Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

I’ve been thinking about that quote from C.S. Lewis a lot lately, because I’m concerned about secret activities in the city of Ouray that have deprived the public of its right to know.

As you’ll see in the paper this week, city councilors voted to approve the purchase of a property across from City Hall for its police station.

The problem isn’t with the city purchasing the property — it’s the way the council went about it, clearly making a decision behind closed doors in violation of the state’s open meetings laws.

It’s pretty simple — public business needs to be conducted in public. And they didn’t do that.

Let’s review what happened: City councilors met in an executive session on March 19 to discuss the real estate. That’s fine. They’re allowed to discuss the purchase of property behind closed doors, under state law.

But they are not allowed to make decisions in secret. The law is pretty darn clear on that point.

We’re not sure what else to call it when the city administrator signed a contract to purchase the property the same day the council held the executive session, which the councilors didn’t come out of and take any action afterward in public. Unless new City Administrator Michelle Metteer is making decisions unilaterally to spend more than $600,000 of the taxpayers’ money, the council clearly decided in that closed-door meeting to buy the property.

You might hear the excuse that city councilors had to act fast to get the property — the deal came together quickly.

We have no dispute about that. Councilors called a special meeting outside of their regular schedule to have this executive session, indicating it was a more urgent matter that couldn’t wait until their regularly scheduled meeting.

The problem stems from their illegal decision making behind closed doors. They could have used that executive session to receive information about that property, had a discussion about negotiations and then come out of that session into a public meeting to discuss the matter in public and vote on whether to make an offer on the property and sign a contract.

But no, that’s clearly not what happened.

At Monday’s council meeting, Mayor Ethan Funk announced the city had already put down earnest money on the property, before the council rubber- stamped its decision.

Why on Earth would you put down money on something you hadn’t already decided to buy?

You wouldn’t. Let’s not pretend that the unanimous vote approving the property purchase that took place on Monday night was authentic. It was just a repeat of a decision that was obviously made three weeks earlier.

The law clearly says elected officials shouldn’t be rubber-stamping decisions they already made behind closed doors. Not only is that illegal, it’s also insulting to the public, which deserves more than a fake public vote.

Public officials may be tempted to think they’re in the clear legally if there isn’t a formal yea-or-nay vote in executive session. But that’s not what state law says.

The open meetings law states, “No adoption of any proposed policy, position, resolution, rule, regulation, or formal action (except the approval of executive session minutes) shall occur at any executive session that is not open to the public.”

Even informal decision-making isn’t allowed behind closed doors, according to a 2007 Colorado Supreme Court decision.

That means if elected officials are taking straw polls or reaching consensus about a proposed policy or position, that amounts to a decision. The same goes for blinking once if you’re in favor or twice if you’re against something – it’s all shenanigans. And the law doesn’t allow it.

The public deserves transparency. This is the public’s money and constituents have a right to witness how decisions are made on how it will be spent.

Even if the city’s legal counsel isn’t going to do the right thing and advise the council how to comply with state law, each councilor has a responsibility to abide by Sunshine laws and do their job in a transparent, accountable way. They each have a responsibility to stand up and do the right thing, especially behind closed doors.

What’s really disturbing is, this comes on the heels of another transparency issue involving public records in January. Metteer and former interim administrator Joe Coleman decided to shred anonymous public comments solicited during the reception for the police chief finalists. These were public records. When we asked them why they were shredded, they said they decided to destroy them to preserve the anonymity of the commenters, who were already anonymous.

Coleman and Metteer pointed to these destroyed public records with the anonymous comments, and the feedback from interview panels when asked why they decided to reopen the search for the police chief position. But there was no way for anyone to verify the contents of these comments, because they were immediately destroyed after they read them.

Shredding government documents is never a good look.

There are ways to retain these records and redact them, if the anonymous commenters happened to put their names on the comment forms and a member of the public requested them.

In Colorado, most municipalities adopt and follow records retention policies that provide a guideline for how to handle public records and how long to keep them. A city official told us Ouray uses the records management manual from the Colorado State Archives. But the city isn’t approved to use the state archivist’s system. And the city doesn’t appear to have a formal policy or resolution of its own spelling out how long records should be retained.

Between the secret back-room real estate deals and the shredding of public documents, the beginning of Metteer’s term as city administrator doesn’t seem off to a great start as far as transparency is concerned.

We can’t do anything about the shredded documents now, but the city could do better by adopting and following a records retention policy.

There is a way to make amends for the secret decisionmaking. Councilors need to educate themselves about Sunshine laws and be willing to police themselves in executive sessions.

If the city council wants to make it right, they can release the recording of the executive session in which they clearly made the decision behind closed doors, so constituents can witness the decision making that should have been conducted in public in the first place. That’s a good start.

The public is watching. It’s time to do the right thing.

Erin McIntyre is the co-publisher of the Ouray County Plaindealer. Email her at erin@ouraynews.com.