Councilmember’s Guest Opinion in TMM reveals political enemies list at City Hall

After being prevented by Mayor LiVecchi from giving her Elected Official’s Report at the October 4, 2017, City Council Meeting (see previous post), Councilwoman Eileen Rogers was afforded the opportunity on October 11th to finish her statement in a Guest Column in The Mountain Mail.  In her guest column, she revealed that, in reading the detailed bills of City Attorney, Ben Kahn, she learned he was directed by the mayor to investigate Salida citizens who express opinions with which the mayor disagreed.

It seems that in one matter called “No. 00272-City of Salida: Elected Official Public Statements” the city attorney’s bills disclosed he was paid $9,767.23 over six months to investigate Councilmembers Rogers and Brown-Kovacic, where he “scoured The Mountain Mail and the internet searching for anything suspicious. Our spoken and written words were closely examined, looking for ‘false public statements and admissions against city interests, public misinformation campaign and fake news promulgation by public officials.’”

Those bills also revealed that “Mayor LiVecchi also directed Mr. Kahn to scrutinize a large number of Salida citizens who have spoken during council meetings, written letters to the editor in The Mountain Mail, published comments on the internet and/or filed requests for copies of official documents using a CORA, the Colorado Open Records Act requests application.”