The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission has reached a settlement agreement with two national hunting advocacy groups in a lawsuit claiming that two commissioners violated Colorado’s open meeting laws by writing an op-ed during the November election. 

The lawsuit was over an opinion article that ran in The Durango Herald during the fight over a measure that sought to ban the hunting of mountain lions, lynx and bobcats in Colorado. Current Parks and Wildlife Commissioners Jessica Beaulieu and Jack Murphy were listed as authors on the article, alongside James Pribyl, a former chair of the commission, expressing their support for the measure. 

In the complaint filed on Nov. 21 in the Denver County District Court, Safari Club International, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and Brett Axton, president of the Colorado chapter of the Safari Club, claimed that to draft the op-ed, Beaulieu and Murphy “must have met to discuss their position on the hunting of mountain and bobcats.” 

They argued that this violates Colorado’s Open Meetings Law because “the hunting of lions and bobcats is ‘public business,'” and any meeting of two or more members of the commission is required to be open to the public under the law. 

The lawsuit also alleged that the op-ed spread errors about the state hunting regulations. 

At a November commissioner meeting, both Murphy and Beaulieu addressed the op-ed, claiming that they did not meet or discuss the article. They said that the opinion article was written by a private party, and they separately signed off on it. The defendant’s response to the complaint — filed in the district court on Feb. 14 — argued that because the commissioners never met to discuss public business, they never violated the law. 

The lawsuit was dismissed by the district court on March 27 after the parties reached a settlement agreement on March 20. 

In a statement from Travis Duncan, the public information supervisor for Parks and Wildlife, the agency reiterated that the commissioners never met in private to develop the op-ed and thus never violated the law. 

“Once the state proved in the lawsuit that the commissioners never communicated, plaintiffs decided to settle for a modest amount,” Duncan said. 

According to Duncan, the agency settled the lawsuit for $2,332 “to avoid the expense of litigation.”

“We filed this suit to hold the commissioners accountable for violating the open-meeting law and making blatantly false statements about state hunting regulations in a failed attempt to persuade voters,” said Michael Jean, litigation counsel for Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, in an emailed statement. “This settlement does that. And the commissioners will have no excuses for future violations.”

According to a release from the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation and Safari Club International, the settlement requires the commission to receive training on the Colorado Open Meetings Law — specifically the portion relating to “daisy chains” or serial meetings — as well as training on current law governing the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx. Serial meetings are instances when two members of a local public body meet via email, text, phone or otherwise to discuss public business.