From The Coloradoan (Fort Collins):  The email of elected officials has been considered public record for many years. But accessing those records hasn’t always been simple.

A typical approach was to file a request through the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA, and wait for a response.

Fort Collins has made accessing email from City Council members a lot easier. It can be done anywhere, any time thanks to the magic of computer technology.

As I recall, the process of opening up email access started more than a year ago with a conversation between me and Assistant City Manager Kelly DiMartino. She was explaining to me how to access council email through a computer set up at City Hall for media use.

I explained to her that in a perfect world, I would be able to access that email from my computer at work or home. (Yes, I would do such a thing.) DiMartino said she would check into it.

As it turned out, DiMartino told me last week, council members also had expressed interest in making their email more accessible to the public. But there were a lot of technical issues to work out.

Visit The Coloradoan for more.