Garfield County District Court has made a decision on Anthony Hershey v. City of Glenwood Springs, the case investigating whether the city possibly violated Colorado’s open meetings law. 

After the Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 court dates, Ninth Judicial District Court Judge Elise Myer ruled that the city of Glenwood Springs had until Dec. 7 to submit the Aug. 10 executive session in-camera recording for review. 

Upon in-camera review of the executive session recording, the judge ruled on Wednesday that there was sufficient evidence to conclude the city had violated the state’s open meetings law by deciding to terminate former City Manager Beverli Marshall’s employment behind closed doors. 

---

---

“The Court ordered an in camera review of the executive session recording to determine whether City Council adopted a proposed policy, position, resolution, rule, regulation, or formal action in the executive session in contravention of the statute,” Court documents state. “After conducting the in camera review, the Court finds that City Council violated the OML.” 

Myer also ruled that, unless there is an application to redact items in the recording or a motion to appeal the decision, the recording will be released to the public on Dec. 19. 

---

---

City Council met on Thursday in a special meeting to discuss the case and vote on what action, if any, they planned to take in response to the ruling. 

After all council members were given a chance to voice their suggestions on what their next steps should be, they voted unanimously against appealing the decision.

The decision not to redact anything from the recording of their Aug. 10 executive session, including names of residents involved, passed 6-1, with Mayor Ingrid Wussow voting against it. 

“It (the recording) will stand on its own merit, quite frankly,” Councilor Mitchell Weimer said. “I don’t want any more allusions to us trying to redact things and protect ourselves.” 

The question of whether to release the recording to the public themselves or wait until the Dec. 19 date was also brought to a motion, with a unanimous vote from council to not release it themselves. 

“I don’t know that the actions that we took on that day are significant enough to cause all of this,” Councilor Erin Zalinski said. “I feel like we have created a lot of turmoil and mistrust in the job that we are here doing based on the fact that this is all under a veil right now. And I think it would make me a lot more comfortable if that could just come out to light so that the community could review what was done.” 

Attorney Richard Peterson-Cremer said during the meeting that Myer’s decision was most likely influenced by intervening case law that emerged on Dec. 7, right between the initial hearings and the ruling. He said the intervening case law “undermined precedent that … a later action in an open session that was in furtherance of any direction given in the executive session … would cure any potential open meetings law violations.” 

The precedent was overturned in Sentinel Colo. v. Rodriguez, a case cited in the judge’s order, where The Sentinel sued the city of Aurora for unlawfully convening an executive session where Council had met to vote on ending the censure process of Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, the recording of which the city had denied a public records request for. The newspaper argued the city violated both the Colorado Open Meetings Law and Colorado’s Open Records Act. 

The District Court ruled in favor of the city of Aurora. The Sentinel chose to appeal the court’s ruling and the Court of Appeals reversed the decision in favor of The Sentinel. 

Councilor Jonathan Godes referred back to the Aurora case, asking whether the fact that they were discussing “sensitive questions about legal strategy” during a public meeting was itself a product of the case’s ruling. 

“This whole transparency thing is going to hurt our community,” Godes said. “We’re going to have, potentially, a less effective council…” 

In Peterson-Cremer’s legal advice to the Council, he stated that their chances of winning an appeal had most likely gone down due to Sentinel Colo. v. Rodriguez. 

“Before the Aurora case came out, I think we would have said this is a good case to appeal,” Peterson-Cremer said. 

Ultimately, Council decided it wasn’t worth the costs to try to appeal the case. 

Additionally, City Attorney Karl Hanlon advised Council that it would be very unlikely that the judge would accept a request to redact information, as the standard for redaction is very high.  

Wussow said that their main concern over releasing the recording would be the public’s access to sensitive and personal information about Marshall, which is why they had opted for a private conversation of her employment to begin with. 

“It definitely creates such a challenge for us because I think we all walked into the executive session with a high degree of respect for Dr. Marshall,” Wussow said. “Yet here we are now, knowing the damage that we can do to her reputation with the release of this tape.” 

Wussow ended the meeting by reading aloud from a statement she wrote to the public and press. The letter in its entirety will be published and printed by the Post Independent.