"News coming today, a little more than a week since he was sworn into office, that Gessler plans to keep working part-time as an attorney for his former firm even while serving as secretary of state has set conflict-of-interest alarm bells ringing in watchdog offices.
In an interview with the Denver Business Journal, Gessler acknowledged that his plan to moonlight as a contract attorney with the Hackstaff Law Group, formerly Hackstaff and Gessler LLC, would certainly raise ethical questions but that he needed the money. He said his first priority would be to serve the state but that the public-servant $68,500-a-year salary that came with the office amounted to a major pay cut and he still had to provide for his family.
“My first duty is to the state of Colorado. Anything else I do, I’m going to have to make sure it in no way conflicts,” he told the Journal."
Secretary of State Gessler’s plan to moonlight as private attorney sounds ethics alarms
Colorado Independent:
