How One Colorado Reporter’s Struggle Led To New Open Records Legislation

Earlier this month, Fort Collins Coloradoan reporter Nick Coltrain won the First Amendment Award at the Society for Professional Journalists’ Top of the Rockies for a battle with Colorado State University. He wanted to know if there were inequities in pay between men and women — and discovered there were, but only after a lot of work. The school provided him with a printout of all the information — 150 pages of an Excel spreadsheet — rather than the files themselves.

Coltrain’s struggle to convert the printouts into something he could analyze prompted a battle about the public's right to access data. On April 25, a Senate Bill to require electronic records be made available where possible advanced by a 7 to 6 vote in the House Finance Committee.

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