When the Fort Collins City Council went into an executive session Oct. 20, the announced purpose was to discuss “broadband issues,” a topic not expressly authorized in the Colorado Open Meetings Law for closed-door deliberations.
Is it legal for a Colorado school board to select finalists for a superintendent’s job while meeting behind closed doors?
How detailed must minutes be? The open meetings law, aka the Sunshine Law, says little about that — only that minutes should reflect the topic of any closed-door executive sessions and the outcome of any secret-ballot votes to choose the leadership of a public body.
A Colorado Springs school board improperly denied a parent’s Colorado Open Records Act request for the names and application materials of all finalists considered for the superintendent’s job, a judge ruled this week in a case similar to the Boulder Daily Camera’s successful lawsuit against the University of Colorado regents.
In a precedent-setting ruling, the Colorado Court of Appeals determined that Basalt town councilors violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law by convening four executive sessions to discuss legal and personnel matters without telling the public specifically what they would be talking about.
The Colorado Court of Appeals heard arguments via web conference in a case that focuses on what city councils and other government boards must tell the public prior to convening a closed-door meeting.
In a case similar to the Boulder Daily Camera’s lawsuit against the University of Colorado regents, an El Paso County District Court judge will soon decide whether Colorado’s open government laws require a school board to name more than one finalist when choosing a new superintendent.
The Denver-based nonprofit that provides video access to the Colorado General Assembly is offering its virtual-meeting software package to local governments for free during the coronavirus pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic forces everybody to consider limiting their exposure to other people, local elected officials are starting to think about how they can do the public’s business virtually without violating the Colorado Open Meetings Law.
A split screen might be the best way to think about government transparency in Colorado in 2019. On one side is the ground-breaking new state law that opens records on completed police internal affairs investigations. On the other is the trend among law enforcement agencies in our state to encrypt 100 percent of their scanner transmissions.
