From The Pueblo Chieftain: A TRIO of Pueblo City Council members once again find themselves on the wrong side of the Colorado Open Meetings Law this time while acting under the manipulations of an apparently ambitious county official.
An exhaustive Chieftain review of more than 1,000 pages of emails between Council President Sandy Daff, Councilman Chris Kaufman, Councilwoman Ami Nawrocki and Pueblo County Transportation Director Greg Severance found the three city officials blatantly violated the state’s sunshine law in July. The emails show an extensive, two-day conversation in which Daff, Kaufman and Nawrocki were directed — although they claim to have been advised rather than told — on what stance to take on one of the city’s most controversial issues.
The documentation was obtained via a formal request through the Colorado Open Records Act and show Severance gave pointed instructions to the council members on how to handle issues including the future of the half-cent sales tax for job creation, the expansion of the Pueblo Convention Center and the push for mandatory trash collection. It came to a head July 4 and 5, when Severance lured the trio into an extensive electronic debate about how to steamroll the local trash haulers’ response to the city’s controversial trash consultant.
He called it the “Bazooka Plan.”
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