By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director

State lawmakers are trying for the third straight year to give state and local government entities up to three calendar weeks to fulfill many Colorado Open Records Act requests.

Senate Bill 26-107, introduced Wednesday, is nearly identical to a measure vetoed last year by Gov. Jared Polis. A major difference: This year’s bill does not exempt a “newsperson,” as defined by Colorado’s press shield law, from extended CORA response deadlines.

Polis rejected the 2025 legislation because it created “three classes of open records requests that are subject to different timelines: those made by mass media, those made for pecuniary gain, and all other requests.” His veto message added, “It would certainly be convenient for the Executive Branch to agree to weaken CORA, but as a representative for the people of Colorado, I support more, not less, openness and transparency.”

Sen. Cathy Kipp, the Fort Collins Democrat who introduced the 2024 and 2025 bills and is a prime Senate sponsor of SB 26-107 with Sen. Janice Rich, R-Grand Junction, has said that records custodians are “essentially drowning in CORA requests.”

Under the new bill, they would have five working days, rather than three, to fulfill requests and an additional 10 working days, rather than seven, if “extenuating circumstances” exist. Governments could take up to 30 working days to fulfill requests made “for the direct solicitation of business for pecuniary gain” and charge a “reasonable cost” — rather than the maximum hourly rate in CORA — to do so.

The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition opposed last year’s bill because requesters are, for all practical purposes, powerless when records custodians disregard the existing deadlines in CORA. Extending the response deadlines to 15 working days — three calendar weeks — if governments claim that extenuating circumstances apply “essentially gives records custodians an excuse to further delay providing public records within a reasonable period of time,” we wrote in an April 7 letter to Polis.

CFOIC knows from the freedom-of-information hotline we’ve run for 12-plus years that when government entities claim that extenuating circumstances apply or they do not meet the statutory deadlines, there is not much Coloradans can do about it. Colorado’s Court of Appeals ruled last year that the same language in the Judicial Department’s CORA-like policy is not enforceable in the courts even when deadlines are missed for by months.

SB 26-107 includes a penalty provision for records custodians that was not in the 2025 measure. A custodian who fails to respond to a CORA request within the required time period “shall also provide the requester with one additional hour of research and retrieval time without charge for each calendar day, or portion thereof, that the response is late.” (CORA currently requires one free hour before a maximum hourly rate of $41.37 can be charged.)

The bill also would add an extenuating circumstance, giving records custodians who are “essential to the process of responding to requests” more time to process requests when they are not scheduled to work during the response period.  

Additionally, it would let governments treat multiple requests — “pertaining to facially similar content” made by the same person within 14 days — as one request, ensuring the requester gets only one free hour before research-and-retrieval charges kick in.

SB 26-107 contains other provisions that would benefit records requesters, although there is no mechanism to ensure they are enforced.

It requires government entities to post on their websites rules and policies about how to make CORA requests as well as their records retention policies. If a requester asks, a custodian must provide “a reasonable break-down of costs that comprises the fee charged for research and retrieval of public records.”

The bill also clarifies that a government entity must allow electronic payments for public records if that government entity lets the public pay for services or products electronically. Some governments still require requesters to write paper checks for public records, interpreting a 2023 CORA amendment to mean that records custodians don’t have to accept credit cards if that designated person doesn’t take credit cards for other services or products.

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