By Marianne Goodland, The Gazette

Colorado Ethics Watch, the ethics advocacy group that has spent the last decade ensuring Colorado’s campaign finance and ethics laws are followed, announced Thursday it will cease operations at the end of the year.

The shutdown is a financial matter, said Colorado Ethics Watch Executive Director Luis Toro. “It’s harder for us to justify our existence now that citizens can file their own complaints,” he told The Gazette. He also cited the national political atmosphere over ethics, stating the attention being paid to President Donald Trump and his ethics issues leaves little room for ethics concerns at the state level.

Attorney Chantell Taylor started Ethics Watch in August 2006, three months before Colorado voters adopted Amendment 41, the constitutional amendment that dictates ethics rules for elected officials. In 2008, Toro joined Ethics Watch; he became executive director in 2010.

At the time Ethics Watch was started, Toro said, “if we didn’t file the (campaign finance) complaint, no one would.” That’s a model that Toro said has worked well until the last few years, when citizens started filing their own complaints, both on campaign finance and on ethics.

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