Colorado’s judicial discipline commission on Friday told legislators it is actively investigating more than 70 cases, in which judges allegedly violated state law by not filing personal financial disclosure documents for public review.

The commission told a joint hearing of the House and Senate judiciary committees those investigations — 73 of them — were a large part of a nearly 40% increase in the number of cases brought before it.

The commission received 345 requests for investigation in 2023, up from 249 the year before. 

“It’s been an incredibly active year,” said Christopher Gregory, executive director of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline.

The investigations come on the heels of a Denver Gazette report last year that found one in six sitting judges in Colorado had not filed the disclosures, some of them for several years. It is a misdemeanor to knowingly not file the documents.

In the worst examples, The Denver Gazette found nearly two dozen judges who sat on a Colorado district court or county court bench — some of them the chief judge of their judicial district — haven’t had a disclosure on file for several years, the only way the public could know if a judge might have a conflict of interest in the cases they oversee.

The number with unfiled disclosures is even higher when the more than four dozen senior judges — jurists who have technically retired but remain on the bench in a limited capacity — are added. Although still deciding cases that run from felonies to family court, nearly all hadn’t had a disclosure on file with the secretary of state since retiring — one of them more than 16 years ago, The Denver Gazette reported.

Gregory told legislators that their work investigating the cases is complicated by a prohibition against judges with any form of discipline from serving as a senior judge when they retire.

“The collateral consequences as we try to negotiate resolutions, with judges looking to avoid exclusion from the senior judge program, it’s become highly problematic,” Gregory said.

Gregory also said the commission is recommending legislators clarify the laws regarding financial disclosure filings, largely because of confusion about when to file and who should file. For instance, the law is not clear whether senior judges must file or not, and the deadline for any judge to file is in January, leaving some judges newly appointed after the deadline to work cases for nearly a year before filing their first disclosure.

Gregory said the commission — a 10-member board made up of lawyers, judges and citizens — hopes legislators would consider removing the absolute prohibition against judges with even minor discipline from serving in the senior judge program.

Some legislators balked at the idea that a judge with a history of discipline — no matter how slight — should be allowed to serve as a senior judge.

“I have concerns about that legislative priority, particularly of those judges with a history,” Rep. Jennifer Bacon said. “How do we do that?”

Many of the judges who failed to file financial disclosure reports with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office didn’t bother to respond to efforts by The Denver Gazette to reach them. Others told the newspaper they simply forgot.

The newspaper’s investigation laid bare a toothless law with little enforcement. The secretary of state’s office says its job is merely to compile the filings and make them available for public inspection, but not to remind anyone of a failure to submit them. The newspaper found 56 of the state’s 358 judges did not file the disclosures last year. A handful still hadn’t after the newspaper’s report.

Weeks after The Denver Gazette story published, the state’s Judicial Department began training its jurists in complying with the disclosure law.