“When Randy Hampton moved from Hawaii last year to again work in public information for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, good friends, including within the agency, told him to be careful with the issue of wolf reintroduction, calling it “touchy.”
He was speaking on the phone following his return to Hawaii after quitting his job because CPW asked him to go back to work for a supervisor he had filed a wolf-related complaint against with the state Department of Natural Resources.
Hampton’s treatment led him to bring his situation to the attention of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
“Whatever privacy interests Mr. Romatzke has in this episode are more than outweighed by the public interest in knowing whether state agencies are being commandeered to run shadow political campaigns,” Chandra Rosenthal, Rocky Mountain PEER director, said in a news release Monday.
PEER and Hampton shared Hampton’s story first with the Denver Post, which broke it in a June 12 article that ran in The Daily Sentinel the next day. Hampton said he since has heard from and received a lot of support from retired and active CPW employees, and from wolf reintroduction advocates, while also hearing from some people critical of him.”
