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.
The 2021 Colorado legislative session produced a mixed bag of good and not-so-good developments for those concerned about government transparency.
A state legislative committee killed a bill that would have barred Colorado from using nondisclosure agreements to keep state government employees from talking about “factual circumstances” of their jobs.
Two transparency bills died during a purge of proposals left over from before the coronavirus pandemic forced a suspension of the 2020 Colorado legislative session.
The state health department could dispose of a former high-ranking employee’s emails because the records retention schedule for state agencies gives officials the discretion to decide which emails are important enough to keep. The Colorado Open Records Act also doesn’t provide any meaningful guidance about the retention of public records.
