Freshman Denver City Council member faces ethics investigation over office spending

First-year City Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez is under investigation by the Denver Board of Ethics after a former staffer filed a complaint last month alleging she flouted city spending rules repeatedly during her first few months in office.

The 42-page complaint features photos of receipts, invoices, plane tickets and screenshots of emails and text exchanges between office staff members. It alleges at least a half dozen instances of financial mismanagement and, in some cases, apparent attempts by Alvidrez to conceal how the councilwoman was spending her office budget.

Ultimately, it requested that the board investigate whether the councilwoman violated sections of the city’s Code of Ethics that govern conflicts of interest and using public office for private gain.

In one example detailed in the complaint, Alvidrez agreed to pay her ex-husband, Cesar Duron, $4,234 out of her Council District 7 office budget to build a float for the Broadway Halloween Parade. Alvidrez already had contracted with Youth on Record, a nonprofit group, to build a float for $10,000.

The councilwoman chalked up paying for two floats — adding up to more than $14,000 — to forgetfulness on her part, according to the complaint.

Alvidrez is one of six new council members sworn in on July 17, along with Mayor Mike Johnston. She represents several south Denver neighborhoods and succeeded Councilman Jolon Clark.

In a written response to that complaint that Alvidrez sent to the ethics board on Dec. 27, she denied doing anything to personally enrich herself while in office.

The response addresses specific allegations directly. When it comes to the Halloween parade, Alvidrez said she had personally asked her ex-husband to build a float for the price of supplies and also agreed to a sponsorship agreement with Youth on Record. When both put effort into creating floats, she decided it would be wrong to cancel either one and decided to march in the parade with both.

“I did not privately benefit from either transaction and Cesar is no longer related to me,” she wrote of Duron.

Avlidrez said she welcomes and is cooperating with the board’s investigation, according to a prepared statement released Tuesday. She also said she’s committed to correcting any errors the probe may uncover.

The existence of the complaint and the open ethics investigation were first reported by Denverite, which also reported that all four of Alvidrez’s council office aides had resigned since December. The ethics complaint form lists the first name “Leya,” which matches the first name of her former aide Leya Hartman, identified fully in the emails enclosed with the complaint.

The ethics board voted 4-0 at its Jan. 3 meeting to direct executive director Lori Weiser and the City Attorney’s Office to further investigate the allegations, Weiser confirmed Tuesday morning.

The board will take the matter up in a closed-door executive session on Feb. 7 before deciding how to proceed. If the board finds the claims are substantiated and that it has jurisdiction, Alvidrez will have the right to a public hearing, should she request one, according to Weiser.

It’s also possible the board will decide it is not the proper body to hear the matter. The board typically screens complaints in executive sessions, as allowed by city laws.

“The Board of Ethics does not have independent authority to discipline or penalize an officer, official, or employee upon finding a violation of the Denver Code of Ethics,” Weiser wrote in an email. “The Ethics Code provides that the Board may recommend discipline to the appointing authority.”

In the case of elected officials, the appointing body is the voting public — with public scrutiny of the violations by voters serving as the effective punishment.

Other allegations in the complaint include that Alvidrez sought reimbursement from the city for alcohol and sales tax paid after a meal with an aide, which allegedly violated city spending rules she had been warned about. She also is accused of using a city travel card to pay for flight upgrades on a trip to and from Chile for the Biennial of the Americas in October.

The aide claims the upgrades were not allowed under city policy and that Alvidrez was expected to reimburse the city for improper use of the travel card.

“As of my last day with her office … Councilwoman Alvidrez, to my knowledge, had still not reimbursed the city for many of her personal purchases,” wrote Hartman, who left the District 7 office for another city job on Dec. 8 and filed the complaint 10 days later. “These documented instances described in this ethics report indicate to me a willful disregard of fiscal rules and accountability for spending taxpayer dollars.”

Alvidrez denied seeking reimbursement for a glass of sangria she drank at that lunch and also denied that the city footed the bill for any flight upgrades on her Chile trip.

In her response to The Denver Post, she took issue with a portion of the complaint in which the former staffer claimed Alvidrez yelled at her during a discussion of the councilwoman’s financial habits and city spending rules.

“Also the claim that I yelled at an employee is not true and news to me because never in any complaint … or email did anyone mention yelling before this Denverite article and that is not my temperament,” she wrote.

In her written response to the ethics board, Alvidrez directly criticized Hartman. The councilwoman claimed that she tried unsuccessfully to get Hartman to schedule regular check-ins where the two would “have time to discuss outstanding items relating to budget and constituent services in depth.”