public policy

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, COSTILLA COUNTY, Colorado,
Petitioner, v. COSTILLA COUNTY CONSERVANCY DISTRICT and Michael McGowan, Respondents.
No. 02SC743.
April 19, 2004

To resolve this dispute, we now turn to the language of the [Open Meetings Law] OML and our case law construing it.

D. The OML Applies to Meetings that are Part of the Policy-Making Process

Based on our reading of the statute as a whole and our case law construing it, we hold that a meeting must be part of the policy-making process to be subject to the requirements of the OML. A meeting is part of the policy-making process if it concerns a matter related to the policy-making function of the local public body holding or attending the meeting. If, as a threshold matter, a meeting is part of the policy-making process, then the requirements of the OML must be met. If not, nothing in the OML prevents some or all members of a local governing body from attending a meeting, even if public notice has not been given.

public policy:

Black’s Law Dictionary, 7th Ed.

1. Broadly, principles and standards regarded by the legislature or by the courts as being of fundamental concern to the state and the whole of society.  2. More narrowly, the principle that a person should not be allowed to do anything that would tend to injure the public at large.

Notwithstanding the heroic image promulgated by the band of New-Plains brothers and sisters currently harassing the Board of County Commissioners, this tribe in no way represents the interests of the whole of society or of the public at large in Elbert County.  They claim to, but they’ve never been elected, never achieved a plurality of votes in Elbert County.  Most of them don’t have the substance to admit their true political philosophy by presenting themselves to the public at large in a political party that accords their agenda.  These self-anointed inquisitors occupy their meeting seats at the BOCC with intent to find any grounds whatsoever — factual, legal, interpretive, procedural — to excuse speaking their truth to power to bring down the ruling conservative candidates.

Theirs is a non-stop political campaign that shoehorns reality by any means possible into their ongoing narrative.