By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
I wrote about Polis advisor Nicole Rosmarino being the sole finalist for the directorship of the State Land Board recently. That newsletter is linked first below if you want or need context.
On the heels of that newsletter, I got a message from a reader alerting me to the other two appointments that Governor Polis made to the State Land Board–this is the same board mind you that makes decisions on grazing leases, mineral-extraction (oil/gas) leases, and provides revenue to schools–Mark Harvey from Pitkin County and James Pribyl from Louisville. Harvey was appointed to fill the agriculture seat on the board and Pribyl the citizen-at-large seat.
If the name Pribyl sounds familiar, you’re not alone. He was a former member of the CPW Commissioners (see the picture heading this post whose text was taken from Pribyl’s Linked In account), a wolf reintroduction advocate, and one of the three co-authors of the op ed in support of Prop 127, the big cat hunting ban.**
You can get a sense of Mr. Pribyl’s orientation to wildlife and Ag by the following gem quoted from a December 2024 op ed he penned about wolf reintroduction (see the second link below):
“It’s time for truth-telling about Colorado’s first-state-in-the-nation, publicly mandated wolf restoration program. Stockgrowers, following the playbook they established during federal wolf restoration 35 years ago in the northern Rockies, are promoting the false narrative our wolf recovery is a ‘catastrophe.’ That fiction, promoted by the anti-wolf coalition of big game outfitters, hunting advocates and some politicians, ignores well-proven facts: Wolves are the least threat to Colorado’s livestock industry. Consider two facts: Colorado has been home to about 2.6 million cattle and sheep for decades. Exactly 25 head of livestock have been lost to wolves since last winter’s introduction, mostly in a limited area, attracted, in part, by a carcass pit, and a few ranchers reluctant to employ conflict minimization tools offered by CPW. Though any loss is regrettable, two dozen animals out of 2.6 million is hardly a ‘catastrophe’. Moreover, last week, nearly 200 head of cattle were reported “rustled,” that is stolen, near Meeker. That’s 10 times the loss to wolves.”
Now that’s what I call sympathy! I wonder if Mr. Pribyl ever took the time to fly down from 35000 feet to actually talk to a single rancher suffering depredation. Had he done so, I wonder if he still would have held that it wasn’t a “catastrophe” to them.
And this doesn’t bode well for his role at the State Land Board where he’ll be dealing with small outfits and ranchers who would like to lease state lands to run their herds (while putting money into state schools).
I have looked into the process to offer comment at the June 11/12 meeting of the State Land Board, and I will post on that later (along with what I intend to send in and then say when I attend the meeting virtually).
If you share my concerns, be watching for that and please consider sending in your own comment or attending and speaking up. The State Land Board members are not responsible for who sits on the board but this is a great chance to get your thoughts on record and not have them ignored if you bothered to send them to Polis.
One last detail. State law — CRS 24-6-402(3,5) — requires public notice of the finalist(s) for certain state jobs. The reader that alerted me to the two appointees mentioned above, also hinted that the governor is doing the bare minimum at giving this public notice; saying, to put a fine point on it, that the “notice” consisted of two typewritten sheets on a couple of bulletin boards, one of which is behind a locked door in the State Land Board Office in Denver.
I would not put this past Governor Polis, but I did reach out to his press person as well as the press person for the Colorado State Land Board for a statement. As of this writing, I have heard back from the DNR (where the Land Board is housed) spokesperson.
That response is quoted below with the links left intact:
“The hiring process for the Director of the Colorado State Land Board kicked off with a nationwide competitive job announcement that was open from February 5, 2025 to March 24, 2025. The State Board of Land Commissioners conducted its search in a collaborative process with the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Governor’s Office. Per the 14-day statutory requirement, the State Land Board and DNR have made public Nicole Rosmarino is the sole finalist for the Director of the State Land Board. A written announcement is posted on the front doors of the State Land Board Building at 1127 Sherman St. and DNR building at 1313 Sherman St. and inside both offices. The announcement is also posted on the State Land Board’s website on the “Public notices’ page: https://slb.colorado.gov/public and the DNR website on its “Notices” page: https://dnr.colorado.gov/about-us/notices. The State Land Board will consider the appointment of the next Director at its next regular monthly Board meeting on June 12, at 1127 Sherman St. The State Land Board will post the agenda one week prior to its meeting on its website: https://slb.colorado.gov/public-meetings.”
I had run a site search on the Governor’s press release website (linked third below) and the State Land Board site (linked fourth) for the name Rosmarino. Neither returned a single result. With this new information, I ran a site search on the SLB’s public notices page and got no result. This seems to indicate a problem with Google site search, because the link is there on the public notice page when I looked this morning.
I have written in the past about Governor Polis quietly surrounding himself and filling government advisor and board positions with animal rights and environmentalists, national searches and collaborations notwithstanding.
Rosmarino’s getting the nod, is part and parcel of that. It’s also more. It reflects Polis’ his none-too-quiet indifference to (disdain for?) Ag and those that do this vital work in Colorado.
If you are growing tired of it, I urge you to join me in speaking up about it. More to come.
**The other two authors being sitting CPW commissioners and whose names being on that op ed resulted in settlement over open meetings law violations by the two board members.
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/another-governor-polis-extreme-appointee?utm_source=publication-search
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/time-for-truth-telling-about-colorados-collaborative-wolf-reintroduction-podium/article_7d395a38-c22b-11ef-80cc-1b05a12acad3.html
https://www.colorado.gov/governor/news
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT SUBSTACK
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