Anti-mayor petitioners vow lawsuit, city attorney to retire after organizers misled on signature requirement

A circulating petition to abolish Pueblo’s mayoral system has failed, the city attorney has been asked to retire and petition organizers have vowed to sue after the city misinformed them about how many petitions they needed to collect to change city charter.

The city announced its mistake in a news release Wednesday and Mayor Nick Gradisar confirmed to the Chieftain he’s asked City Attorney Dan Kogovsek to retire. Kogovsek’s last day is Friday.

Organizers are considering seeking legal action against the city, according to City Councilor Lori Winner.

An agenda has been released for a special city council work session Thursday. The only item on the agenda is an executive session with the assistant city attorney for “legal advice regarding charter amendments and ballot measures.”

‘It would be chaos’: Here's what went wrong

A group of people has been working for months to collect signatures for a special election to abolish the city’s mayoral office and return to a city manager-council form of government, essentially undoing a 2017 vote by Puebloans to move Pueblo to a “strong” mayor government.

Gradisar is the city’s first mayor in recent memory. He was elected to the position after a runoff in early 2019 and is running to serve an additional term. The mayoral election will be held on Nov. 7.

City Clerk Marisa Stoller told organizers that they needed to collect at least 3,768 valid signatures, but that was incorrect: per state law, the city's release states, petitioners actually would have needed 7,260.

The city charter outlines a procedure for citizen-initiated ordinances, but not charter amendments. Petitioners were seeking to change the city charter, rules for which are in the state statute.

Kogovsek told Stoller the incorrect number of signatures required, which would have been appropriate for initiated ordinances, according to Gradisar: he said he realized petitioners may have been told an incorrect number when reviewing the signatures earlier this month.

“I immediately retained outside counsel to review it as well,” Gradisar said. He hired Mark Grueskin at the city’s expense to review the statute. Grueskin has experience with election law and has worked for national Democrats. Gradisar said this is the first time the city has hired him.

The anti-mayor petitioners were seeking to amend the city charter through a special election sometime this summer. Under these circumstances, state statute requires that organizers collect signatures from at least 10% of registered electors when they file a notice of intent.

Gradisar said the city could have been sued if the charter amendment had passed because it didn’t meet the legal requirements.

“It would be chaos,” he said.

Petitioners would have been short, even under the incorrect guidance

Gradisar, who was a lawyer before he was elected mayor, said that the petitioners should have hired an outside attorney to review the statute but would have been short of the required signatures anyway, according to the city's release.

Organizers first submitted 3,830 signatures on March 1 to meet what they thought was the 3,768 minimum.

The clerk’s office found that they were 954 valid signatures short of the original, incorrect guideline. The clerk’s office released an initial certificate of insufficiency on March 14 after finding only 2,814 signatures were valid.

But petitioners had an additional 15 days to collect more and “cure” initially rejected signatures. They re-submitted 4,877 total signatures, according to the clerk’s office, on March 29.

The amount of valid signatures in the final round of review dropped to 2,740 because a section initially approved by the clerk was “found to have been improperly disassembled,” according to the release.

The clerk’s office still reviewed each of the signatures in the disassembled sections. Even then, the petitioners would have been short: they would have only added 870 signatures to the 2,814 initially approved, which would have been “68 signatures short of the original instruction to the Clerk and 3,550 signatures short of the requirements of state law,” the release states.

Some of the petition sections were not submitted intact, the release claims, but the attempt to fix that did not work.

“In addition to the insufficiency of overall signatures, four petition sections were disassembled, separating the circulator affidavits from signatures pages. Petitioners had attempted to cure these petitions with a handwritten affidavit, but upon examination, this was found to be insufficient to cure the petition sections as they were no longer to the approved form and disassembly had still occurred,” the release states. “270 signatures were contained within those four sections and were therefore disqualified.”

Organizers express outrage

Winner, who has been involved with collecting signatures for the past few months, said she was “really pissed” about the decision.

She said that organizers started collecting petitions because Gradisar and Kogovsek were “so corrupt” and that the review from the clerk’s office affirms this.

“Dan (Kogovsek) is a very bad lawyer,” Winner said.

Winner confirmed she would not be seeking an additional term as at-large city councilor and that organizers are planning on seeking legal action against the city.

Judalon Smyth, who spearheaded the petition, did not respond to a request for comment from the Chieftain before its deadline.

Under Pueblo’s current government, the mayor controls the executive branch and city council holds legislative powers. Executive and legislative powers are combined under the council-manager form of government.

Petitioners have said that the mayor costs the city too much money and that the position has too much power.

Proponents of the mayoral system have said that the city manager was beholden to the whims of council and could be fired at whim. Gradisar said that previous councils have fired city managers, who were given severance and health insurance following their departure.

Gradisar isn’t fazed by the attempts to abolish his office. He speculated the measure would not have passed.

“What I've told people is if you don't like the job I'm doing, vote for somebody else. There'll be plenty of choices on the ballot in November,” Gradisar said.

At least eight candidates have already filed to lead Pueblo.

Gradisar asks Kogovsek to retire

Kogovsek announced his retirement in a Wednesday morning email addressed to department heads that was obtained by the Chieftain.

“I gave the City Clerk incorrect legal advice regarding the number of signatures necessary to place an initiated City Charter amendment on the ballot. The Mayor requested that I retire,” Kogovsek wrote.

“Friday will be my last day. I have enjoyed working with each of you over the last 10 years. I really mean that. You are a great bunch of public servants. I have been inspired by your dedication to your jobs and the people of this great city. I will miss you. I really mean that too.”

Gradisar said that Kogovsek made a “mistake.”

“I think this whole thing is going to make the city look bad and I think there needs to be some consequences,” Gradisar said. “(Kogovsek) made a mistake. He admits he made a mistake. Moving forward, I thought we ought to have a change in that position. He agreed with that.”

Robert “Bob” Jagger will serve as interim city attorney until a replacement for Kogovsek is hired, Gradisar said. According to Jagger’s LinkedIn profile, he has served as Pueblo’s assistant city attorney since 1994.

Kogovsek will be paid out his earned time off but will not be given any supplemental severance, Gradisar said.

“He’s not a city manager,” Gradisar said.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com or on Twitter, @annalynnfrey.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo anti-mayor petition fails but organizers misled on requirements