The Boulder County commissioners’ Sept. 10 rebuttal to our Aug. 27 editorial, “A rigged county bid process,” was long on issues not argued in the editorial and short on responses to the issues it did raise. Much of the rebuttal was spent recounting how widely the county circulated two requests for proposals to conduct an agricultural study on county-owned land. No one contested the circulation of the RFPs.

What we contested were the ethics of a process in which county commissioners explicitly recruited a bidder — the Rodale Institute of Kutztown, Pa. — with a well-known political agenda in an attempt to preordain the outcome of the study. Disingenuously, the commissioners argued that Rodale is a “well-known research organization” without ever acknowledging it is also a well-known advocate of organic farming. We have nothing against organic farming, but we believe if you want to conduct an unbiased study of sustainable agriculture in Boulder County’s semi-arid climate, you do not predetermine the outcome by recruiting an organization with a political agenda.

As we have pointed out before, organic farming in Boulder County is hard, which is why Jason Condon, one of the county’s more successful organic farmers, opposed the commissioners’ decision to ban genetically-engineered crops before figuring out what would replace them. The Camera reported more than a year ago that an earlier program to encourage and support organic farming in the county encountered an 80 percent failure rate. A nonprofit with experience in the very different climate and growing conditions of the eastern U.S. may or may not be of any help in addressing the issues faced by farmers here.

We also contested the county’s decision to allow representatives of Colorado State University to help draft the RFP and then bid on it as Rodale’s partner. The commissioners responded that CSU’s Boulder County extension agent, Adrian Card, recused himself “once CSU indicated it would submit an application.” Unfortunately for the county, Card’s “recusal” is meaningless if it came after he helped draft the RFP that CSU bid on. The commissioners rely on the technicality that they issued a second RFP after Card’s recusal, but the Camera’s analysis showed it was nearly identical to the one Card participated in drafting.

“That’s definitely an issue,” Louis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, told the Camera. “The situation is hard to salvage at this point. The best course would be to vacate the deadline (and) start from scratch.”

The commissioners also offered no insight into the sudden disappearance of Rodale’s name from CSU’s bid on the second RFP after the two bid jointly on the first. In the absence of an explanation, we see at least two possibilities. One is that Rodale actually dropped out, perhaps because of the study’s meager funding, perhaps because Rodale was disappointed that county staff reported its initial bid “morphed county goals to fit Rodale’s organizational mission,” which was our concern about recruiting an advocacy organization in the first place.

But if Rodale is actually out and CSU is compromised, then the county’s proposed study to help farmers transition from genetically-engineered corn and sugar beets is back to square one seven months after the first RFP was issued. That would mean the commissioners are on track to put corn and sugar-beet farmers out of business with no idea what will replace them.

The second possibility is that the revised CSU bid intentionally hides Rodale’s involvement because of the allegations of bias that followed Rodale’s recruitment. The bid allows CSU to “tap into existing and future networks” of various nonprofit agencies, which could provide cover for a continuing partnership with Rodale.

This lack of transparency around Rodale’s participation in the latest bid was reinforced by the refusal of both CSU and Rodale to comment on the matter aside from CSU’s bland acknowledgment that “Rodale could be among” the partners it takes on. County Commissioner Elise Jones has been talking up a partnership with Rodale since her re-election campaign last fall and now, all of a sudden, its involvement is a state secret?

The commissioners would seem to have two choices. They can continue to defend the current process, as they did in their rebuttal, and award a contract to CSU, almost certainly triggering a legal challenge from area farmers and further delaying the study that is supposed to help corn and sugar-beet farmers transition from their current GE crops. Or they can take Toro’s advice and start over with a third RFP, which will also further delay the study.

Either way, the process to date has validated criticism from area farmers that the commissioners put the cart before the horse by approving a ban on GE crops first and then pursuing a study to determine what comes next.

Commissioners Jones and Deb Gardner, who made the ban part of their political campaigns, are term-limited and will be out of office in three years, just about the time farmers are dealing with the effects of their ban. As matters stand, the commissioners have so botched the study that they seem likely to walk away with a GMO ban on their political resumes while area farmers are left to pick up the pieces without any of the advertised transition help.

We call on the commissioners to appraise honestly the current stalled state of their study and revisit the timetable of their GMO ban. They should consider carefully the ethics of putting their political ideology before the livelihoods of any number of area family farmers.

—Dave Krieger, for the editorial board. Email: kriegerd@dailycamera.com. Twitter: @DaveKrieger