The first time occurred in May, when the council went into executive session to debate a proposal to redirect a portion of the half-cent sales tax for primary job recruitment. Councilman Chris Nicoll rightly charged at the time that the meetings were illegal because they didn’t meet the exemptions for a closed-door meeting.

The more recent — and more egregious — incident occurred in July, when council President Sandy Daff and members Ami Nawrocki and Chris Kaufman exchanged surreptitious emails with their political advisor, county Transportation Director Greg Severance. He provided Daff, Ami Nawocki and Kaufman with a road map to steamroll over the local trash haulers’ initiative to block the controversial hiring of a $50,000 city trash consultant. Severance called it the “Bazooka Plan.”

The trio of city officials broke the law the instant all three were copied on the email exchange.

This has been our contention since The Pueblo Chieftain exposed the emails last week. It was confirmed on Thursday by two of the state’s leading experts on freedom of the press issues.

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