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.
As amended by the Colorado House, an open meetings bill still significantly weakens Coloradans’ ability to enforce a 22-year-old provision in the Sunshine Law requiring school boards and other local public bodies to announce the topics of closed-door meetings with some specificity.
State lawmakers endorsed a bill that makes it harder for Coloradans to challenge inadequately announced closed-door meetings of school boards, city councils, county commissions and special district boards.
Recently retired Denver attorney Marc Flink spent decades fighting alongside news organizations for public access to the records and workings of government — and played a leading role in some of the most consequential First Amendment cases in recent Colorado history.
In a new filing, the Aurora Sentinel lays out multiple reasons why it believes the Colorado Court of Appeals should reverse a judge’s ruling and order the city of Aurora to publicly release the recording of a closed-door meeting at which council members ended censure proceedings against a fellow councilor.
Like last year, court rulings dominate CFOIC’s 2022 list of transparency highs and lows, with perhaps the most closely watched decision coming nearly three weeks after a shooter killed five people and wounded more than a dozen others at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19.
Three Lakewood City Council members are raising free-speech concerns after Mayor Adam Paul muted two of their microphones while they spoke during a Zoom meeting convened to consider changes to the city manager’s contract.
