Government transparency doesn’t have to be as difficult — and expensive — as state and local lawmakers keep making it.
Few things are more critical in exposing, preventing, and even reversing government corruption and malfeasance than open records and meeting laws.
Nothing.
The ability of the public, and the press, to inspect the trail of records and recordings revealing what every state and local agency does, courtesy of taxpayers, builds integrity and trust in the government.
Despite a citizen-initiated mandate from Colorado residents in 1972, just about every level of government works to find ways around open records or open meetings laws, often tossing them off as a cumbersome nuisance that detracts from the government’s “real work.”
Providing access to public records and meetings is “real” work, and history has repeatedly shown that “real” bad things happen when the laws are weakened or violated.
It took the Sentinel and a handful of other news media collaborating on a series of stories and investigations months to uncover weaknesses and outright loopholes in state records laws allowing police fired from one Colorado agency to get a job in another agency without the public ever knowing it.
After more than three years, the Sentinel is still embroiled in a lawsuit with the City of Aurora after reporters discovered that the City Council held a meeting in secret, illegally, in an attempt to prevent the public from hearing arguments for and against censuring Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky for allegations of interfering in police operations. Jurinsky infamously called former Police Chief Vanessa Wilson “trash” on right-wing radio shows and admittedly advised the former chief about firing a deputy chief.
Witnesses told the Sentinel that a “show of hands” vote was taken in secret among lawmakers to scuttle the censure action against Jurinsky, and a public vote afterward awarded her $16,000 in attorney fees.
Currently, the Colorado Supreme Court is hearing appeals from the city after lower courts ruled for the Sentinel — and the release of secret meeting recordings, which would allow for the public to hear for themselves whether the public’s business was conducted wrongly and illegally.
A judge in 2024 forced the City of Aurora to turn over a recording of a secret Aurora City Council committee meeting to the Sentinel, marking at least the second time since 2022 that the council or a subgroup of the council was found to have violated state law while meeting behind closed doors. City lawmakers met without informing or admitting the public to discuss the performance and pay of the city’s four top appointed officials last October, including candid doubts about the court administrator and city attorney, whom they nonetheless recommended for raises.
These issues and hundreds just like that across the state depend on laws that force willing and unwilling government officials to allow the press and public to see a wide range of records, data and recordings.
But winning access isn’t the only problem for the media and the public looking to reveal what the government does right and wrong.
State lawmakers continue to legislate impediments into law, primarily by making it so expensive that only the very wealthy can afford to impose transparency in government.
Last year, Democratic state lawmakers, exposed for violating the spirit and letter of open meetings laws, changed the statute to suit their needs. State lawmakers were outed for conducting virtual meetings with fellow members through group emails and texts as they caucused and lobbied state bills.
State law specifically forbids three or more elected officials from meeting away from public scrutiny when they conduct the public’s business.
The defense state lawmakers gave in changing the law is that it’s too hard to be a state lawmaker without being able to group chat, group email and keep those conversations secret from public scrutiny. Clearly, none of those voting for that measure last year would have been able to handle the job before email and mobile phone messaging became a thing.
The public’s need and right to know what government officials and bureaucrats do is diminished by such self-serving laws. It’s also hampered by state lawmakers regularly raising the fee that agencies can charge the media and public to provide access to public records that already belong to the public. After changing the law last year to provide for secretive legislative bargaining, lawmakers raised the hourly price governments can charge the public for records requests to a whopping $40 an hour.
Whether intentional or not, the hike puts revealing government actions and meetings outside the realm of affordability, at great cost to public accountability.
In addition to many state lawmakers and government officials seeing records requests as a distraction and annoyance, lawmakers look for ways to legislate real-live barricades for public requesters deemed to be nefarious and purposely bothersome in their public records requests.
No responsible person wants to see scarce government resources wasted for any reason, including odious or disingenuous requests of public records. But putting all “genuine” records requests out of reach of the public is not an acceptable answer.
The clear answer is not to continually find ways to discourage or prevent the media from accessing public records and information, instead, the state needs to ensure that the workings of the government are simply more accessible by anyone at any time, preventing government staff from having to fulfill records requests in the first place.
In a world where so much is available on public databases, moving copies of records to public spaces would be a time and money savings for governments and members of the public diligently providing the public information and context.
That’s likely years away. In the interim, state lawmakers must lower the price — and barrier — to access public records, despite the challenge to do so.
As for ensuring public meetings are public when it comes to conducting the public’s business, for those who find it too difficult or distasteful, leaving public service for a private company job is probably a better solution for everyone.
