Visit Estes Park clarifies CORA policy on emails

Estes Park Trail Gazette: Visit Estes Park (VEP) CEO Elizabeth Fogarty clarified the Local Marketing District Board of Directors’ recent decision to mark emails private, saying that the new policy would simply not automatically make board emails public.

“The Board merely chose to not switch to public emails, which is a standard in the destination marketing industry, due to the fiercely competitive nature of the tourism industry,” Fogarty said. “Sharing of proprietary data, strategies, campaigns and branding would compromise the organization and this community’s economic viability.”

The board’s attorney provided advice before the policy was enacted, according to Fogarty.

No public board can have a policy that would refuse to fulfill any Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request across the board, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (FOIC) Executive Direct Jeffrey Roberts said. FOIC recently shared a Trail-Gazette editorial, critical of the VEP board’s decision, on its website, where it regularly posts stories related to freedom of information issues in Colorado.

“You can’t just willy-nilly make things confidential,” Roberts said. “You have to cite a specific exemption [in the Colorado Open Records Act] to deny a CORA request.”

According to Fogarty, the new policy would not affect how VEP responds to CORA requests. Requests would continue to be processed as they have in the past, in which each request is reviewed by Fogarty who is also the VEP records custodian.

Visit Estes Park Trail Gazette for more.

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