Open government is an idea that is as old as democracy. In ancient Greece, for example, public officials were required to provide citizens with an account of their annual work. That ideal found new life during the Enlightenment when a similar notion began to spread throughout Europe.
Here in the United States, of course, our Constitution includes an explicit commitment to the freedom of the press. The Framers knew that democratic government could never succeed without a robust commitment to independent monitoring of its work.
In the years following World War II, Americans grew increasingly concerned about a lack of transparency in our government institutions. This concern drove enactment of the federal Freedom of Information Act in 1966.
And it was during the tumult of the same decade in which FOIA became law that Colorado became a leader among states in open government policies.
In 1969, the Centennial State enacted the Colorado Open Records Act. Three years later, the state was the first in the nation to pass a Sunshine Law, which required all meetings of two or more members of any state public body where any public business is discussed or at which any formal action is taken must be open to the public.
The law applies to state and local public bodies and political subdivisions, such as special taxing districts, and includes boards, committees, commissions, authorities, or other advisory, policy-making, or rule-making bodies.
The law was a citizen’s sponsored initiative, and it passed 491,073 votes in favor to 325,819 against. A resounding majority of 60% charted a path that was to give every resident of this state the right to know what those who work for them in state government are doing.
The law also included two other important parts. First, it required elected state officials and judges to file financial disclosures with the attorney general’s office, and second, it required lobbyists to register with the secretary of state’s office and file detailed financial disclosure forms that are “open and readily accessible for public inspection” for five years.
Other states followed suit. By 1976, all 50 states had enacted sunshine laws, signaling a change in how the public’s business was conducted.
Last year, Colorado saw more than 12,000 CORA requests to the governor, treasurer, attorney general, secretary of state, legislature, other publicly funded agencies, county clerks, city offices, and school districts.
The Estes Valley Voice’s recent CORA request to the Estes Valley Fire Protection District, which sought the recording of a closed-door executive session in which a hiring decision occurred, was one of those. A Larimer County judge ruled that the information had to be made public.
Since Estes Park Health announced in October that its CEO had signed a letter of intent to enter into negotiations with UCHealth for some type of merger or acquisition, the Estes Valley Voice has pursued that document because the public has a right to know about the terms of the planned UCHealth affiliation. EPH is a taxpayer-funded hospital supported by a mill levy paid by those who live within the boundaries of the Park Hospital District.
The Estes Valley Voice has asked for that letter of intent on three occasions. Thirty community members signed the most recent CORA request for it.
Two years ago, voters of the Park Hospital District gave that organization’s governing board permission to pursue some type of affiliation in an effort to save Estes Park’s hospital, which was, and still is, facing serious financial problems. Departments and services were being closed. Reports of serious staff morale problems were concerning.
While an affiliation, merger, or acquisition may be the only way to preserve adequate health care access in Estes Park, the community did not tell the Park Hospital District governing board to keep the community in the dark during the process. But that is what has happened.
Monthly meetings of the Park Hospital District Board of Directors have become performative. Department reports are given, and the board chair gives speeches, but board members sit silently on the dais and do not enter into discussions or deliberations with one another over the issues.
The only votes taken are to approve the agenda, approve the minutes from the previous board meeting, and adjourn the meeting.
Between these performative meetings, that board of directors has met more than 200 times behind closed doors in private executive sessions.
You read that correctly: more than 200 times!
The state’s open meeting laws prohibit decisions from being made in executive session. In October, the EPH board chair informed the community that the hospital’s chief executive officer had signed the letter of intent without a governing board decision or directive.
It is inconceivable that a CEO would sign such a document in any corporation without first receiving explicit direction from that corporation’s board of directors.
After the CEO signed the letter of intent, and after the Estes Valley Voice submitted a CORA request for the minutes or recording of the executive session where the decision was made to have the CEO sign the letter of intent – because the board did not take this action in a public board meeting – the board took a vote to “ratify” the action of the CEO, but denied the publication’s request.
The board also informed the community that the residents of the hospital district would never see the letter of intent. Instead, the board circulated a written “summary” that highlighted provisions in the letter.
The Estes Valley Voice sued this past week – ironically during national Sunshine Week – to ask the Larimer County District Court to order release of the letter of intent to the public.
It is unacceptable for the Park Hospital Board of Directors to treat its constituents with such disrespect as to block the people who have bought and paid for this hospital for over the past five decades from knowing what has been agreed to on their behalf.
The people deserve better.
And, it is beyond the pale that the Park Hospital District board has stopped holding its board meetings in person.
The board has retreated to conducting its meetings virtually through a cumbersome platform that requires interested public members to register with the hospital and provide their name and contact information to the hospital to watch the meeting live or review a recording of it.
Not only does it smack of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where “Big Brother is watching you,” but community members have complained that the hospital’s audio-video technology for virtual meetings makes it difficult to see who is talking and to clearly hear what is being said.
In terms of transparency and accountability, this is unacceptable.
We do not claim that the decisions made by the Park Hospital District Board of Directors pad pockets. We certainly have no evidence that such corruption has occurred. We also believe the people who ran for and were elected to sit on the boards likely mean well and take due account of the public interest.
But decisions made behind closed doors don’t have to be about money. They can be about favoritism, influence, and problems swept under carpets that the public has a right to know about. And that, like more overt forms of dishonesty in public service, is an example of poor governance.
Estes Park deserves better.
The community will elect two new directors to sit on the Park Hospital District board in the next few weeks. Five candidates are standing for election. The Estes Valley Voice has learned that, if the agreement with UCHealth proceeds, the hospital board will effectively be denied its role in setting policy at the hospital and that all such policy decisions will be transferred to a new board of individuals appointed by the Park Hospital Board of Directors and the governing board of UCHealth.
The Park Hospital Board of Directors apparently will be responsible only for setting the mill levy that property owners must pay.
Who on the current hospital board has been promised a seat on the new policy decision board? Is that information specified in the letter of intent?
Does the letter of intent provide golden parachutes for current hospital leadership?
What would the community say if they were privy to the details of the letter of intent? Would they approve of the details? Would they balk?
Between its 200-plus secret executive session meetings and moving all board meetings to an online format, the hospital board has figured out how to sidestep public scrutiny and accountability.
This is wrong.
Hopefully, the court will provide the community with the transparency and accountability the members of the Park Hospital Board of Directors have denied to the voters.
And all of us in this community, who deserve quality healthcare and an accountable public hospital district, can again look with appreciation to the long history of efforts to make democratic government accountable to those it serves.