From The Denver Post:  Colorado’s laws governing public access to information are among the weakest in the nation, according to a new report that sizes up how states handle requests for court documents, police files and other records.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., found only 14 states had worse open-records laws than Colorado, which received a grade of F.

Although Colorado has an open-records law on the books as 35 states do, it is among 25 states that do not have a public agency to monitor how the law is applied and investigate alleged violations, the center found. The state earned low marks for having no administrative appeals process when open-records requests are denied and for failing to put many government databases online for public access.

“There are daunting obstacles to obtaining information through the state’s open-records laws, and there is no formal appeals process outside of the court system,” the center reported. “Because Colorado doesn’t have a centralized process for handling public records requests, different government entities handle such requests in different ways.”

Overall, Colorado ranked higher, at No. 13, on the center’s State Integrity Investigation, which graded each state in 13 categories, including political financing, electoral oversight and executive accountability. The center gave Colorado an overall integrity grade of D+.

Colorado scored poorly, as it did in an earlier center report, on public access to information. As an example, the center pointed to a state law that gives police agencies discretion on when to disclose wrongdoing by police officers.

While Colorado law requires local police departments to release “records of official action,” such as arrest reports, the law still gives those officials discretion on a wide range of other records. The law gives police officials the ability to deny access if they believe release of the records is “contrary to the public interest.”

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