Remember the uproar over Proposition 104 on the 2014 statewide Colorado ballot? Neither do we. Actually, we didn’t recall the ballot issue at all until noticing a mention of it this morning in go-to education news source Chalkbeat Colorado.

Chalkbeat’s Melanie Asmar reports that Denver Public Schools – the state’s largest school district – declared an impasse this week over ongoing contract talks with the local teachers union, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. The result will be that negotiations now will continue with the assistance of a mediator.

As Asmar explains:

In the past, DPS and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have mutually agreed to mediation without one side having to call an impasse to trigger it, said DPS deputy general counsel and lead negotiator Michelle Berge.

But this year, the union refused. DCTA wanted to keep negotiations as public as possible and avoid private meetings with mediators, said DCTA deputy executive director Corey Kern.

And that’s where the unheralded Proposition 104 comes into play. Though it didn’t stir much debate in the election – passing with over 70 percent of the vote – it stood to have a far-reaching, if low-key, effect in bringing greater transparency to government.

The  measure in a nutshell required collective-bargaining talks between school districts and teachers unions to be held in public, and that includes the talks now underway between Denver’s school board and the DCTA. And even though some of those talks now will be in private because of mediation, the fact that the process up to now has been public at all is the result of the 2014 ballot issue.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Proposition 104 was authored by the Denver-based Independence Institute – a longtime proponent of education reform – in part as check on teachers unions, which Independence sees as an impediment to reform. The aim was to ensure that more problematic proposals – on pay, class time, membership requirements, etc. – once routinely pitched by union negotiators in private now would get public scrutiny.

But an interesting thing happened on the way toward more open government: At least in Denver’s case, the union turned out to like it, too. As Asmar points out:

The Denver teachers union has been taking advantage of the public sessions, inviting teachers to attend and talk to negotiators about their experiences and how various proposals would affect them.

Union leaders see the impasse as a way to silence that voice.

Now that the talks are retreating behind closed doors, it’s only for the negotiators to know what will come of it all. Yet, the process thus far has played out under a new set of rules, courtesy of Colorado voters.

How many of those voters anticipated the practical implications of their vote for this measure can’t be known. Still, it’s interesting, and for many probably gratifying, to see voters’ handiwork in action.