At today's meeting of the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission (IEC), Colorado Ethics Watch applauded the IEC for its recent discussions on changes to the Rules of Procedure and urged the IEC to continue its efforts.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported last Friday that Attorney General John Suthers has received over $10,000 in campaign contributions from the payday loan industry, even as Suthers drafts regulations to implement the new payday loan law that went into effect last week.  Ethics Watch calls on Suthers to return these contributions in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The Office of Administrative Courts is setting the hearing date for Ethics Watch's campaign finance complaint against Clear the Bench Colorado for September 15.

Today, Ethics Watch asked Secretary of State Bernie Buescher to look into campaign finance reports that appear to show non-itemized contributions of greater than $20.00.  Because under existing law it is permissible to enter multiple small contributions from an event as a lump sum into the TRACER database, the public cannot tell whether a large non-itemized contribution is a lawful aggregation of small contributions or a larger contribution that should be itemized.