A check for $30,000 written by Greg Kolomitz to repay the “Ritter Inaugural Fund” was not immediately deposited into that account, but rather was turned into a cashiers check by Stephanie Villafuerte.

Villafuerte is currently deputy chief of staff for the Governor, and is also nominated by President Obama to become the next Federal attorney for Colorado.

An attorney for the inaugural fund said that the monies were in fact deposited into the inaugural account less than 24 hours after the cashiers check was created, but simultaneously refused to release the bank statements verifying that claim.

The check in question was written from the account of “Solutions West, LLC,” the political consulting firm co-owned and operated by Greg Kolomitz, who managed Bill Ritter’s campaign for Governor in 2006. The back of the check shows that a cashiers check was issued “in lieu of” a deposit, and the words “by Stephanie Villafuerte” appear underneath the rubber stamp language that converts that original check into a cashier’s check. The transaction happened on April 15, 2008, one day after Kolomitz dated the check.

Jennifer Hunt with the law firm Hill & Robbins which represents the inaugural fund told the Institute that the cashiers check was necessary “…to ensure that the check reflected good funds immediately upon deposit into the Inaugural Committee’s account.” As for releasing the corresponding bank statements, Hunt further stated, “…we are not authorized to waive the confidentiality of the actual underlying bank records of the Inaugural Committee, and will not do so.”

Because the check was issued as a repayment to the “Ritter Inaugural Fund,” the Independence Institute asked for all bank statements for the inaugural fund from January 2008, to present, in order to determine if or when the money actually reached the intended account.

Additionally, the Institute asked two members of the “Ritter Inaugural Committee, Inc.” nonprofit corporation to provide the bank statements for the same time period. All of those prior requests were either denied or ignored.

Only until the Institute disclosed the contents of the check from “Solutions West” was any communication provided by someone within the administration, or someone with authority over the inaugural account.

In total, the inaugural fund was set to receive approximately $300,000 in “repayments” after a 2008 audit, including monies from a loan Governor Ritter originated using his home as collateral. Unless the inaugural committee releases the bank statements from 2008 to present, there is no way of verifying if the repayments happened as planned.

“In the words of Reagan, ‘trust but verify.’ So while we take the Ritter administration’s word that these funds were placed into the inaugural account, we’re dismayed at the refusal to verify that by making public a single bank statement to prove it,” said Independence Institute President Jon Caldara. “I have yet to understand this administration’s difficulty with transparency. In fact, the Governor at one time seemed to be bragging about the transparency for this very fund, and now the same administration is claiming the right of privacy on the same account.”

Caldara is referring to a press release in which Governor Ritter said, “We were open and transparent with the public and appropriate authorities when we discovered these problems [with the inaugural fund].”

The inaugural fund was created to pay for Governor Ritter’s celebratory activities after winning the November 2006 election.

Corporations and individuals gave just over one million dollars to pay for inaugural dinners, concerts, and a “whistle-stop” train tour of the state. The purpose of creating a separate business (in this case a 501 c(4) non-profit) for an inaugural is to allow taxpayers to avoid financing such activities.

“Solutions West” voluntarily repaid money to the inaugural account in

2008 after the Ritter administration accused Kolomitz of making improper payments to himself and his consulting firm. The matter was turned over to the Arapahoe County District Attorney’s office for investigation, but no charges or formal accusations of wrongdoing were ever filed against Kolomitz or his company. The Ritter administration also admitted that some campaign expenses were improperly paid from the inaugural fund. State Representative Kent Lambert has filed a lawsuit against Governor Ritter and the inaugural committee, arguing that the inaugural fund violated Colorado’s campaign finance laws.

After disclosing the various discrepancies with the inaugural funds, Governor Ritter used his home as collateral to take out a loan of $200,000 and deposited those monies into the “Ritter for Governor”

campaign account. The campaign account was then supposed to pay, a second time, all of the illegal or improper vendor payments discovered by the audit. In return, the vendors would then repay the inaugural committee in an attempt to restore all accounts.

The terse and unfriendly divorce between Ritter and Kolomitz was widely documented by both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News.

Kolomitz maintained he properly compensated himself through the inaugural committee for consulting services, while the Ritter campaign and administration have maintained that Kolomitz’s payments were never authorized.

The Ritter administration voluntarily provided banking and other documents for a 2008 audit of the inaugural fund by “Patten, McPhee, and Associates.” However, the audit’s final report was released on April 14, 2008, the same day Kolomitz wrote the check in question.

Therefore, the inaugural committee has never released any documents that would prove that all or any of the intended “repayments” did in fact reach the committee as intended, whether those repayments were from Kolomitz, or from any of the vendors which were improperly paid from the inaugural. Page 9 of the report shows the audit only examined bank statements up to February 2008. Furthermore, the conclusion of the audit (pg. 6) admits “it is our understanding that Kolomitz has reimbursed the inaugural committee,” but that the auditors only worked on those assumptions and nothing more.