DENVER – Bob Gardner, former state representative and a state Senate candidate, is tied to a $9,700 unpaid fine for a campaign finance violation. But the penalty isn’t his to pay.

Gardner, a Colorado Springs attorney, said the Alliance for a Safe and Independent Woodmen Hills was his client. Attorneys don’t pay the fees courts assess their clients, he said.

The issue came back up when Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt, R-Colorado Springs, noted the penalty hadn’t been paid. Klingenschmitt is also running for Senate District 12.

“I’m not liable for any fine,” Gardner said. “Anyone who says otherwise and knows better is simply lying, and I would suggest to you that many people who have made that statement know better.”

But the matter is pending before the courts.

Matt Arnold, director of Campaign Integrity Watchdog, has filed a complaint in the 4th Judicial District to compel someone to pay the $9,700 fine.

“Bob Gardner and Sarah Jack are the two people who formed this organization,” said Arnold, whose company works on campaign issues and does consulting work for candidates. “His involvement goes far beyond him just being the hiring lawyer. He was intimately involved in their activities and giving them advice to break the law.”

The Secretary of State’s Office said it doesn’t have any recourse against unpaid fines other than sending them to collections. In this case, there’s no one to collect against.

The issue stems from a 2014 election for the Woodmen Hills Metropolitan District in Peyton.

Arnold, among others, filed and won a complaint that a nonprofit “social welfare” group had expressly advocated against a candidate during that election without registering as a Colorado political committee. In Colorado, political committees must register and regularly disclose donors and expenditures.

The nonprofit was established by political consultant Sarah Jack and sent mailers leading up to the special district election attacking candidate Ron Pace. But it wasn’t the negative mailers that got the nonprofit in trouble.

Judge Robert Spencer decided that the Facebook page set up by Alliance crossed the line of express advocacy and that more than $200 – the Colorado threshold for registering a political committee – had been spent to set up the page.

“The evidence is convincing that Alliance received contributions of $18,000 that were primarily intended and used to fund Alliance’s effort to defeat Mr. Pace’s election,” Spencer wrote.

The judge ordered Alliance to pay a $9,700 fine in August 2014.

It remains unpaid.

Gardner is listed as the “registered agent” for the Alliance, but a registered agent of a political organization is merely the person put forward as a contact and often is paid solely to provide an address, name and phone number to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Jack said the Alliance no longer exists.

“I am not the Alliance,” she said. “The alliance was formed. I was hired as a political consultant … I don’t own it. I worked for some very wealthy people. I was a hired gun and it’s not my fine.”

Jack said this is about more than campaign finance violations and has become a personal attack against her and Gardner.

“We felt at the time that we were totally within the law,” she said.

The issue won’t go away anytime soon, though.

The committee can’t be closed because there’s an outstanding fine, but no one seems to be personally liable for paying the fine.

“The Alliance is a nonprofit corporation and it doesn’t have any further assets, and so the penalty was assessed but there’s no money to pay that penalty with,” Gardner said. “That money is not the personal liability of anyone, and it’s certainly not their attorney’s liability.”

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Contact Megan Schrader: 286-0644

Twitter @CapitolSchrader