Several key rulings in 2023 showed why courts matter so much for enforcing and interpreting Colorado’s open government laws.
A year from now, on July 1, 2024, inflation will likely boost the maximum hourly rate governments are allowed to charge for processing Colorado Open Records Act requests from $33.58 to around $41.34 — an alarming 23 percent increase.
Gov. Jared Polis’ signature on Senate Bill 23-286 will change the Colorado Open Records Act in some small but important ways when the measure takes effect in early August. Here are some things to know about what the CORA bill does — and does not do.
Concerned the measure would “act as an impediment to legitimate challenges to open meetings,” Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a heavily amended bill that would have barred pro se litigants who sue over executive sessions from collecting legal fees if they prevailed in court.
Signing into law a bill that lets elected officials block anyone from their private social media accounts for “any reason,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis urged state lawmakers to monitor two cases related to the issue pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
Promising to keep working to improve access to state-and-local government for people with disabilities, a lawmaker requested the defeat of his own bill to mandate the livestreaming of public body meetings and make other changes to help all Coloradans participate in democracy more fully and equally.
State senators rewrote an open meetings bill, leaving only a provision that bars pro se litigants who challenge the legality of executive sessions from collecting court costs and attorney fees if they prevail in court.
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.
An open meetings bill in the Colorado legislature no longer requires plaintiffs to pay the court costs and attorney fees of local government bodies they unsuccessfully sue over executive session announcements.
