A district court judge made “egregious” errors last year in deciding that Colorado’s Sunshine Law did not require members of an elected town board to discuss the censure of a fellow board member in an open meeting, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition contends in a brief submitted to the Court of Appeals this week.

The Oct. 31, 2022, ruling by Rio Grande County District Court Judge Crista Newmyer-Olsen “declares that a meeting of a local public body that was duly noticed and an advance agenda published, at which they voted in public to conduct an executive session, and upon emerging therefrom promptly voted to sanction an absent member of that body — was, in fact, not a ‘public meeting’ at all,” says the friend-of-the-court brief, drafted by CFOIC president Steve Zansberg, a First Amendment and media attorney.

“The error in this ruling is so obvious, it hardly needs explanation.”

Newmyer-Olsen’s order came in a lawsuit brought against the trustees of Del Norte, a statutory town in southern Colorado, by former town board member Laura Anzalone.    

Anzalone alleged that the trustees held a “substantial” unauthorized discussion about censuring her during an Oct. 18, 2021, executive session convened to receive legal advice from their attorney. The trustees unlawfully crafted a 260-word censure resolution in the closed-door meeting and then “rubber stamped” their decision in public, she contended.