Emails of public officials are open for inspection under the Colorado Open Records Act, depending on their content. Such messages can reveal important insights into how government decisions are made, but using CORA to obtain emails can be a frustrating and sometimes futile exercise because records-retention policies tend to be vague and discretionary.
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Advocates say Senate Bill 40 does something simple: It brings the Colorado Open Records Act into the 21st century by requiring state agencies to provide information in a digital format — such as a database or a spreadsheet — where feasible.
“These are the people’s records. We are the custodians, we are the stewards of these records,” said Democratic Sen. John Kefalas of Fort Collins. He’s the main sponsor of the bill.
For some, the issue is more complicated.
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Read More… from Why Colorado Lawmakers Aren’t Totally Open To Digital Open Records
In behind-the-scenes negotiations on a bill designed to make government more transparent in the digital age, Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office offered a series of amendments that could dramatically expand the types of records that can be hidden from public view.
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An effort that proponents say would modernize Colorado's open records law for the digital era hit a bump last week when the state attorney general's office stated its opposition to the effort.
Deputy Attorney General David Blake, according to a statement read by a representative from his office at the meeting, said his office believes the proposal, in its current form, "creates more problems than it cures" and makes the Colorado Open Records Act "more complicated and vague."
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Read More… from Colo. AG’s office opposes open record reform
A Republican state lawmaker said she will try again during the 2017 legislative session to make Colorado’s judicial branch subject to the state’s open-records law.
“It’s just so interesting that one branch of government thinks they should be held to a different standard,” Rep. Polly Lawrence of Douglas County told the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “We don’t let the executive branch write their own rules.”
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Read More… from Legislator plans another try at making Colorado judicial branch subject to CORA
Colorado lawmakers in 2016 rejected an opportunity to bring the state’s open-records law into the 21st century.
They also decided that wage-law violations should remain “trade secrets” and that internal affairs files on judicial branch employees should remain confidential, which isn’t the case for other state government workers. Continue…
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Read More… from Open-government wins and losses in the 2016 Colorado legislative session
The state’s 20 nonprofits serving people with disabilities shouldn’t be subject to the Colorado Open Records Act, a Senate panel decided Wednesday.
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Opposition from a state agency and several local governments Wednesday doomed proposed legislation intended to modernize Colorado’s open records law by requiring that public records kept in database formats be available to the public in similar formats.
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Read More… from Colorado database records bill dies, but stakeholders hope to work on a compromise
When was the last time you used microfilm or microfiche to find information? Does the phrase “on-line bulletin board” bring to mind that screeching noise associated with dial-up connections from 20 years ago?
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Read More… from A 21st-century open-records law for Colorado
