For years, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has drawn scrutiny for the bungled management of her office. It has included dizzying turnover among her top deputies.

In late 2020, Griswold was already on her second deputy secretary, third chief legal counsel and fourth chief of staff. By February 2021, she’d be on the hunt for her third deputy.

Gazette investigative columnist Jimmy Sengenberger was among the first to report on Griswold’s dysfunctional office in early 2021.

It turns out a consultant hired by Griswold’s office had cited that same dysfunction in a highly critical report — which no one now seems able to find. 

Last week, CBS Colorado’s Shaun Boyd reported on nearly $25,000 spent by Griswold’s office on “leadership development,” including “findings, conclusions, and recommendations” by the consultant. And a court has ordered Griswold’s office to ask the consultant for the consultant’s report.

Suzanne Taheri, an attorney and former deputy secretary of state, came across the invoice for the consultant’s services and asked for the report.

The report, Taheri told CBS, “is important for the public to know … and they deserve to see it.”  

Former employees confirmed the report’s existence, saying the secretary refused to take custody of it because it’s “highly critical of her” and “she didn’t want” it subject to open records requests.

That the office of the notoriously ambitious Griswold might sit on embarrassing records isn’t hard to believe. After her office inadvertently leaked election-equipment passwords for dozens of counties online, she didn’t tell county clerks until it went public. 

She is the Democratic nominee for attorney general on the Nov. 3 ballot, so she has a lot to protect.

Taheri asked Griswold’s office to ask the consultant, SageRiver Consulting, for the report. The office refused, insisting it had no such documents — even though, under state purchasing terms, a vendor’s deliverables become state property.

Yet another SageRiver contract for the same amount produced a 700-page strategic-planning report.

“I thought it was unusual because their whole argument is that this would be really difficult to have to go call the vendor,” Taheri said.

For Griswold’s office, a phone call was too much to ask. Instead, Taheri showed up to court, solo, squaring off against four state employees and three assistant attorneys general.

The judge wouldn’t have it. He called the office’s suggestion that the documents might not even exist “implausible” and said the office should have them.

He ordered Griswold’s office to request them, essentially mandating the phone call it fought in court to avoid. He signaled taxpayers might have to cover Taheri’s attorney fees and costs, too.

Whatever was in the missing report, the shameless attempt by Griswold’s office to play dumb makes a mockery of transparency and accountability in government. And it shows contempt for the state’s public records laws — and for the public’s right to know.

It gets worse. In a follow-up, Boyd reported the Attorney General’s Office, which represents Griswold, said the SageRiver consultant is retired and “shredded all hard-copy documents and attempted to delete and erase all electronic files.”

The consultant said searching electronic storage would cost $4,000, though she called it “possible, but unlikely” anything still exists.

The consultant told the court she’d already handed over a survey summary and final report. 

Griswold’s office won’t say what happened to it. Former employees say Griswold refused custody of it, too.

How clever — she knows how to skirt the law. Just the quality Colorado needs in its next attorney general.