Colorado Politics: Let’s do some high and low history. First, the high history. England’s King George III didn’t like the complaining he heard from the American colonies, so he went to war to shut the people up. President Donald Trump doesn’t like to hear from the U.S. Congress when he can have his own way without their input or any other elected officials’ official input. So we’re in another Middle East War.

Now to the low history: Douglas County Commissioners Abe Laydon, George Teal, and Kevin Van Winkle don’t like to hear from Dougco’s residents. A couple of years ago Teal and Laydon pushed public comment to the end of the county’s business agenda and often, conveniently, ran out of time, leaving testifiers in the lurch. Now these two commissioners plus their newish chum Van Winkle have completely eliminated public comment on non-agenda topics.

According to former legislator and current commissioner Van Winkle, the public gets plenty of opportunity to comment on items up for a vote. In his recent newsletter he avers that “everyone who wishes to be heard has the opportunity to do so “relative to the business at hand.” He adds, “What has changed is we have moved the prior ‘open topic’ segment at the end of our business meetings to the more appropriate setting of town hall meetings. That’s it. We focus on business during business meetings and facilitate open comment during meetings where official business does not and cannot occur.” In this way, the public’s comments are never “official” or on the record.

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