Jill Gaebler wants some answers.

For months, the president pro tem of the Colorado Springs City Council has been raising questions about mPACT, a group that many council members didn’t even know exists but that spends at least $40,000 in public money every year to lobby the federal government on behalf of the Pikes Peak region.

Gaebler got herself appointed Dec. 13 as the City Council’s representative to the group to find out more about how it spends the city’s money. But she wasn’t invited to the group’s monthly meeting Wednesday, despite twice inquiring about the meeting date.

“This is yet another stall tactic from this secretive organization that continues to not be transparent with the significant tax dollars they receive from the citizens of Colorado Springs,” Gaebler said Thursday when informed of the meeting.

Stephannie Finley Fortune, mPACT facilitator, said she contacted Council President Merv Bennett to schedule an orientation. That way council members will be prepared for mPACT’s February meeting, which Bennett and Gaebler will be invited to attend. “I have invited both he and Jill to have the initial conversation,” Finley Fortune said by email.

But as of Thursday, Gaebler said, “I have not been invited to any meeting.”

Bennett, who appointed Gaebler to represent the city with mPACT, said he got a phone message from Finley Fortune, but they hadn’t yet connected. Does he plan to attend the meetings also? “If that’s what Jill wants me to do or Stephannie wants me to do, I’d be glad to,” Bennett said.

mPACT, Pikes Peak Federal Action Coalition, has 13 member organizations, each of which pays $10,000 a year. The group initially was formed to protect local military bases from cuts and closures under BRAC, nickname for the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Since then, its governmental and private members hired a leading lobbyist group in Washington, D.C., that helped win federal grants after the Waldo Canyon fire of 2012 and ensuing floods in 2013.

Gaebler first raised questions in November about mPACT because council members said they didn’t know about the group or the $10,000 annual dues each paid by the city and Colorado Springs Utilities, which the council governs.

Finley Fortune said Gaebler had attended two meetings of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG) where mPACT’s work was explained.

Said Gaebler, “In all honesty, I do recall Stephannie speaking at one PPACG meeting, but I don’t recall what she said, mostly because she spoke in public comments and there was no reference to her organization being funded by PPACG. Her few moments at the podium did not register with me.”

The City Council got a PowerPoint presentation on mPACT at its Dec. 13 work session, though, when Bennett appointed Gaebler to be the city’s elected representative with the group.

El Paso County and the PPACG send elected representatives to mPACT meetings. The city sends Chief of Staff Jeff Greene and Economic Development Director Bob Cope, neither of whom report to the council.

Gaebler wanted a city elected official to attend.

As for the orientation, that would be a first for mPACT, said Sallie Clark, an mPACT member since its inception and a county commissioner from 2005 until Jan. 10.

“As new members have come on, there was no orientation,” Clark said. “When (county commissioner) Dennis (Hisey) moved off, (new commissioner) Mark Waller just started attending. It’s very simple. There’s no difficult ability to catch up. You just start to engage, listen and participate.

“I’m not aware there was ever a need for orientation.”

Meanwhile, Gaebler is being challenged in the April 4 election by businesswoman Lynette Crow-Iverson, whose daughter was hired by mPACT members in October.

Two mPACT members, who asked not to be identified, questioned that hiring, saying they never saw Whitley Crow’s resume, and she has no grant-writing experience. They also balked at the use of taxpayer dollars on a job that wasn’t advertised, a requirement for government positions.

In addition to the city and Utilities, mPACT also receives $10,000 a year each in public dollars from the county and PPACG. It gets the same sum from its other members, too.

Emails obtained by The Gazette show that many if not all of the 13 mPACT member organizations agreed to pay another $12,500 a year each to cover Crow’s salary.

They are: Utilities, Colorado Springs, the Regional Building Department, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, Pikes Peak United Way, Ent Credit Union, Bryan Construction and the then-Regional Business Alliance (since renamed the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce & EDC).

“None of us was aware of any of this,” Gaebler said. “That’s why the city wants an elected representative at these meetings.”