BLACK HAWK, Colo. -- The last time a news organization questioned the way the Black Hawk officials spend money on trips and parties, the elected officials used city money to punish the newspaper, the paper's publisher said.

Four years later, questionable spending by Black Hawk officials continued despite the negative publicity. Council members still took their wives to conferences, received gift certificates worth hundreds of dollars and bought alcohol with tax money, the CALL7 Investigation found.

After the Weekly Register-Call's stories about government spending, council members found a way to stop putting legal notices and ads into the paper that criticized them. They helped set up a competing newspaper using tax money, according to the Register-Call's publisher Bill Russell.

Russell said council members threatened to close down his paper if he didn't fire the paper's editor, Debra Krause, who wrote the article detailing Black Hawk officials' use of tax money.

"If we got rid of Debbie then everything would go away," said Russell, who has owned the paper for almost 40 years. "And they wanted to fire her 'cause they wanted to get somebody, some stooge in there."

Russell refused, saying as long as the story was accurate, Krause would keep her job.

About the same time, a man named Aaron Storms said he approached the council about starting a city-run publication. City officials told him the city couldn't run its own publication and put legal notices in it, but Storms said council officials said they would consider putting legal notices in his paper, which Storms called the Gilpin County News.

Around that time, the council paid more than $12,000 in tax money to pay off the debts of a defunct newspaper.

The council then signed an agreement with Storms, giving him the rights to the newspaper that had gone out of business to help him get the 12 consecutive months of publication that would make the Gilpin County News eligible to take legal notices.

Storms said the agreement was unnecessary for him to accept the notices, but he still signed the agreement.

The city also paid for Gilpin County News subscriptions for at least one year for Black Hawk employees , to be delivered at their homes, and paid the paper more than $23,000 for ads and legal notices in 2005 through 2007, records show.

The council members refused to discuss their current expenses with Call7 Investigator John Ferrugia or discuss whether it was appropriate to use tax money to help set up a newspaper.

One council member threatened Ferrugia who was asking questions on public property.

"Chief, do you want to get this man out of my face before I punch him?" Alderman Paul Bennett asked.

"And I can take you down too," Bennett told a 7NEWS photojournalist.

Storms, in an e-mail exchange, said the Weekly Register-Call publication has been contacting law enforcement about allegations of improprieties by the city council. Storms called the conduct of officials from the Weekly Register-Call a "reign of intimidation and terror."

City officials "had no desire to help support that (Russell's) paper and when another viable local media vehicle was available, they made the switch as soon as legally possible to do so," Storms said.

"We are a small, positive-minded community newspaper reporting on local news without the resources or inclination to investigate our neighbors unless there is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed. And of course, we report on any arrests or reports sent to us by the DA’' Office concerning local elected officials, whether city or county," Storms said.

Storms added that he was not a mouthpiece for the city of Black Hawk.

Russell said an independent press is key to a free society, and he will continue to publish as long as he is alive.

"I just happen to be in a position where they can't put me out of business," said the 92-year-old man, who was a former Central City mayor. "The only time they'll run me out of business is when they poke a calla lilly in my fist and close the lid."