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Who wins with lawsuits?
Contributed by: Ed Dorsey on 11/1/2006

The City of Golden has spent a considerable amount of taxpayer funds defending it self against citizen-initiated lawsuits and other legal actions. The have also spent taxpayer monies fighting governmental agencies and others on issues that they feel have a significant impact on the City and its citizens.

Most of the citizen-initiated actions since 1998 have been filed or at least funded by one citizen activist, Marian Olson. Since 1998, the City has spent $627,000 and their insurance carrier nearly another $100,000 on these actions. Those are not the only costs. One of the lawsuits involved the recreation bonds approved by the voters in 2000. The funds for the Community center were tied up in a lawsuit until 2005, which reduced significantly their buying power due to increased construction costs and the fact that while the bond proceeds sat in a low interest account, the City was paying a higher interest rate on the bonds. That suit was initiated on the basis that the bond issue stated the City would build a satellite community center but later changed its mind and decided it would be more economical to expand and renovate the existing center.

Two other cases, the Hillside Church case and the Incentives case have also been concluded in the past two years, both in the City's favor. Hillside Church was a planning/zoning issue that perhaps was the biggest case (in terms of time and money) and the start of Ms. Olson's activism against the City, probably because she lives next to the Church and was impacted by their new building. The incentives lawsuit tried to retroactively apply the City Charter Amendment approved in 2001 to previous incentive agreements. Those agreements covered the Golden Towne Center (King Soopers) and Interplaza (Home Dept & Kohls). The lawsuit maintained that no future payments under those agreements should be made without voter approval. The Colorado Supreme Court did not agree in the final decision reached earlier this year.
The irony of all these legal cases is that when a final decision was rendered in a case, the City prevailed in every single one.

Although no new lawsuits have been filed recently, Ms. Olsen has filed legal complaints concerning the elections and ethics violations. In addition, she and her newsletter, the Voice of Golden, was the subject of an election complaint filed by former Councilor Dave Ketchum. The election complaints have been settled, again in the City's favor and the five ethics complaints filed by her early this year were declared unfounded and dismissed by City Council based on a recommendation by special counsel. It doesn't end here; just two weeks ago, Ms. Olson filed another 76 ethics violations against former and present City Councilors, the Mayor, certain City Staff, Special Counsel, the City Attorney and even the City Judge.

The filing of ethics complaints is a rather unique way to go after the City, since all it takes in a one-page letter outlining the complaint. Under the current Ethics Ordinance, City Council usually has to hire special counsel to review the complaints because it specifies that the City Manager will investigate such complaints, which would be a conflict of interest in many cases. Hiring a special counsel costs money. The five ethics complaints filed early this year cost $8500 to review by special counsel and make recommendations. That's $1700 per complaint and Ms. Olson recently filed 76 more. City Council is considering revising its Ethics Ordinance based on recommendation of special counsel, which would allow them (city Council) to review and dispose of future complaints in a more efficient and less costly manner. There is also some hope in that Ms. Olson's recent complaints may be past the legal statute of limitations.

Wouldn't it have been better if the City were able to use those funds for needed infrastructure improvements. Sidewalk installation/replacement (a major Olson complaint) cost about $5 a square foot. The City could have installed many thousands of square feet of new sidewalk rather than pay attorney fees for legal actions that ended up with little merit in the final decision by the Courts.

Of course, citizen initiated lawsuits are not the only legal costs our funds are used for. The City, acting on its own and at its initiative, has spent about $1.6M fighting the Northwest Corridor Beltway and another $370K fighting the tower on Lookout Mountain. Although citizen's disagreements with their governments and government's disagreements with others, including other governments are a fact of life, and in some cases necessary and legitimate, wouldn't it be great if these issues could be settled without costly legal fights with their resulting attorney fees exhausting taxpayer dollars that could be used for better things.



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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Submitted By: Bill Simpson
posted on 11/9/2006 @ 9:01:17 AM
Rated Story
The poster fails to disclose that he is a long-time political operative in Golden with ties to the defendants in the cases he complains about. Full disclosure: I am a friend of the person the poster attacks and have assisted in her attempts to bring transparent, ethical administration to Golden.
[Report as objectionable]
Submitted By: Karen Groves
posted on 11/1/2006 @ 10:14:44 AM
Rated Story
Very interesting
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Ed Dorsey

Golden , CO

Ed Dorsey has posted 10 stories and 0 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Ed Dorsey 's average story rating is 4.5.
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