Last year, ethics in Colorado improved by 50 percent -- at least judging by Colorado Ethics Watch's list of the year's top ethical standards. After all, the 2008 edition was ten items long, but the 2009 sports just five. "We realized it had been a slow year," says new CEW director Luis Toro. "Which is a good thing."

The press release announcing the five winners/losers, on view at at the bottom of this item, ranks the offenses, with number one going to Scott McInnis, who made campaign-like calls indicating that he was running for governor before officially filing as a candidate -- a definite no-no, albeit one whose details he has publicly disputed. But while the account of McInnis's actions appears first in the full report, too (read it here), Toro notes that numbers aren't ascribed to the items there. In his view, they're all equally bad in their own special way.

For instance, the way Colorado State University's board of governors went about naming Joe Blake the institution's new chancellor strikes Toro as particularly noxious.

"The whole way it was handled shows a lack of transparency," he says. "Inside the boardroom, a member of the board is involved in creating a new job, and he ends up getting it."

Transparency issues also bedeviled the Independent Ethics Commission, Toro notes -- although he praises the organization for fixing the difficulties in mid-year. He's also critical of Gail Norton, who's suspected in some quarters of using her position as Secretary of the Interior under President George W. Bush in unscrupulous ways. "Obviously, the Department of Justice takes this very seriously, since there are subpoenas flying around," he points out. And he cites the "major delinquency" exhibited by Boulder state rep Jack Pommer, who was fined $4,000 for repeatedly neglecting to file campaign finance reports over a four-month stretch.

"This isn't supposed to be a definitive list," Toro stresses. "The idea is to provoke conversation and thought -- and if other people disagree and have their own suggestions, I'm fine with that."

Bet he wouldn't mind putting together an even smaller list of scandals next year. For the full story, please visit http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/01/scott_mcinnis_kind_of_tops_col...