Aspen Daily News: Transparency as practiced by those elected and appointed to represent us took a significant step forward last week.

A three-judge Colorado Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled in favor of greater transparency when doing the people’s business in secret behind closed doors. The case involved executive sessions conducted by the Basalt Town Council in 2016 that the court found to be in violation of Colorado’s Open Meetings Law.

Notwithstanding repeated claims by our elected and appointed officials that they’re making decisions on our behalf in the bright sunlight of public debate, they often revert to conducting business in closed-door executive sessions thus depriving the public of the opportunity to see where representatives stand on various issues and to weigh in at the earliest possible point before the subject matter of such sessions are brought back to the council table for a formal vote. Too often, that represents just a rubber stamp of what had been discussed and tentatively agreed upon behind closed doors.

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