by Duane Gall and Megan Waples

Editor’s note: This article was originally written by Kate Meyer and published December 7, 2017. The article has been edited and updated as appropriate.

Odds are, if you spend any time in the Capitol as a legislator or staff member, you’ll be the recipient of a “Colorado Open Records Act” (CORA) request at some point. In fact, given the recent uptick in CORA requests—and no sign that this trend is abating anytime soon—you may even have multiple requests with which to deal (if you haven’t already!).

This article addresses issues and answers questions that frequently arise for legislators and legislative staff in responding to a CORA request. Specifically, we’ll talk about deadlines associated with requests, tips for finding records, and other considerations you may find helpful. [Note: In addition to CORA, this article refers to the policies of the Colorado General Assembly regarding public records requests. The policies are included in the “Legislative Policies Related to Public Records and E Mail,” dated July 2019 (“the Policies”) and are available through the “Open Records Requests & Policy” link at the bottom of the Colorado General Assembly website.]

Deadlines

I’ve received a CORA request; what do I do and when do I need to do it? The first thing a legislator or legislative staff person should do is contact the Office of Legislative Legal Services, and he or she should do so as soon as possible. As you will see below, time matters in responding to CORA requests. The OLLS staff will work with you to prepare a response.

LegiSource previously covered the nuts and bolts of being “CORA’d.” Please refer to that article, and the Policies, for a broad overview of the process–and keep in mind that CORA imposes strict deadlines. Generally, upon receiving a CORA request, recipients have three business days to respond in some fashion, although production of all of the requested records may not actually be completed within that time.

This CORA request is dated more than three days ago, but I only just opened the email/got the letter/found out about it from OLLS. What is my deadline to respond? According to subsection II.C.5 of the Policies, the CORA clock starts ticking when the recipient actually receives the request or, in the case of a request to a legislator that is also sent to the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS), the earlier of when the legislator actually receives the request or when the OLLS notifies the legislator of the request and confirms that the legislator is aware of it. So, how does this work in real life?

• Example 1: If a CORA request arrives on August 1^st (i.e., during the interim) via United States mail to a legislator’s office at the Capitol, and the legislator doesn’t open it until he or she is in the office on September 1^st, the period of time in which to respond commences on September 1^st, and a response is due three business days later on September 4^th.
• Example 2: The same CORA request from Example #1 is also sent to the OLLS, in accordance with the Policies. The OLLS receives its copy on August 1^st and promptly leaves a message for the legislator to whom it is addressed. The legislator and the OLLS actually discuss the request on August 4^th. In this case, August 4^th is the day from which the response deadline is calculated, so the response will be due on August 7^th.

Ack! I need some time to get to my records to determine whether I have any to produce. Despite the stringent deadlines that attach to any CORA request, there is some wiggle room (up to seven additional business days) for recipients when “extenuating circumstances” exist. Even so, the recipient must provide written notice to the requestor, within the initial 3-day window, that the recipient is invoking an extension due to extenuating circumstances.

Ok, but what constitutes “extenuating circumstances”? Subsection II.D.3 of the Policies states that extenuating circumstances exist when a request is submitted during the legislative interim and the recipient legislator’s office is closed. CORA itself provides that extenuating circumstances apply when an agency can’t fulfill a broadly stated request encompassing a large volume of records. In the case of the general assembly or its staff or service agencies, this specifically includes the period when the general assembly is in session (section 24-72-203 (3)(b)(II)(B), C.R.S.).

Of course, “extenuating circumstances” do not exist when the CORA request is merely inconvenient. Because someone may file a CORA request at any time and the turnaround period is so short, CORA requests can be very inopportune. Although “[r]esponding to applications for inspection of public records need not take priority over the previously scheduled work activities of the custodian or the custodian’s designee” (Policies, subsection II.D.2.a), CORA recipients must take their duties under the law seriously even when a request comes at a bad time.

 

Finding records

How should I assess whether I have responsive records? First, read the language of the request carefully. Many requests are limited to certain dates, names, terms, topics, and types of records. A legislator responding to a CORA request should keep in mind the request’s parameters. Start by using the request itself to identify appropriate search terms. Often, certain records are specified or terms are provided. If not, reassess: Is the request sufficiently specific to enable the legislator to comply? If so, proceed, making reasonably diligent and good faith efforts to devise search terms to unearth any responsive records. If not, the requestor will need to be contacted to clarify his or her submission. Please consider allowing OLLS to handle this on your behalf.

So, do I just need to check through my emails? No, not necessarily. CORA and the Policies broadly define “public records” to include many types of records. Only if the request is explicitly limited to emails should the legislator confine his or her review to emails. If the CORA request seeks records in broad-based categories such as “all correspondence/records/documents” or “any communications,” the type of records covered by those broad categories is not limited to emails but could be any type of correspondence—printed letters or memoranda, hand-written notes, screenshots of text messages or social-media posts, etc.

Reviewing and retrieving my records will take me a few hours because I potentially have quite a few records to produce. In that case, please STOP! If responding to a CORA request will require more than one hour, the requestor must pay a deposit based on the estimated time required (not counting the first hour) to retrieve any potentially relevant records. Therefore, if it appears that you will need more than one hour to respond to a request, please give OLLS an estimate of the time that it will take. (In the case of emails, you can estimate the number of emails that may be responsive to the request, because we apply a standard factor of 2.5 minutes per email to calculate the time required to process emails.) The OLLS will then multiply the estimated time by an hourly rate to calculate the estimated search-and-retrieval fee.

The requestor must pay a deposit, equal to the estimated search-and-retrieval fee, within 30 days. Only when this payment is received should you proceed with actually assembling the requested records. If payment is not received within the 30-day period, the CORA request is deemed closed and no further action is required.

The requestor must be notified of the requirement for payment of the deposit within three business days after receiving the request unless extenuating circumstances exist. (See item #3 in Deadlines, above.)

Because the fee deposit is based on an estimate, the actual number of records located and the corresponding time spent retrieving and reviewing those records in order to respond to the CORA request may vary from the estimate. If it falls below the estimate, the overage paid by the requestor is refunded to him or her. If it exceeds the estimate, the requestor must pay a supplemental fee to cover the amount of time the legislator estimates will be necessary to retrieve the remaining volume of records.

Do I have to produce my personal records that contain a term or otherwise appear to fall within the scope of the CORA request? Not necessarily. It’s the nature of the record, and not the platform on which it is created or stored, that is determinative. The mere fact that a document is created during one’s tenure as a legislator does not render it a public record. CORA defines “public records” as writings “made, maintained, or kept by the state, any agency, … or political subdivision of the state … for use in the exercise of functions required or authorized by law or administrative rule or involving the receipt or expenditure of public funds.” Further, the Colorado Supreme Court has observed that the definition of “public records” in CORA is intended to preserve a balance between private and public interests. Accordingly, the scope of CORA’s “public records” definition limits the type of documents covered by CORA to those that relate to the performance of public functions or the receipt and expenditure of public funds. The Supreme Court has stated that “CORA was not intended to cover information held by a government official in his private capacity.” https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2623451/wick-communic-co-v-montrose-county-board/

On the other hand, a public record is a public record regardless of the medium. So if a legislator uses a personal email account to conduct public business (e.g., relating to the performance of official functions), the records pertaining to that public business are still “public records” and must be disclosed if requested under CORA.

Is my constituent correspondence subject to disclosure under CORA? Potentially, yes. CORA’s definition of “public records” explicitly exempts a constituent communication that “clearly implies by its nature or content that the constituent expects that it is confidential or is communicated to request assistance or information relating to a personal or private matter that affects the constituent and that is not publicly known.” But any other constituent correspondence (e.g., an email urging that a legislator vote for or against a particular bill) is subject to disclosure. If a legislator has constituent correspondence that falls within the definition of “public records,” the OLLS will assist in redacting the constituent’s personal e-mail address and any extraneous matter such as forwarding headers, etc., before the document is released.

Any other lifelines I can use? In addition to the OLLS, legislators may want to use their own staff members (aides, interns) for assistance in responding to a CORA request. Aides and interns are often tech-savvy and are familiar with the types, locations, and amount of records in a legislator’s custody. And legislators may want to apprise their caucus’s leaders or staff about CORA requests so that they can track and assist with the responses if desired.

Other Considerations

The requestor didn’t specify a reason for the request/I suspect the request is ill-intentioned. CORA does not require a requestor to explain why a request is submitted or for what purpose or in what manner any documents produced in response will be used. A record is either subject to inspection or not; the motivation for the request is irrelevant.

The request I’ve received is very, very broad; doesn’t the request need to be limited in some way? There is no requirement that a request contain any parameters; in fact, requests are often couched in expansive terms. For example, requestors can state that they are seeking “all records” that include a certain term (e.g., “energy” or “House Bill xxxx” or “the Jane Doe Lobbying Firm”), and they do not otherwise narrow the scope of the request. This approach can be deliberate (if a requestor isn’t certain what records may exist and thus wants to cast a wide net) or inadvertent (if a requestor doesn’t anticipate the large volume of records that a custodian may have in his or her possession that may contain the sought-after term). So long as the request is “sufficiently specific to enable the custodian to locate the information requested with reasonable effort” (Policies, subsection II.C.1.), that’s all that matters.

Once I’ve been CORA’d, may I continue to discard records in accordance with my usual records retention process? No, at least not with respect to any records that may be included within the scope of the CORA request. You should treat a CORA request the same way you would treat a litigation hold, under which a person is obligated to preserve records for a certain amount of time in anticipation of future potential use at trial. Once the CORA request is completely concluded, you may proceed with document disposal pursuant to your normal retention and disposal policy. (For more information on developing such policies, please refer to Subsection IV of the Policies and consult with the OLLS.)

Whew! Responding to that CORA request seemingly took forever; how can I reduce the amount of time the next one takes? You can mitigate the time spent responding to requests by creating (and abiding by) a written records retention policy that establishes how long you keep various types of records, the frequency with which you dispose of records, etc. The fewer records in existence, the lower the volume of records that you may have to review and therefore potentially less time you will spend searching for, retrieving, and reviewing them. Alternatively, you may feel it necessary, in order to adequately complete your legislative duties, to maintain records for significant lengths of time. The Policies contain a number of guidelines and recommendations regarding records categorization, retention, and deletion; you may also consult with the OLLS. If you decide to establish a written records retention policy that could affect the documents produced in response to a specific CORA request, the policy must be in place before the request was received.

by Bob Lackner

You are the chairman for a legislative committee, and the committee’s next hearing starts in 15 minutes. The committee will be discussing a new report that you expect may embarrass employees of a particular state agency. To avoid this type of embarrassment, it would be better if the committee could meet in executive session so the committee can talk about the issue in a “safe space” without the media or any professional malcontents being present. You read the Open Meetings Law when you started chairing the committee, and you’re sure that the fine print of the law includes a list of reasons for which you can close the meeting. Specifically you’re hoping it includes a general catch-all for sensitive matters that would make the state look bad if disclosed. But you also seem to recall that there are specific procedures to follow when going into executive session. You reach for the phone for a quick consult with your legislative staff…

This article aims to provide a basic understanding of the requirements for meeting in executive session under the Colorado Open Meetings Law (OML) and enable legislators and legislative staff to successfully navigate the requirements for executive sessions.

First, it’s important to note that the OML begins with an over-arching statement of policy: “It is declared to be … the policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret.” Next, the OML declares that all meetings of “two or more members of any state public body at which any public business is discussed or at which any formal action is taken are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all times.” The General Assembly and its committees are specifically included in the definition of “state public body.”

The OML allows a legislative committee to go into executive session, that is, to conduct a closed session, only to discuss topics that are specified in the statute. Only members of the committee and staff—and in some cases outside counsel—may be present in an executive session. Before the committee can go into executive session, the committee chair must announce to the public—in open session—the “topic for discussion in the executive session,” including specific citation to the OML provision authorizing the committee to meet in executive session, and  identify “the particular matter to be discussed in as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive session is authorized…”. Going into executive session requires the affirmative vote of 2/3 of the entire membership of the committee after the chair makes the announcement. The committee may hold an executive session only at a regular or special meeting. Presumably this means the committee is not permitted to hold a spontaneous get together to go into executive session.

These are the specific grounds for which the statute authorizes a legislative committee to meet in executive session:

• Discussions regarding the purchase of property for public purposes or the sale of property at competitive bidding if premature disclosure of the information would give an unfair competitive or bargaining advantage to a person whose personal, private interest is adverse to the general interest;
• Conferences with an attorney representing the General Assembly, the legislative committee, or a legislator concerning disputes involving the General Assembly, the committee or the legislator that are the subject of pending or imminent court action, concerning specific claims or grievances, or for purposes of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions;
• Matters required to be kept confidential by federal law or rules, state statutes, or in accordance with any joint legislative rule pertaining to lobbying practices;
• Specialized details of security arrangements or investigations; and
• Determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations with employees or employee organizations; developing strategy for receiving reports on the progress of such negotiations, and instructing negotiators.

The OML additionally permits a legislative committee that is acting as a search committee to go into executive session to consider certain appointments or employment matters, but establishing job search goals and the time frame for appointing an agency’s chief executive officer must take place at an open meeting.

This list states the only reasons for which a legislative committee may meet in an executive session. (There are other reasons on the list that apply to state public bodies that are not associated with the General Assembly.) If the topic of the discussion is not on the list, the legislative committee cannot hold an executive session to discuss it. There is no general catch-all for a legislative committee to meet in executive session to avoid a public discussion that could make the state, a state agency, or a state employee look bad. And no catch-all for sensitive matters that decision makers simply want to be able to discuss in secret. As stated above, under the OML, the default position is that the discussion of public business should be conducted in the open.

The OML prohibits a legislative committee from adopting a proposed policy, position, resolution, rule, or regulation or otherwise taking formal action at an executive session. If the discussion during executive session leads to an official action, the committee will complete its discussion in executive session, then go back into the open meeting, make a motion, and vote to take the action.

When a legislative committee goes into executive session, the committee staff turns off the official digital recorder and turns off the internet streaming technology. But under the OML, the committee’s discussions in an executive session must be electronically recorded. The electronic recording must reflect the specific citation to the provision of the OML that authorizes the body to meet in an executive session and the actual contents of the discussion during the session.  The minutes of a meeting during which an executive session is held must reflect the topic of the discussion of the executive session.

A person who feels that a legislative committee improperly held an executive session may sue for a copy of the record of the executive session under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). If this happens, the court will privately review the recording of the executive session. If it finds that the legislative committee discussed matters that are not included in the list of reasons to hold an executive session or took formal action while in the executive session, the court will declare the part of the record that applies to those issues or actions to be open and available for public review.

The public cannot inspect, and the members of the legislative committee are not supposed to disclose, any part of the record of an executive session and the record is not subject to discovery in a trial unless 1) the legislative committee consents; or 2) the legislative committee fails to comply with the OML, resulting in disclosure of the record in accordance with CORA.

Armed with this information, legislators and legislative staff should now be better prepared to appropriately meet in executive session in compliance with the OML.

By Kate Meyer

Odds are, if you spend any time in the Capitol as a legislator or staff member, you’ll be the recipient of a “Colorado Open Records Act” (CORA) request at some point. In fact, given the recent uptick in CORA requests—and no sign that this trend is abating anytime soon—you may even have multiple requests to deal with (if you haven’t already!).

This article addresses issues and answers questions that frequently arise for legislators and legislative staff in responding to a CORA request. Specifically, we’ll talk about deadlines associated with requests, tips for finding records, and other considerations you may find helpful. [Note: In addition to CORA, this article refers to the policies of the Colorado General Assembly regarding public records requests. The policies are included in the “Legislative Policies Related to Public Records and E Mail”, dated November 2013 (“the Policies”) and are available through the “Open Records Requests & Policy” link at the bottom of the Colorado General Assembly website.]

Deadlines

I’ve received a CORA request; what do I do and when do I need to do it? The first thing a legislator or legislative staff person should do is contact the Office of Legislative Legal Services, and he or she should do so as soon as possible. As you will see below, time matters in responding to CORA requests. The OLLS staff will work with legislators and legislative staff to prepare a response. Legisource previously covered the nuts-and-bolts of being CORA’d. Please refer to that article, and the Policies, for a broad overview of the process … and keep in mind that CORA imposes strict deadlines to provide public records to requestors. Generally, upon receiving a CORA request, recipients have three business days to respond.

This CORA request is dated more than three days ago, but I only just opened the email/got the letter/found out about it from OLLS; what is my deadline to respond? According to subsection II.C.5 of the Policies, the CORA clock starts ticking when the recipient actually receives the request or, in the case of a request to a legislator that is also sent to the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS), the earlier of when the legislator actually receives the request or when the OLLS notifies the legislator of the request and confirms that the legislator is aware of it. So, how does this work in real life?

Example 1: If a CORA request arrives on August 1^st (i.e., during the interim) via United States mail to a legislator’s office at the Capitol, and the legislator doesn’t open it until he or she is in the office on September 1^st, the period of time in which to respond commences on September 1^st, and a response is due three business days later on September 4^th.

Example 2: If the same CORA request from Example #1 is also sent to the OLLS, the OLLS receives its copy on August 1^st and promptly leaves a message for the legislator to whom it is addressed. The legislator and the OLLS actually discuss the request on August 4^th, and that’s the day from which the response deadline is calculated. The response will be due three business days later on August 7^th.

Ack! I need some time to get to my records to determine whether I have any to produce. Despite the stringent deadlines that attach to any CORA request, there is some wiggle room (up to seven additional business days) for recipients when “extenuating circumstances” exist. Even so, the recipient must provide written notice to the requestor that he or she is invoking an extenuating-circumstances extension within the initial three-day response window.

Ok, but what constitutes “extenuating circumstances”? Subsection II.D.3 of the Policies states that extenuating circumstances exist when a request is submitted during the legislative interim and the recipient legislator’s office is closed. CORA itself provides that extenuating circumstances apply when an agency can’t fulfill a broadly stated request encompassing a large volume of records because, in the case of the general assembly or its staff or service agencies, the general assembly is in session (section 24-72-203 (3)(b)(II)(B), C.R.S.).

Of course, “extenuating circumstances” do not exist when the CORA request is merely inconvenient. Because someone may file a CORA request at any time and the turnaround period is so short, CORA requests can be incredibly inopportune. Although “[r]esponding to applications for inspection of public records need not take priority over the previously scheduled work activities of the custodian or the custodian’s designee,” (Policies, subsection II.D.2.a) CORA recipients must take their duties under the law seriously.

Finding records

How should I assess whether I have responsive records? First, read the language of the request carefully. Many requests are limited to certain dates, names, terms, topics, and types of records. A legislator responding to a CORA request should keep in mind the request’s parameters. Start by using the request itself to identify appropriate search terms. Often, certain records are specified or terms are provided. If not, reassess: Is the request sufficiently specific to enable the legislator to comply? If so, proceed, making reasonably diligent and good faith efforts to devise search terms to unearth any responsive records. If not, the requestor will need to be contacted to clarify his or her submission.

So, do I just need to check through my emails? No, not necessarily. CORA and the Policies broadly define “public records” to include many types of records. Only if the request is explicitly limited to emails should the legislator confine his or her review to emails. If the CORA request seeks records in broad-based categories such as “all correspondence/records/documents” or “any communications,” the type of records covered by those broad categories is not limited to emails but could be any type of correspondence—written letters or memoranda, hand-written notes, etc.

Reviewing and retrieving my records will take me a few hours because I potentially have quite a few records to produce. In that case, please STOP! If responding to a CORA request will require more than one hour, the requestor must pay a fee deposit based on the estimated time required to retrieve any potentially relevant records before the legislator proceeds with retrieving and reviewing the records. A legislator who anticipates that it will require more than one hour to respond to a request, should provide the OLLS an estimate of the number of records that may be responsive to the request. The OLLS will use this figure to calculate the estimated search-and-retrieval fee deposit the requestor must pay within 30 days. Only when this timely payment is received will the legislator proceed with actually assembling the requested records. If payment is not received within the 30-day period, the CORA request is deemed closed and no further action is required.

The requestor must be notified of the requirement for payment of the search-and-retrieval fee deposit estimate within three business days after receipt of the request unless extenuating circumstances exist—see #3 in Deadlines, above.

Because the fee deposit is based on an estimate, the actual number of records located and the corresponding time spent retrieving and reviewing those records in order to respond to the CORA request may fall below or exceed that preliminary estimate. If it falls below the estimate, the overage paid by the requestor is refunded to him or her. If it exceeds the estimate, the requestor must pay a supplemental fee to cover the amount of time the legislator estimates will be necessary to retrieve the remaining volume of records.

Do I have to produce my personal records that contain a term or otherwise appear to fall within the scope of the CORA request? Not necessarily; it’s the nature of the record, and not the platform on which it is created or stored, that is determinative. The mere fact that a document is created during one’s tenure as a legislator does not render it a public record. CORA defines “public records” as writings “made, maintained, or kept by the state, any agency, … or political subdivision of the state … for use in the exercise of functions required or authorized by law or administrative rule or involving the receipt or expenditure of public funds.” Further, the Colorado Supreme Court has observed that the definition of “public records” in CORA is intended to preserve a balance between private and public interests. Accordingly, the scope of CORA’s “public records” definition limits the type of documents covered by CORA to those that relate to the performance of public functions or the receipt and expenditure of public funds. The Supreme Court found that “CORA was not intended to cover information held by a government official in his private capacity.”

On the other hand, a public record is a public record regardless of the medium. So if a legislator uses a personal email account to conduct public business (e.g., relating to the performance of official functions), the records pertaining to that public business are still “public records” and must be disclosed if CORA’d.

Is my constituent correspondence subject to disclosure under CORA? Potentially, yes. CORA’s definition of “public records” explicitly exempts a constituent communication that clearly implies by its nature or content that the constituent expects that it is confidential or is communicated to request assistance or information relating to a personal or private matter that affects the constituent and that is not publicly known. So other constituent correspondence (e.g., an email urging that a legislator vote for or against a particular bill) would not appear to meet this exemption. If a legislator has constituent correspondence that falls within the definition of “public records,” the OLLS will assist in redacting the constituent’s personal information before the document is released.

Any other lifelines I can use? In addition to the OLLS, legislators may want to use their own staff members (aides, interns) for assistance in responding to a CORA request. Aides and interns are often tech-savvy and are familiar with the types, locations, and amount of records in a legislator’s custody. And legislators may want to apprise their caucus’s leaders or staff about CORA requests so that a caucus can track and assist with responses if it so desires.

Other Considerations

The requestor didn’t specify a reason for the request/I suspect the request is ill-intentioned. CORA does not require a requestor to explain why a request is submitted or for what purpose or in what manner any documents produced in response will be used. A record is subject to inspection or not; the impetus for the request is irrelevant.

The request I’ve received is very, very broad; doesn’t the request need to be limited in some way? There is no requirement that a request contain any parameters; in fact, requests are often couched in expansive terms. For example, requestors can state that they are seeking “all records” that include a certain term (e.g., “energy” or “House Bill xxxx” or “the Jane Doe Lobbying Firm”), and they do not otherwise narrow the scope of the request. This approach can be deliberate (if a requestor isn’t certain what records may exist and thus wants to cast a wide net) or inadvertent (if a requestor doesn’t anticipate the large volume of records that a custodian may have in his or her possession that may contain the sought-after term). So long as the request is “sufficiently specific to enable the custodian to locate the information requested with reasonable effort” (Policies, subsection II.C.1.), that’s all that matters.

Once I’ve been CORA’d, may I continue to discard records in accordance with my usual records retention process? No, at least not with respect to any records that may be included within the scope of the CORA request. Treat a CORA request like a litigation hold under which a person is obligated to preserve records for a certain amount of time in anticipation of future potential use. Once the CORA request has completely concluded, a legislator may proceed with document disposal pursuant to his or her written records retention and disposal policy. (For more information on developing such policies, please refer to Subsection IV of the Policies and consult with the OLLS.)

Whew! Responding to that CORA request seemingly took forever; how can I reduce the amount of time the next one takes? A legislator can mitigate the time spent responding to requests by creating (and abiding by) a written records retention policy that establishes how long the legislator keeps various types of records, the frequency with which he or she disposes of records, etc. On one hand, the fewer records in existence, the lower the volume of records that a legislator may have to review and therefore potentially less time he or she will spend searching for, retrieving, and reviewing them. Alternatively, a legislator may feel it necessary, in order to adequately complete his or her legislative duties, to maintain records for significant lengths of time. The Policies contain a number of guidelines and recommendations regarding records categorization, retention, and deletion; a legislator may also consult with the OLLS. If a legislator decides to establish a written records retention policy that could affect the documents produced in response to a specific CORA request, the policy must be in place before the request was received.

By Dan Cartin

The Open Meetings Law, or OML (section 24-6-401, C.R.S., et seq.), requires any meeting of two or more members of the General Assembly to be open to the public when any public business is discussed or formal action may be taken. Legislative committee meetings are subject to the OML’s requirements and are generally open to any person who wishes to attend. Notice of a meeting must be given if the committee is taking formal action or if a majority or quorum of committee members are either in attendance or expected to be in attendance. (more…)

By Chuck Brackney

Colorado has in place a number of mechanisms that seek to ensure the public has access to the workings of its state government. For example, the GAVEL amendment to the state constitution requires that every bill introduced in the General Assembly have a hearing and that party caucus meetings be open to the public. Two laws in particular exemplify this focus on open government. (more…)

by Julie Pelegrin

Throughout Colorado people like to open their homes to take advantage of the 300-plus days of sunshine the state gets each year. By law, Colorado’s government is required to open its meetings to let the sunshine — and the public — in. (more…)

by Chuck Brackney and Bart Miller

You may first encounter the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA (§24-72-200.1, et seq.), as an unfamiliar e-mail in your inbox. The message may come from someone you’ve never met or even heard of, and it may contain a rather startling request for copies of “all e-mails sent or received by Representative Smith, as well as all telephone records, for the period January 1 to May 1, 2013.”  Believe it or not, all of these records of communications are potentially subject to release in response to an open records request. (more…)

by Chuck Brackney and Bart Miller

You may first encounter the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA (section 24-72-200.1, et seq., C.R.S.), as an unfamiliar e-mail in your inbox.  The message may come from someone you’ve never met or even heard of, and it may contain a rather startling request for copies of “all e-mails sent or received by Representative Smith, as well as all telephone records, for the period January 1 to May 1, 2012.”  Believe it or not, all of these records of communications are potentially subject to release in response to an open records request. (more…)