A bill to standardize fees for public records in Colorado was amended by lawmakers to cap charges for filling requests for information at four times the state minimum wage.
The Denver Post is right in urging passage of Rep. Joe Salazar’s House Bill 1193 to create a uniform statewide standard for “research and retrieval” fees permitted under the Colorado Open Records Act.
Rep. Joe Salazar’s proposed legislation to regulate how much governments can charge for public records has been introduced in the Colorado House as HB 14-1193.
A bill to increase legal protections for Colorado journalists and their sources died in a state Senate committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee also killed another measure that would have opened records kept by private associations of elected officials that get some of their money from public sources.
Records kept by private associations of elected officials that get some of their money from public sources would be open to public scrutiny under legislation proposed by state Sen. Kevin Lundberg.
Winners of open-records lawsuits in Colorado are entitled to attorneys’ fees, even if they succeed in getting only one record released, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled last week.
A plan to regulate fees for public records statewide is expected to be one of at least three bills introduced during the 2014 legislative session that would affect the flow or availability of information in Colorado.
Check out the CFOIC’s new Resource pages, which include guides to accessing public information and a categorized directory of public data available online.
A court decision last week that let the Colorado Attorney General turn over consumer complaints to the Better Business Bureau, but not to a Denver TV news organization, may have broader implications for the release of public records.
A Gazette investigation into a secret spy program at the Air Force Academy was one of three recent news stories that had nothing in common, except the vitally important fact that none could have been reported in such detail, or perhaps even reported at all, without the state and federal laws that ensure your rights of access to public information.
