August 08, 2017 02:37 PM UTC

Durango officials pressed Gardner and others to allocate more time for questions at skinny town hall

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Last week’s skinny town hall, with U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and other Colorado lawmakers, was originally scheduled to last 45 minutes, with about 10 minutes going to each of four lawmakers, followed by a question-and-answer period lasting maybe five minutes.

That plan was scrapped not at the request of Gardner or the other politicians, but at the insistence of the event’s moderators and local officials who were unhappy with the time allocation and decided to push for a longer question period, according to one of the moderators.

“We just committed all of them to three minutes each instead of ten, so that left more time,” La Plata County Commissioner, and co-moderator of the event, Brad Blake told the Colorado Times Recorder today. “We asked them, ‘Well how about if you guys just do three minutes instead of 10. We’ll hold you to that, and there will be more time.’ And that’s what happened.”

Blake said the decision to push for more time came from him, Durango Mayor Dick White, a co-moderator, and a county official.

“We talked to them and their handlers about, ‘Hey, we’d really like to get some more question-and-answer time in,'” said Blake. “People don’t want to hear a ten-minute opening from everyone. They wanted more discussion.”

As it was, the question time was limited to 30 minutes (total, for four lawmakers present) during the formal portion of the event, and Gardner and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) stayed for additional questions.

Also at the skinny town hall were U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) and Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.