New ethics complaint on Pueblo Councilor Regina Maestri dismissed unanimously
The composition of Pueblo City Council shifted significantly after the November 2023 election. Since then, the new council has been reversing some of the decisions made by the previous one.
That wasn’t the case for one of the items put before council Monday evening, when councilors voted unanimously to reject an ethics complaint about Councilor Regina Maestri.
The new complaint, submitted on a hand-written sheet of lined paper by Christina Longoria, noted how Maestri participated in voting on a previous complaint that was brought forth over two years ago at her second-ever council meeting.
While Maestri was involved in casting a vote dismissing the original complaint in January 2022, all of the other councilors on the dais also voted to dismiss it.
What the previous complaint alleged
Pueblo's former city attorney, Dan Kogovsek, told council at its Jan. 24, 2022, meeting that the complaint related to several items on Maestri’s campaign finance reports from her 2021 city council campaign.
Kogovsek said that he reviewed Maestri’s filings and that she was compliant with regulations.
That same evening, council also voted to dismiss an ethics complaint about now-former Councilor Vicente Martinez Ortega, which Kogovsek said was related to a criminal case in the 10th Judicial District.
Who was behind the complaints against Maestri?
Maestri told the Chieftain that her campaign finance manager had erroneously reported some personal expenses, including cosmetics, on her campaign finance forms. She said no campaign money was spent on those purchases and her campaign filed corrected reports.
Maestri said that Elvis Martinez, a former council candidate and frequent attendee at council meetings, has been behind the complaints. Martinez lost to Maestri in the District 1 city council race in November 2021 and also ran for an at-large seat in November 2023.
Martinez confirmed with the Chieftain that he filed the first complaint in 2022 but declined to comment on whether he was behind the new one.
Christina Longoria, the person who filed the new complaint, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Why Maestri voted on the complaint against her in 2022
Maestri left before council discussed the most recent ethics complaint Monday evening, but she did not recuse herself during the vote in early 2022, and neither did Martinez Ortega during the vote on his ethics complaint.
City Attorney Carla Sikes said that councilors aren’t supposed to participate in votes about ethics violations pertaining to them, per the city ethics code. However, Martinez Ortega and Maestri were likely unaware of that.
“I wasn't here for that, obviously, but it was my understanding it was a new process that no one was familiar with," Sikes said. "There was no direction that she had to recuse herself."
She added that both complaints were dismissed unanimously.
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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: Complaint on Pueblo Councilor Regina Maestri dismissed unanimously
