Former Colorado real estate regulator Erin Toll gets $55,000 payment in resignation settlement

Ex-real estate regulator gets $55,000 settlement

DENVER — Colorado’s former top real estate regulator is getting about $55,000 from the state under a resignation settlement.

Erin Toll resigned last week after a three-month suspension that followed a clash with a state lawmaker. The state released a copy of the settlement agreement this week in response to a request from The Associated Press.

According to the document, Toll will be paid $55,053.93, including $7,158.93 for time off she had accrued. The remainder is being paid in exchange for Toll dropping a lawsuit against her former boss and personnel board complaints over the way her suspension was handled. Of that, $37,895 is coming from the budget of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, where she worked, and $10,000 is being taken from a risk management fund.

Toll agreed to give up her right to file lawsuits on various other grounds.

Both sides also agreed not to disparage each other. The wording of a joint press release announcing the resignation was also part of the deal. In it, Toll’s former boss, DORA chief Barbara Kelley, praised Toll for being a passionate consumer advocate.

Toll was suspended in March after she sparred with state Sen. Ted Harvey, a mortgage broker, over a bill that would give a board, not her, the power to oversee mortgage brokers.

Toll then said Harvey and his employer, American Home Funding, were under investigation to determine if they misled consumers with advertising flyers that look like official tax documents.

However, records show that an investigation wasn’t launched until the next day. The department has repeatedly said Harvey himself wasn’t the target of the probe.

Toll sued Kelley last month, claiming she violated her rights by leaking word of her suspension and ordering her not to talk.

Toll has said she plans to work as a real estate broker.