Polis blames ranchers for the high cost of wolf reintroduction. An interesting juxtaposition of two Colorado rulings. Happy tone-deaf "Howlidays" from the crew over at Nexton9News.

Polis blames ranchers for the high cost of wolf reintroduction.

If only the ranchers in this state would have knuckled under and quietly acquiesced to the will of animal rights activists and those along the Front Range, we could have had our wolves on the cheap.

That is, at least, what our governor seems to think.

At a recent meeting of Colorado Counties Inc., Polis had this to say (quoting the Fence Post article below):

“'This could have cost a lot less if ranchers wouldn’t have said, "oh, don’t get them from Wyoming, don’t get them from Idaho," we probably could have done it for a quarter of the cost there and there’s still time,' Polis said. 'Ranchers, I mean, if their organizations — Middle Park and those guys — say to Wyoming ‘give Colorado wolves’ they probably would. The only reason they’re not is they hear from ranchers that they shouldn’t so that drives up the cost.'”

That's right. If only ranchers had quietly accepted this. Had they only cooperated more with something forced upon them, something likely to cost them money, we could have had our wolves at a quarter of the price. That clearly is the greatest good in this situation.

It is the right of Americans to speak, to criticize their government, to try and persuade with their words, to vote with their feet, to vote with their wallets. I'm sorry if such things upset our governor, or stymie his plans.

You know, cooperation, listening to others, and getting their buy-in are also ways to reduce friction and price there Gov Polis. That might have also helped.

But anyone in Ag who has paid any attention to what Polis has done for that industry since his election knows that's not how he operates. He ignores. He turns a blind eye and a deaf ear. At best.

And yet somehow still complains when he reaps what he has sown.

Want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth? I reached out to Colorado Counties Inc. and got an audio recording of the meeting from them. It's linked second below.

You can hear the entirety of what our governor had to say on a variety of issues (there are his remarks and then, unusual for him, a Q & A session).

**The caption from the source of the photo above: "[Surprising no one but perhaps those who've never thought it through] Women also lived and worked on cattle ranches. Most were either the wives or were ranch owners themselves. Other women worked as hired housekeepers or cooks."

https://www.thefencepost.com/news/polis-blames-ranchers-for-high-cost-of-wolf-restoration-at-cci-meeting/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14PLS59dcoem_5rIQj-5bgcldGiHPTnqv/view?usp=sharing

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An interesting juxtaposition of two Colorado rulings

I wanted to give you an interesting comparison among a couple of Colorado court rulings, one from a CO appellate court, the other from the CO Supreme Court.

Linked first below is an article from the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. A Denver Gazette reporter is trying to get ahold of some disciplinary records for a school administrator and the school district is fighting them.

Normally, discipline records are public. Some parts of government employee records are not public records (e.g. an employee's home address), but it's long been precedent in Colorado that discipline and other performance evaluations are legal fodder for CORA requests.

This applied (with some exceptions) to all government employees until passage of a 2024 bill (linked second below), a gimme from Colorado Democrats to their friends in public schools. This bill exempted more evaluation records from CORA requests. See screenshot 1 attached from the bill's fiscal note.

Note that the discipline reports are still fair game as public records, but not the things that went into their preparation. And that is what the case (with subsequent ruling) hinges on.

The appellate court with a broad stroke exempted a whole series of documents from public view, following what it claimed was the intent and letter of the law. This, despite what the sponsor of the bill said at the bill's committee hearing (see screenshot 2 from the CFOIC article).

The second ruling, linked third below, is an interesting contrast to the first. The Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled on a case that's been working its way through the courts for a while now.

The original case dates all the way back to the halcyon days of 2020 when a man in Archuleta County sued the county commissioners and, wanting more evidence for his case, also sent in a records request to the county asking for a recording of the commissioners' meeting that related to the lawsuit.

The county said that they wouldn't help him and any evidence he wanted should be sought through the usual process of discover in any trial.

The trial worked its way all the way up to the state supreme court where the justices (in a split decision) ruled that there is nothing in CORA that prevents parties to a lawsuit using open records requests to get evidence or other material to help in their trial.

Screenshot 3 attached gives a look at the perspective of the justices who ruled in the majority (from the Colorado Politics article).

I found this to be an interesting pairing. In it you see one of the ways our judicial system works. In one case you have a court exempting a bunch of records while another one "unexempts" other records from the same open records law in our state.

In reading the articles, you also see similar reasoning for the rulings: that the courts are loathe to go beyond what the law itself says (while, arguably, doing that very thing).

This points me to a couple of lessons.

1. A lot of the "mechanics" of law is decided not by elected officials, but by courts in their role as creating the precedents and holdings that make up common law. E.g. our legislature might write that this or that thing needs to be subject to "reasonable" conditions in their law, but it is our courts that flesh out just what reasonable means.

2. The kinds of definitions from #1 above, the kinds of laws we have, are so very dependent on the philosophies of the judges who are appointed. This despite the rhetoric of them "following the law" (and, yes, this applies also to the judges I agree with--the fact that I like their choice doesn't negate the fact that they're ultimately making a choice not following some objective standard).


https://coloradofoic.org/court-of-appeals-disciplinary-records-of-colorado-school-administrators-are-off-limits-to-the-public/


https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-132

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/courts/colorado-justices-rule-plaintiffs-can-use-open-records-law-for-evidence/article_4485b150-b673-11ef-a7d9-ffa043981dcc.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

Related:

Speaking of government officials getting disciplined, the article below by Migoya (who has done marvelous work at breaking and sharing judicial misconduct for the Gazette/Colorado Politics papers) details how state judges who get disciplined/resign to escape discipline end up working as judges at the municipal level.

This quote gives a sense of what's going on:

"Additionally, state judges who are forced to resign typically sign consent orders with the judicial discipline commission that say they are barred from returning to the bench. But that only applies to state courts, not the municipal ones."


Along with the equally frustrating:


"And disgraced judges' law licenses are rarely affected by any discipline, so they’re not barred from further taking on judicial-type jobs, such as an arbitrator or a mediator."

More in the link below.

https://denvergazette.com/colorado-watch/judges-disciplined-hired-municipal-courts-colorado/article_05854aca-b361-11ef-800d-fb0695349e72.html

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Kyle Clark and Nexton9News display the exact kind of obliviousness by those along the Front Range that got wolf reintroduction passed.

In what maybe seemed like a rollicking good joke to the folks in the newsroom, perhaps a dig at Polis, perhaps a bid for publicity for being edgy, Kyle Clark and Nexton9News recently (see the link below) decided to make a holiday ornament with photoshopped pictures of wolves being released (with one side having a gleeful Jared Polis pulling the door open).

Whatever the criteria used for the decision, this looks to me like another example of just how tone deaf the Front Range can be about Ag in this state. It looks exactly like the kind of obliviousness that let a majority of those along the I-25 corridor vote to encumber those on the other side of the state with worry and financial burden.

The fact that 9News and Clark have both covered wolves from multiple perspectives since the vote to reintroduce them makes their choice all the more baffling. A quick Google search reveals multiple stories by the outlet detailing the harm that wolves have done and the divisiveness surrounding it.

And yet a lighthearted ornament labeled "Happy Howlidays" celebrated by Clark on Twitter.

Could we expect future ornaments which show a downhearted coal miner emerging from his last day at the mines in NW Colorado with an ornament celebrating the Democrats' closure of entire swaths of the economy?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for digs at the leadership in this state. They deserve every scrap of mockery and bad publicity they get.

What I don't support is efforts that do so by bringing others in as collateral damage. This tone-deaf ornament does exactly that: it makes a mockery of the issue (not just our governor), it makes the wolves seem cartoonish, and it shows how little people of Clark's ilk understand about the parts of this state outside Capitol Hill in Denver.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/next-2024-ornament-happy-howlidays/73-f4b2fdee-7cf6-4afb-b34a-a02e8a785483