In the decades I’ve been a journalist, a lot of decades, one thing above all underscores how critical, and effective, our work is: transparency.
Nothing I’ve seen in my career, or my lifetime, keeps people, businesses and governments acting on their best behavior as does being watched and scrutinized.
And nothing provides the powerful scrutiny that news media can.
This week, the Society of Professional Journalists honored the Sentinel with its annual First Amendment Award for the work our team of journalists, attorneys and activists have done to help empower all Colorado news media to keep on fighting the good fight.
The story that started all of this four years ago was actually pretty simple. The Sentinel’s demand that the Aurora City Council at the time adhere to Colorado’s open meeting laws has, however, become a complicated and arduous trail that hasn’t ended yet.
The original case stems from when then-Councilmember Juan Marcano initiated censure proceedings against former Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky in early 2022. The controversy came after Jurinsky told a regional talk radio show host how she had encouraged then-police chief Vanessa Wilson to replace Deputy Chief Darin Parker. Jurinsky also criticized Wilson’s leadership of the Aurora Police Department, referring to the chief as “trash.”
Marcano accused Jurinsky of violating a section of the City Charter that prohibits council members from meddling in the appointment of employees who fall under the authority of the city manager.
A supermajority vote of the council to censure Jurinsky would have been required before Jurinsky could be punished for her statements. However — during a closed-door meeting on March 14, 2022 — a majority of the council voted to halt the censure process and pay more than $16,000 in fees for an attorney hired by Jurinsky.
Council rules stipulated at the time that, while an executive session could be called to receive legal advice regarding the process of disciplining an elected official, “no action or decision may occur in the executive session.”
Colorado’s Open Meetings Law also limits what city councils are allowed to do outside of the public eye and generally prohibits groups from adopting “any proposed policy, position, resolution, rule, regulation or formal action” in secret.
If a court finds that a group took such action anyway, recordings of that meeting must be made available for public inspection.
Because the council’s actions appeared to violate the state Open Meetings Law, the Sentinel requested the electronic recording of this private meeting from the city.
The city refused, saying that the recording was “privileged attorney-client communication and is exempt from disclosure.”
Arapahoe County District Court Judge Elizabeth Beebe Volz ruled in 2023 that the city did not have to release the recording.
Volz acknowledged that there was a “roll call” taken during the closed-door meeting to decide how to proceed, but she said this did not constitute “formal action” in the context of the Open Meetings Law.
A trio of Colorado appellate judges overturned Volz’s ruling, saying among other things that the district court made a “clear error” when it found that the council’s secret vote did not violate state law.
The court demanded the city release the tapes.
The city appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which did not make clear the issue of releasing the tapes. But the high court did make clear that a complaint by the city, insisting that the Sentinel did not have standing in the case as a “person,” was wrong. The effect of that ruling is that the Sentinel is able to collect attorney fees when it prevails.
The high court ruling in the Sentinel’s favor empowers all Colorado media to win back lawyer fees when they prevail against governments trying to evade state open meeting laws.
“This is an important win for the public’s right to know,” Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Council, said in December when the decision was handed down. Guaranteeing that news entities have standing in the law ensures journalists, backed by their newsrooms, can pursue issues regarding government transparency and accountability.
This important victory for journalism was the result of dogged determination by Sentinel reporters and editors, including Max Levy, Kara Mason, Carina Julig and Philip Poston. The impressive open-records and court victories are the result of skilled persistence by Colorado media attorney Steve Zansberg, Rachael Johnson, from the Reporters’ Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and open-records and meetings activist Jeff Roberts. They deserve the credit for allowing us to keep pressing for the secret meeting tapes and an opportunity to tell the public what happened on March 14, 2022.
We’re not done yet. We’re still waiting on state courts to decide if and when we can let the public hear and understand what the city council did, and whether it violated the letter or spirit of state laws regulating government.
Either way, honors like this one from SPJ and the very cases themselves serve the public good by keeping all governments on notice that the public is always watching through the eyes of the media.
Few things are as effective at holding the government accountable, and the need for this work never ends.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com