Recording seems to show petition-gatherer was paid to leave state

In the latest bizarre twist over petitions for Initiative 97, those pushing the initiative say oil and gas industry supporters paid one of their signature-gatherers to leave the state.

Their evidence: an audio recording they say is of the gatherer, Dan Fessler of Petition Connection, who abruptly quit after working for Colorado Rising for less than a week in July.

In the recording, a male who identifies himself as “Dan” says he’s leaving Colorado because he was paid to: “They’re going around buying people.”

Asked how much he was paid, he replied: “It was enough.”

On the recording, he refused to say who paid him.

Fessler, who is based in Washington state, did not return texts and emails seeking comment.

Colorado Rising volunteers’ story of how they got the audio recording is almost as crazy as the recording itself: Lauren Petrie, a board member with the group pushing the ballot measure, said she saw Fessler walking outside their downtown Denver office on Tuesday. She and fellow volunteer Russell Mendell, armed with an audio recorder, went out to talk to him.

In the recording, they ask if it was Protect Colorado that paid him to leave, but the voice identified as Dan refuses to say who did it. He does say those who paid him also asked him to turn over the petitions he gathered, but he refused. Instead, he gave them to the company for whom he was subcontracting.

Toward the end of the 18-minute recording, he says he doesn’t want a “legal hassle” about the petition effort. He says he hopes the conversation wasn’t recorded, and when he learns it was he says it was done without his permission.

Colorado Rising released the recording to media Wednesday.

Protect Colorado, the industrybacked group that’s fighting the initiative, responded via a statement from spokeswoman Karen Crummy: “There have been so many allegations and misrepresentations by Colorado Rising it’s difficult to take them seriously. They are trying to distract the public from the real issue, which is their ballot measure would cost tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.”

Asked if Protect Colorado had any involvement with Fessler’s buyout, Crummy said: “We have no idea what they are talking about.”

Less than a week earlier, Colorado Rising had problems with another company it hired: Oregon-based Direct Action Partners took about 15,000 signatures with them when they left Colorado. The signatures were returned after lawyers got involved, but the incident has Colorado Rising on the lookout for efforts to thwart their work, Petrie said.

Initiative 97 would force oil and gas wells to operate farther from homes and schools. It would increase setbacks to 2,500 feet, up from 500 feet for homes and 1,000 feet for schools. Supporters say it’s needed to protect neighborhoods and water supplies. The oil and gas industry is strongly opposed, saying it will lead to job losses and thwart drilling in Colorado. To qualify, the measure needs to submit 98,492 valid signatures from voters to the Secretary of State’s Office by Aug. 6.