From: The Denver Post
GRAND JUNCTION — A closed-door meeting in Utah in March prompted a lawsuit this week against the Garfield County Commissioners by a citizens’ group that alleges the county broke the law and ignored public input on oil shale development.
“They gave lobbyists special treatment and shut out the public,” said Leslie Robinson, president of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance.
The lawsuit, filed this week in Garfield County Court by the Alliance , alleges the commissioners violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law by meeting in an executive session March 27 in Vernal, Utah.
There was no public notice prior to the meeting attended by all three Garfield County Commissioners.The Open Meetings law requires public notice anytime a quorum of commissioners meets to discuss public business.
Garfield County was the only county named in the lawsuit because it was the only Colorado county in attendance with a quorum.
The meeting was hosted by the Uintah County, Utah, commissioners with planning help from Garfield County, and included representatives from eight counties in the oil shale-underpinned area of the Green River formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — one of the richest shale formations in the country.
The meeting also included oil shale lobbyists and attorneys, the director of the National Oil Shale Association and a representative from Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s office.
The meeting came to light after a reporter for the Vernal Express was asked to leave and after Colorado Common Cause uncovered details about the meetingthrough a Colorado Open Records request.
More than 450 pages of documents released as a result of that request shows that the meeting was planned in advance to agree on a resolution that would ask the Bureau of Land Management to release more land for oil shale exploration and research.
The resolution criticized the BLM for cutting back on the amount of land available for oil shale leasing to about 462,000 acrews from about 2 million acres. The BLM has been taking comments on that plan and is set to release a decision in December.
Two weeks after the Vernal meeting, the Garfield County Commissioners passed the resolution that the lawsuit alleges was crafted and agreed on in the closed session in Vernal.
Prior to passing the resolution, Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky emailed a copy of the “confidential draft” to a representative of Shell, one of the companies involved in shale research. The email stated the resolution would become a public document during the upcoming public meeting.
At that meeting, there were nearly two hours of public comment, most of it opposing the resolution and supporting the cutback in the amount of federal lands available for oil shale leases.
The commissioners toned down some of the language in the resolution and passed it in spite of the opposition.
A Vernal woman had earlier filed a lawsuit against Uintah County, and officials there admitted the joint March meeting did not fit with Utah open meetings laws because of a “technicality” and rescinded the oil shale resolution addressed during the meeting. The Uintah commissioners later readopted the resolution.
The technicality the commissioners referred to was the fact that a notice of the meeting was not posted at least 24 hours in advance as required. The meeting posting was four minutes late. Uintah County officials said the meeting was closed because the issues discussed could be the subject of imminent litigation — one of six reasons the Open Meetings Act allows for closing a meeting to the public.
Garfield County is making no comments at this time on the Colorado lawsuit.
“We don’t comment on pending litigation,” Garfield County Manager Andrew Gorgey said.
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