Ouray County Plaindealer: Even in a pandemic, we deserve to have public business discussed in public, and we deserve to know what’s going on around here.

But that’s getting harder and harder to do as this situation drags on.

For example, last Thursday we listened in on a meeting where restaurant owners invited a county commissioner to participate in discussions about how and when to reopen for in-person dining service. Commissioner John Peters participated in the meeting initially, and then later on, Commissioner Ben Tisdel joined in the meeting, too.

That’s when a red flag went up — two commissioners constitutes a quorum, and they were discussing public business, the business of reopening restaurants, a topic the county had on its agenda the following week to request a variance from the state. This wasn’t a chance occasion where two commissioners just ran into each other at the post office and discussed the weather.

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