House committee unanimously endorses bill to open records on wage-law violations
A wage-theft transparency measure that died in the Colorado legislature last year passed unanimously in the House Judiciary Committee.
A wage-theft transparency measure that died in the Colorado legislature last year passed unanimously in the House Judiciary Committee.
A Colorado House bill is intended to encourage records requesters and government entities to resolve disputes through mediation rather than in the court system.
For half a century, public records laws have been indispensable tools for disproving “alternative facts” and getting to the truth about government spending, activities and decision making. But in our state, the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) is showing its age, especially regarding access to the myriad records maintained in spreadsheets and databases by state agencies, cities, counties and other taxpayer-funded entities covered by the law.
It happened to be Groundhog Day when a House committee killed Rep. Polly Lawrence’s latest effort to make administrative records of Colorado’s judicial branch subject to the state’s open records law.
State lawmakers could substantially reform the Colorado Open Records Act during the 2017 legislative session.
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.
After months of work by stakeholders, proposed 2017 legislation is taking shape that would modernize the Colorado Open Records Act and provide an alternative to litigation for resolving CORA disputes. Despite the progress, however, a formidable roadblock surfaced when the Colorado Attorney General’s office announced that it will not support the most recent bill draft.
Colorado’s state auditor wants statutory authority to investigate tips about kickbacks, bribes and other kinds of fraud and abuse that might occur in state government.
Immediately after a bill to modernize the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) died in a Senate committee last session, the Secretary of State’s office offered to bring stakeholders together to work on a 2017 proposal agreeable to both government entities and records requesters. That effort is well underway this summer and has focused on three main topics.