December 07, 2016 02:53 PM UTC

Attorney General Coffman Opposes Open Records Reform

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition reports via the Colorado Independent, Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office is coming out against proposed legislation for 2017 that would streamline compliance with the Colorado Open Records Act–removing some bottlenecks that have cropped up that have allowed some state agencies to deny otherwise reasonable records requests:

After months of work by stakeholders, proposed 2017 legislation is taking shape that would modernize the Colorado Open Records Act and provide an alternative to litigation for resolving CORA disputes.

Despite the progress, however, a formidable roadblock surfaced Friday when the Colorado Attorney General’s office announced that it will not support the most recent bill draft.

“We think the bill … creates more problems than it cures” and will make CORA “more complicated and more vague,” Chief Deputy AG David Blake wrote in a statement read aloud during a meeting of the CORA Working Group…

The 2017 proposal also would establish a three-year trial period for resolving open-records disputes through mediation. In Colorado, unlike in many other states, going to court is now the only legal remedy afforded records requesters who believe that a government or agency has violated the open-records law.

One problem that individuals filing CORA requests have discovered is often data that is stored in a searchable format, such as a database, is rendered into paper printouts or other non-searchable formats for delivery–which makes data that could be easily sorted through with a database far more difficult to work with. It’s even been alleged anecdotally from time to time that CORA requests are deliberately being stymied in this manner. Other problems have arisen from data that includes confidential information, which the new bill would clarify can be redacted.

Improving the state’s responsiveness to open records requests has been a longstanding goal of information-freedom watchdogs, and this proposal only scratches the surface of what many consider to be a system riddled with loopholes–and sometimes just plain noncompliance by government entities who know there isn’t oversight to keep them honest. There is a general consensus that Colorado’s open records law is broken as it stands today, and must be modernized to stop technological changes from being excuses for noncompliance.

With all of that in mind, why would AG Coffman’s office oppose this bill to update CORA hammered out by stakeholders? Her office wasn’t specific in their statement, only claiming the bill “creates more problems than it cures.”

Maybe that’s true–or maybe AG Coffman’s office is just another “government entity” who likes the broken status quo.