Last week, a district court judge in Denver ruled Colorado’s General Assembly violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by engaging in a series of meetings through an intermediary – a private company that manages what’s called “quadratic voting” – and thereby engaged in an unlawful gathering of two or more of its members to discuss public business. This process of sequential meetings by less than a quorum of a public body has been referred to as “serial meetings,” a form of artifice or chicanery employed deliberately to evade the open meetings law.

Last week’s ruling was the second by a trial court judge in this state finding such shenanigans violated our state’s Open Meetings Law. Last June, a judge in Douglas County ruled the board of education broke the law when four of its members deliberately convened a series of one-on-one phone conversations in which they discussed terminating the superintendent’s contract (and which they also decided to do outside of public view). That court wrote “circumventing the statute by a series of private one-on-one meetings at which public business is discussed and/or decisions reached is a violation of the purpose of the statute, not just its spirit.”

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

In both of these cases, the public bodies argued because no Colorado appellate court has yet addressed this particular issue, the judges should adhere to the strict letter of the law which they argued requires a simultaneous gathering of the minimum number of members to trigger the statute’s requirements of notice, public attendance and minutes being kept of such discussions. Both of the judges correctly rejected that argument.

To condone such blatant efforts to evade the law would render the statute meaningless. The Open Meetings Law declares, unequivocally, that “it is the public policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret.” Though not in the context of serial meetings, our state’s Supreme Court has previously declared “the [Colorado Open Meetings Law] prohibits bad-faith circumvention of its requirements.” And, numerous judges and attorneys general in other states have concluded less-than-quorum serial meetings, referred to as “walking” or “constructive” quorums, unquestionably violate those states’ open meetings laws.

The Open Meetings Law has been on the books for five decades now and it has served the citizens of this state well. As our appellate courts have recognized the “underlying intent” of the Open Meetings Law is to ensure the public is not “deprived of the discussions, the motivations, the policy arguments and other considerations which led to the discretion exercised by [a public body].”  The law is meant to provide “the public access to a broad range of meetings at which public business is considered; to give citizens an expanded opportunity to become fully informed on issues of public importance, and to allow citizens to participate in the legislative decision-making process that affects their personal interests.”

Members of all state and local public bodies – from the General Assembly to county commissioners, city councils and school boards – should heed these judicial rulings and fastidiously abide by the clear dictates of the Open Meetings Law. Conducting serial meetings is but one of several crafty means of attempting to circumvent the law’s requirements. Not only are important public policy decisions better made through exposing discussions to the disinfecting power of sunshine, but the public will have much greater respect for, and willingness to comply with, policies that emerge from an open process. Furthermore, the public will have much greater faith in those institutions that comply with the law rather than scheme to get around it. Given the present state of public opinion regarding government, our public institutions can surely use a boost in that department.

Steve Zansberg is a First Amendment attorney in Denver and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.