Colorado has a strong open-meetings law that gives members of the public the right to know what their elected officials are doing on their behalf. It requires that actions taken must be done under the full light of public scrutiny, which should not be an onerous standard for people who’ve sworn to uphold the public’s best interests.

The law also includes provisions for certain types of discussion to be conducted in private: discussions of legal business when the board’s attorney is present; discussions of cases involving individual employees, students or patients; contract negotiations, etc. That, too, is as it should be, especially since the actual motions still must be made and voted upon in an open session in order to be valid.

But some public bodies have viewed those provisions as loopholes and have retreated into "executive session" whenever they were uncomfortable discussing something in the presence of those members of the public who were attending an open meeting. It’s also tempting, and easy, to allow a legitimately called executive session to range beyond permissible topics.

When that happens, the proceedings can be conducted in secret without appearing in the public record. Therefore, if the open-meetings law was violated by the inappropriate use of an executive session, no proof was available unless a member of the board in question was willing to break ranks and testify against his or her peers. Understandably, that doesn’t happen often.

A bill being considered by this year’s Colorado Legislature would add some teeth to the open-meetings law, while still protecting public officials from inappropriate disclosure that would harm their ability to operate effectively. The new law would include the following provisions:

• It would more clearly define the topics that can legally be discussed in executive sessions.

• It would require that minutes be kept of the content of executive sessions.

• It would establish a method by which members of the public who believe the open-records law has been violated by an executive session can ask the district court to review the closed-session record to determine whether a violation has occurred.

The law also balances all the interests involved with provisions to award attorney fees and court costs to either party should the court action be judged to be frivolous or the withholding of the records arbitrary or capricious.

That means that members of the public could prove that open-meetings violations had taken place, and records custodians would face penalties for withholding that proof. That’s an important safeguard of the public’s right to know. At the same time, penalties could be assessed against claimants intent on harassing a public board — the main concern voiced by agencies opposing such legislation — and records would be protected from disclosure unless a judge ruled otherwise.

Effective government requires citizen participation, and that participation can only happen if citizens know what their elected officials are doing.