| 11/14/2007 |
| No charges against Habig |
| By:Peter Jones , Staff Writer |
Prosecutors in the 18th Judicial District have declined
to file charges against Centennial City Councilmember-elect Betty
Ann Habig. The Ward 1 representative who was elected this month had
been accused of knowingly and/or recklessly disseminating false
campaign information in violation of state law.
After an October council meeting during which councilmembers criticized what they called false or misleading claims in a Habig campaign flier, civic activist Sam Drury filed a legal complaint against Habig with District Attorney Carol Chambers. After a brief investigation, the prosecutor's office referred the matter to a four-member panel of the Colorado District Attorneys Council, which this week issued a recommendation that no charges be filed. The 18th Judicial District accepted the recommendation. "The investigation revealed that the majority of the information Ms. Habig disseminated was obtained through the city of Centennial records," district spokeswoman Kathleen Walsh said. "The Colorado District Attorneys Council and the district attorney's office did not find evidence of fraud. It was reasonable to assume that information disseminated was correct." Habig's critics had accused her of violating a state statute that makes it a criminal offense to knowingly or recklessly "make, publish, broadcast or circulate ... any false statement designed to affect the vote on any issue submitted to the electors at an election or relating to any candidate for election to public office." Last year, state Rep. Morgan Carroll, an Aurora Democrat, cited the law in an unsuccessful complaint about claims made in automated "robo-calls" to voters, but Republican prosecutors, Chambers and Attorney General John Suthers, declined to press charges against the GOP's Trailhead Group. City council races are nonpartisan, though Habig ran her unsuccessful campaigns for the state legislature as a Republican. The Class 1 misdemeanor of "knowingly" distributing false election material is punishable by a minimum penalty of six months in prison and/or a $500 fine. "Recklessly" doing the same thing is a less serious Class 2 offense that can bring the guilty party three months in prison and/or a $250 fine. Regardless of whether Habig's individual claims in her campaign literature were entirely factual, a person could have reasonably drawn the same conclusions by visiting the city of Centennial's Web site, according to Walsh. Chief investigator Mike Knight walked away from the case with essentially the same conclusion. "She may not have done deep investigation, but she got those numbers from the city," he said. Controversies about Habig's flier first came to light at a city council meeting in October when city manager Jacque Wedding-Scott publicly refuted the candidate's claim that her annual compensation is $262,000. The stated figure actually includes Wedding-Scott's $145,000 annual salary, plus her benefits package, a car allowance and the salary of her administrative assistant. According to Walsh, the city's Web site is arguably ambiguous on this matter. "[The $262,000 figure] is the information we were able to obtain from the city of Centennial's records," she said. "The information provided by the city's records verified Ms. Habig's information." The candidate's flier, revised after Drury's complaint was filed, originally included a broad range of charges about city finances, from saying the city was cutting back on public works services to calling public-utilities franchise fees and stormwater fees "taxes." They are not taxes by definitions in state statute. Drury's letter cited two specific examples of false or misleading information - the charge about Wedding-Scott's salary and Habig's assertion that the city had spent $75,000 on a public-opinion survey. The city in fact spent $15,000 on the survey as part of a larger contract for other marketing consultation. Although Drury says he intended the two citations to be examples of a larger pattern of misinformation, 18th Judicial District investigators limited the scope of their investigations to those two claims. Drury accepts this week's decision by the district attorney's office, but rejects the assertion that Habig acted in good faith when she pulled material from the city Web site. "Betty Ann isn't just anybody," he said. "She chaired the budget committee when she was on the council. If she took data from the Web site and saw those figures, she should have known better. For example, if it said $500,000 for the city attorney, that doesn't mean the city attorney gets $500,000. It's his office that gets it. But that wouldn't get the uninformed voter too excited." Chambers, a Republican, did not make the final call in this case, Walsh clarified. Assistant district attorney Leslie Hanson decided not to file the charges, she said. Last year, Habig engaged in a public dispute with Chambers's husband Nathan, the chairman of Arapahoe County Republicans. Habig sparred with the official after she was passed over for a midterm replacement to the state Senate in District 26. Earlier this year, the former councilmember filed a formal complaint with the Colorado Republican Party charging district leaders, including Chambers, with violations of party bylaws. The complaint was rejected by the party attorneys who investigated the matter. The contentious District 26 race had led to Habig's alienation from many Republican leaders. She later broke ties with various former supporters and left a series of angry voicemail and e-mail messages - some copied to the Centennial Citizen - demanding that a number of officials and civic activists stop contacting her. Last week, Habig irately told the Centennial Citizen that she will no longer submit to interviews due to the newspaper's extensive coverage of her controversies. Habig's campaign literature is the latest chapter in the former councilmember's contentious tenure as a civic activist. The maverick official is known for her tenacity and hard work, but is equally recognized for her divisiveness. On council, she differed, often colorfully, with her colleagues on a range of issues and her outspokenness made her among the most watchable of Centennial's founding councilmembers. She will be sworn-in again in January after defeating Moon by a margin of 51 to 39 percent. Contact Peter Jones at 303-566-4109 or pjones@ccnewspapers.com. |
