I signed up to testify at the Jan. 10 meeting of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) commissioners because I felt strongly CPW mishandled the release of wolves into Grand County. I wasn’t there to argue against releasing wolves. I was there to call out what I saw as basic unfairness by CPW: they turned a simple legal requirement into a press event for the governor and his husband, giving both ringside seats, while not bothering to tell local elected officials a word about it.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say I tried to testify, because when I got to the part of my testimony where I mentioned ringside seats, Mr. Dallas May got agitated. After a little back and forth, after my repeatedly asking what rule I’d broken, Mr. May cut my mic and silenced me. When I tried to electronically “raise my hand,” someone kicked me out of the meeting.

I was as close as one could be to hopping mad without actually hopping; I had trouble simply standing still. There are no two sides here. Go and listen to the recorded meeting. I was critical, but I was civil. I did not raise my voice. I was not profane. This was a flagrant and obvious violation of both the First Amendment and Colorado Open Meetings Law. This was the government silencing someone who was critical of their actions.

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And it was not something I intended to take quietly.

Over the next several weeks, I tried every avenue I could think of to get someone at the state to either tell me what rule I’d broken or to acknowledge and then fix this mistake. To my surprise, getting someone to listen, let alone act, proved difficult. Repeated emails to CPW and the Department of Natural Resources went unreturned. My state senator, Byron Pelton, connected me to DNR’s legislative liaison, who answered my questions by, it seems, copying and pasting from CPW’s website. Repeated calls to the attorney general’s office resulted (after weeks of waiting and phone tag), in an underling sending me a couple of internet links and wishing me well.

The media, our supposed watchdogs, were not much better. Outside of an op-ed by my friend Rachel Gabel and a glancing mention by CBS’s Shaun Boyd on a Sunday morning politics show, no one there seemed all that interested.

Now, the media is the media. Their lack of response here was disappointing. It doesn’t at all match their rhetoric, but as private companies, they can do as they see fit. Our government’s another matter. I found their lack of action to be utterly and completely unacceptable.

From elected, to appointed, to employed — what job do any of them have that takes precedence to securing our fundamental liberties? Maybe the admin over at CPW doesn’t know how to fix the problem, but perhaps this person could have followed up and directed me to someone. Maybe First Amendment and open-meetings law violations don’t melt AG Phil Weiser’s butter quite like an abortion denied would, but surely someone over there could see this for what it was.

Action only came with a lawsuit prepared by the Public Trust Institute. That, and seemingly that alone, got the government’s attention. So quick was the response, in fact, that the suit never needed to be filed. A copy sent to the AG’s office brought a quick settlement offer.

I took that offer. Neither court nor settlement would have brought money, I wasn’t seeking any: this isn’t the worst insult I’ve ever had in my life, and I never wanted money. I wanted someone to acknowledge my rights were violated, the law was broken and that I wanted to prevent this from happening to other Coloradans. Whether we agree or disagree on any particular issue, it is your right to speak up to your government. The state needs to have much more care with these rights than it displayed in my case.

Six months on, I testified at the June 13 CPW meeting after the public announcement of their new policy on public comment — one of the conditions of my settlement. Among other things, I pointed out rhetoric about threats to democracy seem common today, but that we should remember sometimes such threats aren’t just about national politics.

Sometimes those threats happen closer to home, and I hope the next time something like this happens, it doesn’t take the threat of a lawsuit to get one of our government employees or public servants to act.

Cory Gaines is a physics instructor at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling. He runs the Colorado Accountability Project on Facebook and lives for what Richard P. Feynman called “the pleasure of finding things out.”