By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
The town of Hudson wants a judge to validate its denial of a request by 9NEWS journalist Steve Staeger for records related to the resignations of the police chief and a lieutenant.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Weld County District Court, attorneys for Hudson argue that pre-disciplinary notices issued to the two now-former employees just before they resigned in May are confidential under the personnel files exemption in the Colorado Open Records Act and CORA’s deliberative process privilege.
The town is asking for an order to restrict disclosure of the documents, also contending that releasing them “would do substantial injury to the public interest.”
“If the Notices are required to be released, the Town Manager will no longer be able to effectively manage his employees, because all such records attempting to create a fair, equitable process for Town employees facing potential disciplinary actions, whether such allegations are true or not, will now be at risk of becoming public records,” says the lawsuit, drafted by attorney Nicholas Hartman.
Hudson previously provided the resignation letters of Chief Scott Sedgwick and Lt. Dustin Trujillo, but only after the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and CFOIC’s president, attorney Steve Zansberg, helped Staeger argue for their release. The town initially denied Staeger’s request for the letters, claiming they were protected personnel files.
In a letter to the town clerk, Zansberg cited two Colorado Court of Appeals opinions that make clear the personnel files exemption “is restricted only to those discrete items of information that are ‘maintained as part of the employer-employee relationship’ that are unrelated to the public employee’s discharge of his or her public functions.”
The Court of Appeals in Daniels v. City of Commerce City held that the exemption applies only to a public employee’s personal information, such as their home address, phone number and personal financial information.
CORA also says that a public employee’s “performance ratings” are not confidential.
Hartman wrote in Hudson’s lawsuit that the town “narrowly” interprets the term “performance ratings” in CORA. “For example,” he added, “when responding to a CORA request for an employee’s performance review, the Town redacts the non-numeric portions of such review, which typically amounts to qualitative and subjective feedback to the employee from their supervisor.”
The disclosure of documents related to a police chief’s performance was an issue in a similar lawsuit against 9NEWS journalist Aaron Adelson by the town of Elizabeth in 2023. In that case, a judge ordered the disclosure of a disciplinary memo about now-former Chief Melvin Berghahn, writing that “[t]he entirety of the Memo is a performance evaluation which is specifically not exempt in the personnel records exception.”
The deliberative process privilege cited in Hudson’s lawsuit is asserted to withhold records that contain “material is so candid or personal that public disclosure is likely to stifle honest and frank discussion within the government.” The town says the pre-disciplinary notices requested by Staeger “are the core of candid, personal discussions of employee management.”
Staeger has done several stories about a controversial photo radar camera placed along Weld County Road 49, north of Interstate 76, that was writing as many as 1,000 tickets per day. The town in a May statement said the resignations of the chief and lieutenant were “not connected to the use of a photo radar system.”
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