Douglas County Commissioner George Teal’s luxury trip to Dubai isn’t the whole story, it’s the starting point. The fact that I can’t get a straight answer on something so specific and standard is a part of a bigger story of the commissioners’ disregard for rules and for the public it serves. It’s not abstract harm; it has a real cost. A pattern is there and in this episode, we connect the dots.

Show notes:

Contact me any time with tips or feedback. emilysuyat@gmail or on signal: emilysuyat.87 You are fully anonymous to me on signal if your screen name isn’t your real name. County employees, please know that I will protect your identity. Home rule cost $700k

Commissioner Teal’s conspiracy theory that the Chinese Communist Party took down the home rule effort. Commissioner Abe Laydon defended the statement in the commission business meeting after the home rule loss. Commissioner Kevin Van Winkle hasn’t said a word.

Colorado Open Meetings Law case: news coverage, actual opinion. Read paragraphs 37-45 of the actual opinion for details on the county attorney’s mistakes. The CO Supreme Court will almost certainly not take the case on appeal because 1) the CO Court of Appeals opinion was unpublished, which means the court thinks it has insufficient precedential value and 2) all three appeals court judges agreed (i.e. there was no split decision). The Court “typically limits its discretionary review to cases raising novel or unsettled legal questions having broad impact throughout Colorado. Three votes are required to grant a certiorari petition.”

Detention Center case: news coverage, actual opinion. Read footnotes 1 and 3, which highlight bad lawyering and would haunt me forever as an attorney.

County attorney Jeff Garcia’s salary

CORA requests per year. This is from a CORA request to the county. I’m just now noticing that they gave me incomplete info, stay tuned. Still, there’s a noticeable jump in CORA requests since home rule.

Type of law enforcement at the commissioner business meetings:

Zebulon $100 million price tag. Comments in regard to Zebulon at this meeting: 20 speakers in support and 10 speakers against. I was there and I think it’s common knowledge that Teal didn’t call everyone and skipped around the list, showing preference to certain speakers. But the sign up lists that prove this were not retained despite a regular practice of retaining them.

Read more about CO’s sunshine laws (CORA and Colorado Open Meetings Laws) here.

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