A free self-governing people needs full information concerning the activities of its government not only to shape its views of policy and to vote intelligently in elections, but also to compel the state, the agent of the people, to act responsibly and account for its actions.
— Colorado Supreme Court
Yesterday, July 31, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners held a work session at 11am to discuss some problems with their ‘new jail’ tax increase proposal. The Tuesday work session was something of a surprise to me, because it had not appeared on the BOCC’s website calendar on Monday.
But problems do crop up… sometimes suddenly… and need to be addressed.
One of the problems concerns the BOCC’s relationship with a special task force they created a couple of months ago — the ‘Archuleta County Facilities Review and Advocacy Committee’ — a committee that has now renamed itself ‘Citizens for a New Jail.’
According to what I heard from a couple of the committee members, the task force spent several meetings in heated discussions about the best size, design, and price for a new Archuleta County Detention Center… and when they were unable to agree on the best solution, they decided to recommend the same size, design, and price that was rejected at the polls last November.
Once they had failed to come up with a better jail design and price than we had last year, they moved into the second phase of their appointed task: to serve as the campaign committee, to sell the voters on the same rejected plan and the sales tax increase that would fund it.
Except it’s not exactly the same plan. The proposed facility — a 54-bed jail and greatly expanded Sheriff’s Office — is now estimated to be slightly more expensive than it was last year. The new price estimate was generated rather simply — according to County Administrator Bentley Henderson at yesterday’s meeting — by adding ten percent to last year’s estimate. So then, about $19.7 million, compared to the $17.9 million estimated last year.
But the BOCC might not want an ‘official County committee’ running a political campaign on behalf of the County government, funded out of taxpayer revenues, because such an arrangement would eventually run afoul of Colorado’s Fair Campaign Finance laws.
It also appears that the ‘Citizens for a New Jail’ may have been violating the Colorado Open Meetings Law.
Administrator Bentley Henderson, at yesterday’s work session:
“As we start moving through the process of supporting the campaign for the [new Sheriff’s facilities] and taking the steps necessary to ensure that it’s successful, obviously we’ve come up against a couple of little roadblocks.
“The first one is the Open Records and [Open Meetings] stuff. I don’t know, necessarily, what the resolution to that is. One of the challenges, with these guys’ group, is that they might meet on a Tuesday, for example, and work through a bunch of topics and then realize they need to meet again on Wednesday, to keep moving forward and to be successful at what they’re doing.
“And we’re staring to bump up against noticing requirements, and things of that nature.”
Noticing requirements for official government committees are rather simple. You must post a printed or written notice of your meeting place, time and date, on the officially-designated government bulletin board, at least 24 hours in advance of any meeting. It would appear that the ‘Citizens for a New Jail’ may have failed to take those simple steps, in some instances… and that’s a cause for concern to the BOCC.
County Commissioner Steve Wadley:
“One thing we might think about is, you know, switching the jail committee — from a committee that was appointed by the offices of the County, to a more independent group.”
In other words, a group funded by County tax dollars… that isn’t expected to hold open meetings?
Administrator Henderson noted that, when this committee was first constituted, its initial task was to present recommendations about facilities. That job is now completed, Mr. Henderson reminded us. But the committee’s second task was always going to be, to run a political campaign. So maybe the committee should be disbanded? And reconstitute itself as an independent campaign committee?
County Attorney Todd Starr:
“There’s another good reason to disband them like that, that occurs to me as I was listening to Steve. As we move forward — September, October, November — we’re anticipating that the members of this committee will be vocal proponents of any ballot issue that comes forward.
“If they are, in fact, cloaked as a ‘County committee’ then it’s going to be harder to walk the line of the Fair Campaign Finances Act. If we are able to say, ‘Yes, they’ve done their job for the County, and we appreciate that,’ and then they move forward in a campaign mode — on their own, without any control by the County on how that campaign is prosecuted — then I think there’s a nice, clean line of demarcation.”
‘Citizens for a New Jail’ chair Richard Vihel wasn’t completely convinced.
“We talked this over at our meeting yesterday, and it seems that… it appears that it’s an attempt to circumvent the Open Meetings Law. The Open Meetings Law is a big nuisance for our committee… But we don’t want even the appearance that we’re trying to do something that’s improper.”
Commissioner Steve Wadley:
“Well, you guys could be disbanded and then act on your own, and you can still post notices of your meetings. However you want to do it.”
Mr. Vihel:
“The thing that I’m worried about is that, if we’re spending County money, and the County says, ‘You’re not part of the County government; you’ve been disbanded; you’re not a County function,’ then it seems like the County is giving away money, to non-County functions.
“Those are the issues that we discussed. We understand that the Board of County Commissioners will do what the Board of County Commissioners will do. But we’ve talked about it, and that was our conclusion.”
Administrator Henderson assured the BOCC that the ‘Citizens for a New Jail’ is not spending County money, directly. The checks to cover the committee’s expenditures are being approved by Mr. Henderson.
Commissioner Wadley then assured the audience that the BOCC is not making any of the decisions about campaign operations. They are merely authorizing Administrator Henderson to pay for the campaign, as he sees fit.
By the end of this particular discussion, I was left with the impression that ‘Citizens for a New Jail’ will continue to function as an official County committee — receiving County funding and honoring the Open Meetings Law — until the BOCC officially approves the ballot language in early September, at which point the task force will be disbanded and a new, independent campaign committee will be formed.
Which brought us, according to Mr. Henderson, to another issue:
The existing, abandoned Archuleta County Detention Center, and the reasons why it can never again be allowed to function as our County jail…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.