First Amendment concerns didn’t prevent a panel of state lawmakers from endorsing a prohibition against medical marijuana advertising that is likely to reach youths under 18.
The House Finance Committee voted 9-2 in favor of HB 16-1363, despite some opinions that it’s an unconstitutional violation of commercial free speech.
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After a bill requiring state courts to abide by open records laws died last week, a prominent officer of the court said the ballot box might be the only solution to judges exempting themselves from transparency laws.
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Read More… from A new option to force the Colorado judicial branch to abide by open records laws?
A bill to encourage state government whistleblowers won the endorsement of a Senate committee Monday, despite fears that private information could be made vulnerable to security breaches.
Under the amended version of SB 16-056, state employees couldn’t be disciplined for revealing confidential information while reporting instances of waste, mismanagement of public funds or abuses of authority to the state attorney general’s office.
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Read More… from Colorado senate committee passes bill to encourage state government whistleblowers
State lawmakers rejected a proposal Wednesday to treat the administrative records of people who work for Colorado’s judicial branch like the records of those who work for the executive and legislative branches and all local governments in Colorado.
HB 16-1346 would have made civil or internal investigative files on judicial department employees subject to the Colorado Open Records Act.
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The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday told the judge in the Planned Parenthood shooting case to reconsider his sealing of court records in light of recent developments.
The high court, however, did not rule on whether news organizations have a First Amendment or Colorado constitutional right to inspect the affidavits of probable cause that El Paso County District Court Judge Gilbert Martinez has kept under seal since last fall.
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Read More… from Judge ordered to reconsider sealing of Planned Parenthood shooting documents
Government emails about the Flint water crisis stirred public outrage in Michigan when year-old messages showed the governor’s staff knew the danger of tap water contamination but took no action.
Here in Colorado, as the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition reported last year, government email records more than a few months old may already be lost.
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Read More… from Retention of government emails in Colorado ‘an honor system thing’
For an ongoing series on race in Colorado, Rocky Mountain PBS investigative reporter Katie Wilcox requested five years of records from six cities on when police stop people for suspicious behavior and other reasons.
Grand Junction provided information from its field interviews at no charge. Pueblo billed Wilcox $20, Colorado Springs asked for $88 and Fort Collins quoted her $60. Denver doesn’t keep the data by race.
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Read More… from Cloudy conditions for Sunshine Week: A pile of paper instead of a spreadsheet
Colorado Sen. John Kefalas and Rep. Dan Pabon deserve thanks from all Coloradans for their valiant, but unsuccessful, effort to guarantee the public's right to inspect its records.
These two legislators introduced Senate Bill 37, which would have clarified that Coloradans enjoy the right to obtain copies of public records in the same digitized format in which government maintains those records. Our tax dollars pay public servants to carry out the people's business, including creating and keeping public records — our records — on our behalf.
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Read More… from Opinion: The right to inspect the public’s records in Colorado
Sloppy record keeping. Failure to follow the state’s open meetings and open records laws. Baffling instructions to anyone brave enough to file a complaint.
Those are a few of the charges the state’s auditor lobbed at Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission, the body that oversees the state’s ethics laws.
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Read More… from Audit: Colorado’s Ethics Commission has questionable ethics
The state legislature no longer will charge thousands of dollars for copies of its annually updated database of the Colorado Revised Statutes and ancillary information such as source notes and editors’ notes, the Committee on Legal Services decided Friday.
The committee, which includes members of both the House and Senate, also voted to stop copyrighting the ancillary information. There is no copyright on the laws themselves.
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Read More… from Database of Colorado statutes will be free, state lawmakers decide
