The Elbert County commissioners should be held personally liable for unlawfully approving new contracts for the county administrator and county attorney outside of public view and ordered to reimburse Elbert’s treasury for those expenditures, a lawsuit filed Thursday by five residents says.

The residents accuse Commissioners Chris Richardson, Dallas Schroeder and Grant Thayer of violating the Colorado Open Meetings Law and another state statute that forbids county commissions from making contracts “unless an appropriation shall have been previously made concerning such expense.”

Under that statute, county commissioners “who undertake to create any liability against the county, except such as they are by statute required to do, shall be personally liable and, together with the sureties upon their official bonds, shall be held for such indebtedness.”