In a new court brief, leaders of the Colorado General Assembly defend their use during recent legislative sessions of an anonymous online survey to help prioritize bills that impact the state budget.
Despite a looming inflationary increase in fees, state lawmakers in the 2023 legislative session never addressed the often-high cost of obtaining public records in Colorado but did vote to eliminate some nagging obstacles for users of the Colorado Open Records Act.
Legislators defeated a CORA bill amendment, proposed by Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, aimed at opening records on the Democrats’ use of a secret survey to help decide the fate of bills requiring state funding.
The public is entitled to know which of their elected legislators favored or opposed certain measures under consideration at the Capitol, in votes that have had real-world, bill-killing consequences.
COVID-19 touched nearly every aspect of our lives in 2020 so of course it affected government transparency and public access to courts in Colorado.
Litigate or give up. Those are your legal options in Colorado if a government entity improperly withholds public records, charges you out-of-line fees for inspection or drags its feet on a records request. The same is true if you suspect that a public body violated the Open Meetings Law. In many other states, however, litigation is not the only way to challenge FOI denials.
Colorado’s Sunshine Law is supposed to prevent more than two members of a local public body from exchanging thoughts outside of a public meeting on matters related to their jobs as policymakers. But Lakewood City Council members appear to be doing just that in a recent email provided to the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
The private emails flap was one of many transparency-related stories we highlighted in 2015 or broke ourselves.
Russell Weisfield and the city of Arvada have settled a lawsuit over Arvada’s use of secret ballots to eliminate candidates for a vacant city council seat.
The Colorado Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling that reinstated a citizen’s lawsuit against Arvada for violating the Colorado Sunshine Law.
