State lawmakers were sued twice last year for breaking the Open Meetings Law by conducting public business in secret.
They lost one lawsuit for using secret ballots in recent years to help decide the fate of bills competing for state funding. They settled a separate suit alleging they also held secret meetings to talk about bills.
Instead of embracing calls for more transparency at the Capitol, this week the legislature passed a bill exempting themselves from the parts of the Open Meetings Law they broke.
Gov. Jared Polis quickly signed the bill Tuesday.
It will allow lawmakers to have more conversations in private.
It will do that by narrowing the definition of public business, let lawmakers discuss bills and other public business electronically without the communications constituting a public meeting, and meet one on one with fewer restrictions.
The legislature passed the bill at the start of Sunshine Week, an annual nationwide event to celebrate open government and the public’s right to know.
Lawmakers also advanced the measure despite facing strong opposition from members of the public and transparency advocates, including the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
“The people of this state would be shut out of a tremendous amount, probably the vast bulk of discussion among legislators concerning their conduct of official public business,” CFOIC President Steve Zansberg told KUNC News last week as the bill neared final passage.
Zansberg compared lawmakers exempting themselves from parts of the Open Meetings Law after breaking it to raising the speed limit on a highway because drivers are routinely speeding.
“That's the equivalent of what this bill does,” he said. “It makes legal the current practices of a public body that has for decades not complied with the Open Meetings Law,” Zansberg said.
Other transparency advocates testified the billwould encourage lawmakers to craft policy and debate bills in secret.
No member of the public testified in support of the bill.
Democratic leaders who sponsored the bill to relax transparency rules said they need more space to have conversations with each other.
They also say the Open Meetings Law was created in the 1970s, long before anyone could have predicted that text messages and emails would become key forms of communication at the statehouse.
House Speaker Julie McCluskie said last week the transparency rules have made it hard for lawmakers to talk to each other outside of public committee hearings and contributed to a “deteriorating culture” at the Capitol.
“For many years, and especially following litigation (over lawmakers allegedly violating the Open Meetings Law) this past summer, lawmakers have navigated this building and this legislative process now in uncertainty, and this uncertainty has caused members to stop talking to one another,” she said. “That is a detriment to our democratic process.”
She called the Open Meetings Law “vague, confusing, and in many instances, impossible to comply with.”
During the final debate on the bill in the House on Monday, there was a bipartisan attempt to block the effort to relax the transparency law.
“It’s disappointing we just throw up our arms and say it’s too hard to follow these (transparency rules), we won’t follow them,” Rep. Bob Marshall, D-Highlands Ranch, said.
Marshall, who sued his colleagues last year for breaking the Open Meetings Law by discussing bills at secret meetings and texting each other about votes, was one of six Democrats to buck their party and oppose the bill.
Republicans also voted against it.
“What do we have to hide,” Rep. Ty Winter, R-Trinidad, said as he tried to have the bill sent back to committee so it could be revised.
Other Republicans said it would result in less transparency at the Capitol and keep the public from observing important deliberations.
Democrats passed the bill after an hour of final debate.
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The League of Women Voters of Colorado, which opposed the bill, sent an email Monday night to its members asking them to write Gov. Polis and encourage him to veto the measure.
“Senate Bill 157 conceals too much information about public business from public view and runs the risk of only adding to the problem of disinformation,” the group wrote.
KUNC News asked last week to interview Polis about the bill, but his office said he was unavailable.
In his statement announcing he signed the bill, Polis said "I am signing this bill to provide clarity to the legislature as it seeks to resolve ambiguities around their own conduct under the Colorado Open Meetings Law."
Polis added the executive branch "should rarely intrude on the inner workings of the legislature, and the executive branch warrants the same deference from the legislature on its internal operations."
