Anchor Kyle Clark and the company that owns 9NEWS are suing the Douglas County School District’s records custodian for refusing to disclose a Colorado Open Records Act request that sought the names of teachers who called in sick Feb. 3 to protest actions by majority members of the school board.
A case before the Colorado Court of Appeals will determine whether a state agency wrongfully denied two news organizations’ requests for aggregate statistics about child-abuse hotline calls made from licensed residential care facilities.
Several of the 24 entries stood out as glaring illustrations of the barriers and attitudes journalists and members of the public sometimes encounter when they request government records or otherwise try to monitor what their public officials are doing.
The Douglas County board of education isn’t the only Colorado school board recently accused of skirting the state’s sunshine laws. That’s why the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition made school board transparency the topic of its 2022 Sunshine Week panel.
Redacted portions of an investigator’s report on sexual misconduct allegations against Denver school board member Tay Anderson cannot be publicly disclosed because of a specific exemption in the Colorado Open Records Act, a judge has ruled.
The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and other organizations are asking the state’s highest court to review an appellate court ruling that, if allowed to stand, will impact the First Amendment rights of lawyers to make statements about public-interest litigation.
What’s your favorite (or should we say least favorite) example from the past two or three years of someone blatantly obstructing the public’s right to know in Colorado? It could involve a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request, a Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA) request, access to a meeting under the Colorado Open Meetings Law, or access to the court system.
Revising rules for the legislature’s Committee on Legal Services for the first time since 1981, Colorado lawmakers proposed an open-ended exception to the Sunshine Law that would let the committee make decisions by email — no public meeting required.
Amid multiple probes into allegations of employee misconduct, the Colorado Judicial Department is considering a new rule that would make records of many completed personnel investigations accessible to the public.
The constitutionally created state commission that investigates allegations of ethical misconduct by public officials should align proposed new procedural and records rules more closely with Colorado’s open-government laws. That’s what the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, Colorado Common Cause and the commission’s former executive director say in critical written comments submitted to the Independent Ethics Commission.
