The High Stakes of Open Records: A Battle Over Access
Stroll into any Colorado town hall or government office and you’ll find a promise, printed or implied: the public has a right to know what its government is doing. That promise, encoded in the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), represents more than bureaucracy—it’s the lifeblood of democracy. So when lawmakers floated Senate Bill 77, a proposal to delay government responses to records requests and carve out special categories for journalists, advocates and ordinary citizens alike took note. After weeks of political wrangling, legislative delays, and pointed criticism from transparency watchdogs, Colorado lawmakers have now abandoned attempts to override Governor Jared Polis’s veto of this contentious bill, leaving the state’s current records access rules firmly in place.
The backdrop to this legislative standoff is instructive. Open records laws across the United States were born out of public mistrust—Watergate, Pentagon Papers, the desire for sunlight in government accounting. Every attempt to reshape these laws summons up historical caution: tinker too much, and you risk swapping openness for opaqueness. The stakes get even higher in today’s climate of eroding faith in public institutions.
Pressure Builds: Advocates Push Back Against Restrictive Reform
Supporters of SB77 argued that governments have been bombarded by increasingly complex and voluminous requests—sometimes fishing expeditions, sometimes genuine oversight. “Requests can paralyze small town offices with limited staff,” explained State Sen. Cathy Kipp, D-Fort Collins, a key sponsor. She and other backers asserted that current research and response fees rarely cover the real cost of fulfilling modern-day records requests, a challenge echoed by many city clerks and county attorneys.
The bill would have extended government response windows from three working days to as many as three weeks in certain scenarios, with separate timelines for journalists, non-profits, and general citizens. Proponents claimed this was a necessary modernization, but not everyone was convinced it was warranted or wise.
Transparency watchdogs were alarmed. The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition called the bill a “dramatic step backward,” warning it would allow officials to pick and choose who qualifies as a journalist and thus, who receives faster access—or potentially any access at all. “This is how accountability erodes,” argued Jeffrey Roberts, the Coalition’s executive director, in a letter to lawmakers. “If people have to wait three weeks, the information is often stale—irrelevant by the time it finally arrives.” Journalists, civil rights advocates, and ordinary Coloradans came together in opposition, highlighting how delays and rising research fees might place a price tag on civic engagement, disproportionately impacting those with the least means to challenge government secrecy.
“This is how accountability erodes. If people have to wait three weeks, the information is often stale—irrelevant by the time it finally arrives.”
—Jeffrey Roberts, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition
On the other side, bill sponsors contended that complex requests are costly—sometimes hundreds of staff hours—and that existing open records fees haven’t kept pace with demand. Yet, data from other states suggest that when public records regimes are weakened, government missteps go unchallenged, and public trust deteriorates. According to a Pew Research Center study, only 20% of Americans feel they can trust the government to do the right thing “most of the time.” Thicker walls—be they delays or higher costs—strengthen this perception.
Legislative Reality Check: The Challenge—and Importance—of Transparency
Attempting to override a governor’s veto is no small feat in Colorado. The bar is set high: a two-thirds supermajority in both houses, a figure that hasn’t been reached for an actual bill veto since 1988. Multiple delays and scheduling the override vote past the legislative session’s end exposed the reality: there simply wasn’t enough support among lawmakers to push SB77 through over Governor Polis’s objections.
Governor Polis’s veto message was clear and unapologetic. He refused to support a rewrite of CORA that “creates three different timelines for fulfilling records requests based on who was making them,” stressing instead the need to maintain and extend access across the board. The governor sided with advocates who feared a slippery slope: if one group can be treated differently, all can.
Bill supporters, for their part, were not insensible to criticism. They promised to engage with transparency advocates and work toward a compromise over the summer, hinting at a willingness to refine future reform attempts. Whether that collaboration yields genuine advances or simply new procedural hurdles remains to be seen.
The deeper question remains for lawmakers and their constituents: should democracy prioritize administrative convenience at the expense of public oversight? And if so, who is empowered—or entitled—to scrutinize the gears of government? Colorado’s answer for now is measured caution: hands off the public’s right to know. But the conversation is far from over.
Across the nation, efforts to limit—or expand—public access to government records reflect larger ideological divides. Progressive leaders commonly argue that true accountability requires more, not less, public scrutiny, especially when state and local governments make crucial decisions about law enforcement, education, and health policy. Attempts to undermine transparency are often rooted in a desire to shield power from inconvenient questions—a tendency history reminds us is rarely benign.
One thing is clear: Trust, once eroded by bureaucratic delay or arbitrary gatekeeping, is hard to restore. Vulnerable communities, in particular, rely on swift and affordable access to information to fight injustice, challenge discrimination, and take part in civic life. As historian Heather Cox Richardson notes, democracy—like sunlight—works best in the open.
As Colorado lawmakers gear up for another round of debates next session, the lessons of SB77 are etched into the record: government transparency is not a luxury. It is a necessity, hard-won and easily lost. For those who value open government, vigilance remains, as ever, the price of liberty.
