Vote YES on 2D

Boulder Progressives supports a YES vote on 2D. In fact, we feel so strongly about the importance of this issue that we've made an extra voter guide page just for 2D.

Executive Sessions solve an important problem. Currently, the city attorney’s office meets with city councilors two at a time in a series of time-consuming and inefficient meetings in order to communicate privileged information without violating open meeting laws. The current practice decreases transparency, harms effective council conversations, and causes unnecessary delays. Measure 2D solves all of that.

Moving to executive sessions actually gives us more checks and balances - in this format our city councilors all hear directly from one another and are clear on what their colleagues have said, heard, and asked for, and they are able to use that information moving forward to hold one another accountable. This change will eliminate the possibility of staff communicating different information to different council members, and it reduces the potential for disclosure violations amongst council members.

“Boulder is one of the only cities in Colorado that can’t meet in executive session for the limited reasons regulated by state law. Those reasons include receiving legal advice, personnel matters, and security.

Currently, the city council discusses these confidential issues by meeting in 5 separate meetings with 1-2 council members, our lawyer and other staff. Not only is this an inefficient way to discuss these topics, but council members only hear the perspective of one to zero other council members on generally important and complicated issues. This is the real drawback. In general, each council member brings unique insight and experience to the table, except in the case of important, generally confidential matters.

Allowing executive sessions doesn’t create more opportunities for ‘secret’ discussions; it simply allows for council to hear from each other rather than to develop decisions in a vacuum. Please support better decision making with a yes vote on 2D.”

— TINA MARQUIS, BOULDER CITY COUNCIL