Fake Hearings? Boulder City Council Records Suggest Another ‘Public-Private Partnership’ with Activists

UPDATE: Exemplar Documents Loaded

UPDATE: Documents loaded (some Word docs follow separately, with interesting Properties)

GAO has documented the seemingly inarguable outsourcing of congressional oversight to donors, and their unelected donees, that reared its head in Washington, DC during the (mercifully concluding) 117th Congress.

Recently, GAO reviewed public records obtained by Energy Policy Advocates which suggest this is becoming a real thing outside the beltway, too. Consider the Boulder (CO) City Council, again in the context of climate and again specifically to try and give a boost to climate litigation (curious: is this widespread or just a climate industry thing?).

 

 

 

 

There is lots more in the somewhat buggy document (which we are attempting to shrink and post in full), affirming what transpired and further illuminating this practice.

The first thing that leaps out, after the obvious deployment of government by and for activists, is the reappearance of players from the ‘climate’ tort bar’s recruitment of Florida municipalities.

Because, well, of course.

 

GAO is continuing to wrestle with the document’s idiosyncrasies. We will return with items offering particular insights about how this governmental body came to be used this way, as we encounter them.

UPDATE:

GAO has loaded some select documents showing how these uses of government come about, as it deals with the original’s issues.

UPDATE: The totality of the PDF’d emails are here. Additional Word docs attached to those emails are here — some of them, like this, and this, have properties further showing the role of outside activists in producing nominally official output; xlsx docs attached to the emails are here, here and here.

 

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