Last November, Denver voters rejected Ordinance 308 by a full 15%. The ordinance would have prevented the sale, distribution, display and trade of new fur products in Denver. It also included prohibitions on the manufacture of new fur products within the city, as well as the raising or slaughtering of animals for their fur.

Eight months later, the senior carnivore campaigner (now that’s a job title) for the Arizona-based, big money animal rights organization Center for Biological Diversity, herself a resident of Grand Lake, is petitioning Colorado Parks and Wildlife to amend their rules about fur to “…prohibit the commercial sale, barter, or trade of wildlife fur in Colorado.”

Fur is not my style. It never was and probably never will be. I figure Carhart is better for dealing with oil and grease than mink is. At the same time, I don’t object to someone else wearing them if they’d like (as long as the animals used for the fur were treated humanely).

Whether I like fur, or you do, or you don’t, is not the bigger point here. Put aside harvesting animals for their fur and look again at the above. A measure failed at the ballot in Colorado’s most populous city. This was a measure pursued, supported and which made the ballot due to a substantial group effort. Voters considered it, and soundly rejected it.

We now have something which would have roughly the same effect, pursued by a monied out-of-state group, put forward by an individual from that organization, and which would be decided upon by 12 individuals.

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Statewide policy put forward by one person backed by money, decided on by 12. Twelve people who I might remind you were mostly appointed by a governor who has, let’s say, a “loose” commitment to making sure the voices of all Coloradans are represented on state boards.

I wish I could say things like this were unique, but they’re not. I wrote recently about how a collection of environmental groups were pursuing a rulemaking of their own with the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (yet another appointed body) to make sure the “social cost of carbon” was included in cumulative impact analyses for oil-and-gas exploration.

I don’t want to say that fur has no effect, but it pales in comparison to this request. A change like the environmentalists want has the potential to have gigantic economic effects on every single person in this state: almost everyone uses fossil fuels, in some way, on a daily basis. And, as above, your thoughts about fossil fuels or climate change are important, but not the point here.

Is this how you envisioned your government working? Is this how policy should be made? That we have advocacy groups and/or individuals going to unelected boards to make momentous decisions for everyone else?

Our state, especially in the last four years, has made board-making into a fine art. So much of your everyday life depends on unelected, and unaccountable, government officials. True, there is always the legally-required public notice of meetings, and, more often than not, some form of opportunity for public comment, but I ask you whether or not your thoughts, your voice, rises above a peep when it comes in an online packet delivered in an email to a talking head on Zoom. This is all made worse when you note, as I have, that though you might struggle to fit this in and around your everyday life, the same professional advocacy groups asking for rulemakings have the resources to gather volunteers to ensure a striking presence in any written or spoken public comments.

Compared to calling up your state representative or senator, giving them your thoughts and having them carry that to a debate in the Capitol or committee hearing, when it’s a board, your voice is diluted to the point it has almost no meaning. Oh, and if you don’t like what the board did, sorry. You can’t vote them out or recall them.

Perhaps it’s time  we as citizens start contacting those representatives, senators, Gov. Jared Polis and the unelected boards to do what I have been doing for the last couple years or so: instead of (or in addition to) your thoughts on any particular issue, tell them that you object to policy made by those who you’ve never met, who’ve never darkened a doorway in your town, and who you didn’t get to vote for.

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.”