baffled

The revelation caught the six-member JBC by surprise this week, creating a rare moment of levity as the panel scours the $16 billion state general fund for difficult cuts to critical services like health care and schools.

“One more time?” asked an incredulous Sen. Jeff Bridges, the Greenwood Village Democrat who leads the budget panel. The JBC swiftly agreed to cut the office’s budget for next year, and will try to claw back the funding it was already given.

When another lawmaker suggested that “they” — the office’s imaginary employees — could always come back to the JBC to argue why it needs its funding, it only added to the confusion.

“Who would ‘they’ be?” asked Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat.

“They can come back,” Bridges said, “if there’s anybody there.”

Without a staff, the responsibility to fight for the agency’s budget will fall to its supporters in the legislature. But today, three of the four bill sponsors — two of whom were supposedly appointed to the board — are no longer in the General Assembly.

The remaining bill sponsor, Bacon, initially agreed to an interview with The Sun but did not respond in time for publication.

The office’s independence from the Judicial Department may help explain why it was never set up in the first place. Lawmakers don’t usually conduct board meetings or hire people without the help of state staff — and in this case, the department was barred by design from being involved.

“We’re trying to understand what has happened,” Sirota told The Sun. “Maybe there were some structural deficiencies in the setup of how this would get established. I’m not sure that there’s necessarily any staff support.”

In the meantime, Judicial Department officials say they’re moving forward with initiatives of their own to improve the workplace culture, including an anonymous reporting system for complaints. The department attempted to hire an ombudsman on its own back in 2022, but the JBC denied its request for funding, Karrer said.