Commissioner Ben Pearlman

Ben Pearlman, chair of the Board of County Commissioners, was elected to the Board in 2004 and re-elected to serve a second term in 2008.

Among his many roles and involvement with regional and statewide committees and organizations, Ben:

• Chairs the Boulder County Consortium of Cities, a longstanding countywide organization that works on major regional issues and is made up of representatives from the County’s cities and towns. The Consortium is currently addressing several issues:
  • One task force is developing strategies on how best to collaborate to reduce energy use and promote renewable energy and green building.
  • Another task force is working toward intergovernmental agreements that would reduce competition between cities and towns for sales tax revenue and ensure sales tax revenue stability for cities and towns.
• Represents Boulder County at the state level on Colorado Counties’ Local Government and Public Lands Committees, as well as the RS2477 subcommittee for public roads on federal land and a subcommittee on off-road vehicle use on federal public lands.
• Serves as the Boulder County representative on the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, a group that oversees the safe transition of Rocky Flats (a former nuclear weapons plant located in Jefferson County) to a wildlife refuge and addresses the management of the property.

Additionally, as part of an internal effort to improve Boulder County government's public service, Ben is leading an initiative to improve employees' service, communication and interaction with the public. See Initiatives page for more details.

Ben was born in 1967 and has been a Boulder County resident since 1969. He attended local public schools, graduating from Boulder High School in 1985. Ben graduated from Williams College in 1989. He worked on a number of political campaigns, taught high school, and worked as a public opinion analyst before going to law school. He graduated from the University of Colorado School of Law in 1996.

For five years he served as an attorney for Boulder County, working on open space acquisitions and resolving other open space and land use issues. He later served as a special projects manager for the County's Open Space Department, where he was responsible for capital improvement projects and stakeholder and user group outreach.

In his spare time, Ben enjoys the outdoors and plays soccer in Boulder's adult soccer league. He is single and lives in Lyons.

Please visit our Regional Collaborations page for more details about the governmental organizations Ben participates in.