“Leadership means you communicate. It means you believe in transparency and the rule of law.” – Nancy Mace
On May 6 we will have local elections for three special district boards in Meeker: the hospital, the recreation district, and the fire district. There are multiple candidates running for a handful of seats on each board, which is a wonderful indicator of community involvement and engagement. Hopefully voters will come out for these “minor” local elections with the same fervor demonstrated in our state and national elections.
In the weeks prior to the special district elections, we plan to publish Q&A interviews with all of the candidates. Now, I know some things (more than I care to know, in some cases), and I hear some things (and even believe some of them), and I’m annoyed with some things (those pesky Sunshine Law violations, for one), but I’m just one person. To have a robust Q&A that addresses the concerns of the community, I need input from the real stakeholders: the people who pay for these districts with their property taxes.
If you have questions you believe should be addressed by the candidates running for board seats in any or all of these three special districts, please give me a call (970-878-4017) or send me an email ([email protected]) no later than Monday, March 24. I hope to compile questions and have them out to candidates by the end of next week.
With that said, this week is Sunshine Week, an “annual celebration of open government and transparency measures, a free press, access to public information, and the collective work to hold our government accountable to the people.”
It’s not just a journalism thing. Sunshine Laws are in place to protect the general public. Government — even small special districts — doing things in secret, making decisions in the dark, and conducting business behind closed doors, is how we end up with the incessant claims of “waste, fraud and corruption,” elected officials lining their own pockets or enriching their private businesses by failing to disclose conflicts of interest, and decisions made that leave everyone shaking their heads asking, “how did we get here?” We get here when the people who are managing the money and making the decisions do so without the supervision and oversight of the people who elected them.
I have faith that the hospital board/administration will make the necessary corrections to the way they’ve been conducting their meetings, and that the Tuesday, March 25 meeting will be held in full compliance with Colorado’s Open Meetings Laws.
This is not about the hospital’s quality of care, it’s not about the doctors and nurses, and it’s not about the employees — those things all speak for themselves. This is about the board and administration choosing to abide by the law. If anyone has questions about what the law states concerning open meetings and open records, you can find that information here: https://coloradofoic.org/open-government-guide/
