AURORA | About six weeks after City Councilman Charlie Richardson filed the open records request heard ‘round city hall, council members recently re-upped the debate on how the city fulfills open records requests under state statute.

At the end of an at-times stormy May 6 spring workshop, council members agreed to bring the issue of how the city charges for open records under the Colorado Open Records Act to a future policy committee meeting. The idea of digitizing all records procured through CORA requests in the city was discussed but ultimately dismissed at a Management and Finance Committee meeting earlier this year.

Councilman Bob LeGare suggested the city consider a policy allowing a CORA requester to be eligible for a refund of the fees associated with a request if the final price of the documents was at least 50 percent more than the initial estimate.  Council members expressed tepid acceptance of that proposal.

The latest open records saga was spawned by a request Richardson made earlier this year in an effort to procure documents related to to a traffic sign located near an exit lane at the Costco on South Havana Street. Initially estimated to cost about $180 in staff time and printing fees, Richardson became incensed after the estimated price ballooned to nearly $500. He also took issue with the amount of information that was redacted from the documents his request generated.

“May I be so bold to suggest that the basis of the CORA law in Colorado is open access to documents?” Richardson said at the recent meeting at Meadow Hills Golf Course. “It is not supposed to be a minefield in the redaction game, chutes and ladders, OK? … God help any other citizen in this city who tries to go the CORA route.”

City Attorney Mike Hyman said there are several reasons why lines could be redacted from a CORA request, including information that falls under the umbrella of attorney/client privilege, or private financial information, like a sales tax return.

Richardson has filed several recent CORA requests instead of using other available means for council members to obtain information, such as the city manager’s council request system, or simply asking a city staffer for a summary report. Richardson has maintained he has not received complete information when utilizing those latter means.

“I didn’t feel I was getting accurate information,” he said.

Richardson, the former city attorney, has claimed he is barred from filing additional open records requests in the city under Aurora’s open records payment policies. However, Hyman has forcefully reminded Richardson he is not banned, but that under city policy, CORA requestors who don’t pay for a completed request are subject to a full deposit on all future requests. Richardson has said that equates to a ban due to the unjust financial burden.

“If that’s not an implied ban, I don’t know what is,” he said.

The city has broad discretion related to open records requests. While the first hour of staff time devoted to a particular request is free, the requestor is charged $30 per hour for every ensuing hour of staff time a request demands, according to the city’s open records policy. Copies and printouts for records requests cost 25 cents per page, and the city can deliver the records in whatever format it deems fit, which could greatly change the cost of the documents. Records provided on a CD or DVD cannot exceed the cost of the disc, and a four-gigabyte thumb drive costs $4.

A new piece of state legislation, Senate Bill 40, could soon require government entities to provide documents procured through a CORA request in a searchable format, pending the outcome of the state legislative session.

Other council members at the spring workshop also denounced some of the communications they’ve recently had with city staff.

“I have huge issues if one of the staff tell me, ‘Excuse me, that’s confidential,’” Councilwoman Barb Cleland said. “You’re a staff member — you just email that information. It’s confidential? Who’s your freakin’ boss? I am.”

Councilwoman Renie Peterson of Ward II has been critical of her communications with staff for several months after she learned city workers had been negotiating a potential lease with a homeless advocacy group in her ward.

“We’re the policymakers, we expect all the information to be given to us by our staff so that we can make a responsible decision,” she said. “… We are left out in left field (and) we know nothing about what’s going on or what took place until we know about it from outside of our organization.”

She added she’s keen on coming up with a speedy solution to the quagmire.

“I don’t want to go through any more of this and I don’t want the next person that takes my seat to go through any more of this,” said Peterson, who’s term-limited and will not seek re-election this November. “ … We need to figure this out. There’s lots of little problems — it’s not just one. It’s a rolling ball with all sorts of little problems.”

At the end of the workshop session, Mayor Steve Hogan implored staff to get the CORA issue back onto a policy committee agenda in order to get the issue solved.

“Get the recommendation to the policy committee as soon as possible so the committee can make a decision or make a recommendation,” he said. “This shouldn’t take three months … don’t let it be another three or four months, to make some recommendation on changes, please, please.”