Revolving door at Pueblo city attorney's office keeps turning: Mayor Graham fires Hypolite

Pueblo’s city attorney’s office will have its fourth leader in ten months.

Newly sworn-in Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham fired City Attorney George Hypolite shortly after she was sworn in Thursday afternoon. He is being replaced by Pueblo Municipal Court Judge Carla Sikes as interim city attorney, which the city announced a few hours after Graham’s inaugural ceremony.

In an interview with the Chieftain, Graham said that Hypolite had damaged relationships with people at the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority in recent months. But Hypolite says that he stands by the legal advice he shared with city council about PURA.

In his last few weeks on the job, Hypolite was also involved in the aftermath of City Councilor Sarah Martinez sharing Democratic election infrastructure with Graham, who is a registered Republican, to aid in her mayoral campaign. Hypolite and Martinez’s attorney, Frances Koncilja, have made contrasting statements about what happened — and Graham said it had nothing to do with why she fired Hypolite.

Why Hypolite is leaving the city

Former Mayor Nick Gradisar appointed Hypolite to be Pueblo’s city attorney in mid-August. He came to the job from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

Graham said that her rationale for giving Hypolite the boot was not because of the aftermath of the controversy with Martinez, but “an ongoing issue” about how he dealt with PURA.

“I was not impressed about the confrontational energy coming from the city attorney's office," she said.

Hypolite had some disagreements with the leaders of the PURA, which appear to stem from fundamental differences in interpreting state laws governing urban renewal authorities. Hypolite took issue with the lack of detail in PURA’s plans and city council ceding authority — which he expressed to city council — while PURA leaders adamantly disagreed and said that local precedent was on their side.

The controversy involving Martinez didn’t play a part in why she fired Hypolite, Graham said.

“What's happened over the last few weeks, that's neither here nor there because that was done to me in a private capacity, not in a city capacity," she said.

Graham said that some of PURA’s projects, with tens of millions of dollars at stake, are now “in limbo” and that she will have to “mend” several relationships because of Hypolite’s actions.

Hypolite told the Chieftain in a phone interview Friday that he wasn’t surprised to hear that Graham was firing him — he had been hearing rumors that he would lose his job when Graham started. But he was caught off guard by losing immediate access to his city email without a chance to say goodbye to his staff.

If PURA is the reason Hypolite is getting fired, then he’s going to “sleep very good at night.”

“In this circumstance or situation, for the mayor to suggest that somehow me defending the interests of the people of the city of Pueblo was somehow confrontational or negative, means I think there may be a fundamental misunderstanding between she and I on the nature of the job of the city attorney,” Hypolite said. “The nature of the job of the city attorney is not to do what the mayor or any elected official says. The nature of the job of the city attorney is to represent the best interests of the public, hard stop.”

He said that “the symbolism is not lost on me” of being the first African American city attorney in Pueblo and getting fired on the first day of Black History Month. He thanked city staff and people of Pueblo for working with him while he was in Pueblo.

Hypolite is not receiving any severance pay from the city.

A few hours after Graham’s inauguration, the city released a statement about Sikes' appointment as the new interim city attorney. The press release did not mention Hypolite.

Sikes started Friday. She previously worked in the office as an assistant city attorney from 2010 to 2016 before she started working as the presiding municipal judge. Graham said in the release that temporary judges will be able to keep business moving through the municipal court in Sikes’ absence.

How Hypolite got involved in the Martinez data controversy

On Jan. 16, local Democrats censured Pueblo City Councilor Sarah Martinez for sharing proprietary party software and data with the Graham campaign.

Martinez and the city attorney had a conversation on the phone about the implications, but Martinez’s attorney Frances Koncilja and Hypolite have differing accounts of what happened. For starters, Koncilja said that Hypolite initiated the conversation, but Hypolite said Martinez called him.

Koncilja alleged in a press release dated Jan. 20 that Hypolite “threatened” Martinez and said she could serve time in federal prison if she made an agreement with Graham for a chief of staff appointment and advised her to “lawyer up."

Graham’s campaign Facebook page also posted Koncilja’s press release in full — and paid somewhere between $500-$599 to run it as an ad on Facebook. The statement got 15,000 to 20,000 views.

“Sarah was so disturbed by Hypolite’s call and threats that she became physically ill and sought medical treatment for herself and her unborn baby girl that afternoon,” Koncilja said.

Martinez apologized for sharing the database with Graham’s campaign in a statement to the Chieftain last month. She declined an interview request but said in a text message that she has “remained transparent and taken responsibility” for the Democratic database snafu and added that she wants to “move beyond campaign matters” with her family, constituents and everyone else.

“I’m looking forward to continuing my work on city council and the many things we have to accomplish as we look ahead to plan Pueblo’s bright future,” Martinez wrote.

Hypolite said that he was providing legal advice to Martinez based on the Chieftain article and a conversation he had with Martinez’s mother, Luann Martinez.

Luann Martinez works as a grant writer for the city and Hypolite alleged that she told him that “if Councilor Graham were elected mayor of the City of Pueblo, Councilor Martinez would be appointed chief of staff.”

Luann Martinez did not respond to a request for comment prior to the Chieftain’s deadline.

Hypolite said that Koncilja deeply mischaracterized his conversation with Sarah Martinez. If the Democratic data had been shared in exchange for a chief of staff appointment, that could be a potential violation of federal and state bribery laws, Hypolite explained.

“The insinuation someone put me up to answer a call from your client no one knew was coming to threaten her with the prosecution of crimes I have no authority to investigate or prosecute is simply ludicrous,” Hypolite wrote in a response letter to Koncilja, which he shared with the Chieftain.

Koncilja claimed that Hypolite told Martinez that Attorney General Phil Weiser “got off” on prosecuting alleged data theft.

A spokesperson for Weiser's office declined to comment and Hypolite did not directly address those allegations by Koncilja in his response to her.

Koncilja also claimed that Hypolite and Democratic Party officials knew that Martinez was in the “second trimester of her high-risk pregnancy” and “bullied” Martinez to help Gradisar get elected.

The chair of the Pueblo Democratic Party, Bri Buentello, and state party chair Shad Murib both declined to comment.

Hypolite said that he learned of Martinez’s pregnancy for the first time from Koncilja.

Graham's plans for other departmental leaders

The mayor has the authority under the city charter to fire any departmental directors. They can also make appointments, but those need to be confirmed by city council.

The city attorney and the chief of staff are the only mayor-appointed positions that Graham is planning to replace at this time, but Chief of Staff Laura Solano has still been working in the interim.

Graham said she doesn’t want to “clear house” of the other departmental directors, some of whom have been with the city for decades.

“I want to see what they can do over the next several months and what they have been doing and we'll go from there, but that that would be very reckless and irresponsible for anybody to come into this position and start doing away with department heads without having somebody with some knowledge there to help you through it,” Graham said.

Graham denied that she and Martinez had ever had an agreement about her becoming Graham's chief of staff if she was elected, but she declined to confirm if Martinez had ever considered applying for the chief of staff position.

Martinez also did not directly confirm if she had talked about applying for the position of chief of staff. But she said in a text message that her priorities are finishing her council term for the next two years and starting her family.

Gradisar appointed Solano as his chief of staff in 2019 after an independent panel identified the top candidates from 35 applicants. Solano came out of retirement to take the job.

Graham said she will also confer with an independent panel to identify finalists for the position.

“I have no experience in municipal staffing or what that looks like, so that would be irresponsible to walk in there with an appointed person that you are going to have without seeing all candidates and who I can bring to my team to bring the city forward,” Graham said.

“I need somebody who knows city government, and I need someone who shares the same values and foresight for the city of Pueblo moving forward. And I don't know who that person is yet.”

Is there a campaign finance investigation?

Hypolite emphasized in his letter to Koncilja that he does not have the authority to prosecute state and federal violations, but he explained in the letter that he told Martinez the city would investigate for a potential campaign finance violation.

In a follow-up email with the Chieftain while he was still employed by the city of Pueblo, Hypolite confirmed that the city attorney’s office was investigating the matter — they saw that Graham did not disclose the use of the Democratic software in her campaign finance reports — and issued Graham’s campaign an opportunity to cure.

“Once a response is provided, the city will determine if the response demonstrates substantial compliance with the Code’s reporting requirements,” Hypolite wrote in an email describing the process for processing campaign finance complaints.

City spokesperson Haley Sue Robinson confirmed with the Chieftain in an email that Graham’s campaign “followed up” with the city clerk’s office Friday to address the cure and referred further questions to the campaign.

The Chieftain has filed an open records request with the city for Graham’s cure. Graham had not responded to a request for comment by the Chieftain's Friday deadline.

10 months of turmoil in the city attorney’s office

Four different attorneys have been at the helm of the city attorney’s office in the past 10 months. The revolving door of city attorneys started turning in April 2023 after former Gradisar asked then-City Attorney Dan Kogovsek to resign because he allegedly misinformed anti-mayor petitioners about the requirements for their petition.

Robert “Bob” Jagger, then the deputy city attorney, served as interim city attorney for the next few months.

Jagger was a finalist for the full-time city attorney job search over the summer, but Gradisar decided to appoint Hypolite to the position in August.

Jagger retired from the city attorney’s office after 29 years in municipal law in late 2023. City council made a proclamation for “Bob Jagger Day” at the Nov. 27, 2023, meeting.

A job posting for Jagger’s replacement as deputy city attorney has been open since Dec. 6, 2023. The annual salary for the position starts at $141,000.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Heather Graham fires city attorney Hypolite in one of first acts as mayor