Colorado voters will no longer have the chance to restore some transparency rules on state lawmakers鈥攁t least not this year.
Libertarian activist Jon Caldara has withdrawn a ballot initiative to repeal Senate Bill 157, which the legislature passed in March to exempt themselves from parts of the Open Meetings Law. The measure allows lawmakers to have more conversations in private.
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Caldara and opponents of the legislature's decision to relax the transparency rules at the Capitol would have had to collect more than 124,000 signatures from voters by Aug. 5 to secure a spot on the November ballot. Caldara cited the high cost of obtaining those signatures as the reason for abandoning the initiative.
鈥淚鈥檝e decided not to spend limited resources on it this year just to reverse one bad law,鈥� 鈥淚nstead, we鈥檒l be spearheading a better initiative to greatly expand transparency and open meetings next year.鈥�
Democrats who control the legislature passed the open meetings exemptions despite strong opposition from government transparency groups who warned it would encourage lawmakers to craft policy in secret.
The measure lets lawmakers meet one-on-one with fewer restrictions and allows them to discuss bills and other public business electronically without such communications constituting a public meeting.
It also narrowed the definition of public business at the statehouse.
鈥淚t is absolutely reprehensible that our elected officials vote to immune themselves from simple transparency,鈥� Caldara told KUNC 暗黑爆料 when he filed the ballot initiative in April. 鈥淐olorado has open meetings laws and sunshine laws so that we can see what they are doing. And for them to excuse themselves is just an abuse of power.鈥�
Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 157 months after they were hit with two separate lawsuits alleging they had broken the open meetings law.
Lawmakers lost one lawsuit for using secret ballots in recent years to help decide the fate of bills competing for state funding. They a separate suit alleging they also held secret meetings to talk about bills.
The Capitol's Democratic leaders said the lawsuits created 鈥渦ncertainty鈥� at the Capitol and that they needed to 鈥渃larify鈥� the open meetings law for the legislature.
