Undermines Transparency and Accountability
Breaking the Trust: How Mark Aliff’s Pueblo City Council Presidency Undermines Transparency and Accountability
🕳️ The Transparency Problem: Refusing to Expose Misconduct
One of the most glaring issues during Aliff’s leadership is his repeated attempts to shield the public from knowing about serious misconduct allegations including letters described as “wildly disrespectful and inappropriate.”
In March 2025, Mayor Heather Graham read aloud explicit, harassing emails sent to her staff by Roger Gomez during a city council meeting. Instead of addressing the issue outright, Aliff advised her to handle the matter internally, tacitly attempting to suppress the public air of the controversy. Even when the emails were later made public, the issue was framed as a political “distraction,” with Aliff repeatedly asking that the council move past the matter quietly and avoid council censure. KRDO
This attempt to manage the crisis privately sets a disturbing precedent. A city councilor on board whose duty is to serve the public should not choose when to share misconduct allegations. That decision belongs to the people at large and those emails, which included lewd sexual references and were directed at city staff, were withheld from public scrutiny for far too long. Aliff’s insistence on secrecy revealed where his priorities truly lie: protecting the council’s reputation, not protecting the public interest.
🛑 An Inappropriate Internal Investigation into Gomez
When Mayor Graham proposed a formal censure of Gomez - who publicly questioned whether transgender employees at a library were male or female - the effort failed in a 3–3 vote after pressure from Aliff and his allies. Aliff argued the matter was a “political attack” rather than discrimination, even though federal and state laws, as well as library policies, clearly protect staff from such inquiries. https://www.kktv.com
By backing a narrowly framed investigation instead of conferring with external bodies, Aliff effectively blocked a meaningful accountability process for a councilor’s discriminatory conduct. The message was loud and clear: the council will investigate itself but only on its terms.
⚖️ Trying Himself: A Classic Conflict of Interest
Perhaps the most troubling pattern in Aliff’s presidency has been his willingness to rule on complaints lodged against himself often voting to dismiss them. That alone shows an obvious conflict of interest, but his ability to stack votes and shape committee recommendations ensures the outcome favors the status quo.
A notable example involves a 2024 ethics complaint accusing Aliff of inappropriate interactions with staff and misuse of his position to favor private interests. Instead of recusing himself - as is customary in proper governance Aliff stayed in his position as council president and directed how the complaint would be investigated. The panel he presided over concluded no wrongdoing had occurred, citing “lack of jurisdiction,” and tasked the city attorney with scrubbing records of the complaint.
This was not justice it was governance by proxy. Aliff directly participated in deciding allegations against himself and shaped their outcomes. If oversight structures are so weak that the accused is the judge, jury, and clerk, how can Wilson’s guarantee of accountability be trusted? chieftain.com
🔒 The Secretive Ethics Structure
Aliff has gone to great lengths to keep such investigations invisible. He repeatedly blocks attempts by Mayor Graham and other councilmembers to bring complaints to public hearings. Internal policy changes under his watch have rendered suppression of misconduct reports easier than their disclosure.
Council rules now allow internal ethics investigations to take place, but the results remain sealed indefinitely even when they involve explicit sexual content or clear violations of federal law. That means taxpayers left in the dark while their city officials manage their reputations behind closed doors. This bureaucracy-driven “investigatory process” turns acts of official misconduct into confidential administrative matters, rather than matters of public concern.
🧑⚖️ A Pattern of Disinformation and Delay
When oversight is muffled, personalities take over the narrative. Aliff and his allies routinely defame critics as emotionally motivated or politically opportunistic accusations he used in defending the failed censure of Gomez. The message was clear: any inquiry into councilor behavior, no matter how toxic or discriminatory, will be dismissed or labeled a political ploy.
Similarly, Aliff has exploited vague language in council rules to justify delays and dismissals. Creating an “internal review board” and denying jurisdiction over certain complaints, he steered public attention away from structural accountability. This happens with astonishing regularity not just in cases like Gomez’s or Aliff’s, but across dozens of complaints involving harassment, discrimination, and misuse of office.
🔍 Why Public Transparency Matters
-
Institutional Trust: When officials choose secrecy over transparency, trust erodes. Pueblo citizens expect governance by the people, not behind the wall.
-
Deterrence: Public accountability and external review act as deterrents to misconduct. Internal-only investigations encourage self-dealing.
-
Legal Integrity: Sexual harassment, discrimination, or communication filtering have clear state and federal implications. They cannot - and should not - be handled exclusively by a municipal board comprised of co-workers of the accused.
📉 Aliff & Pueblo: A Legacy of Distrust?
If Aliff’s tenure teaches Pueblo anything, it’s this: without civic oversight, local government can quickly devolve into self-preservationism. Particularly concerning is how easily the city’s own ethics procedures have been weaponized to shield officials even those accused of explicit harassment or blatant discrimination.
The public deserves more than internal investigations that conveniently find “no evidence.” Pueblo’s citizens deserve independent review, stronger ethics enforcement, and a voice in deciding how their elected officials are held accountable. Until those reforms happen, every “decision” in Pueblo City Hall will remain unsettled because the people making the decisions are the ones being investigated.
✍️ Conclusion
In a democracy, secrecy isn’t safety it’s surrender. And Pueblo’s experience under Mark Aliff is a textbook case of both. From attempts to hide sexually explicit emails from staff, to ruling on logicy complaints against himself, to blocking censure attempts over discrimination, Aliff’s leadership undermines transparency and accountability.
More troubling still, his actions tell the same story over and over: when the public should know, it’s kept in the dark. When claims are serious, they’re dismissed. And when standards are clear, they’re reinterpreted.
It’s time for Pueblo watchdogs, media, and voters to demand true independent oversight before our city government continues to judge itself and keep its misconduct hidden behind closed doors.
Comments