PERRY: Polis’ veto of open records law change critical to ensuring public access

Journalism, like beauty and pornography, is established by the eye of the beholder.

Given that everyone judges the quality and depth of each of those things on a wide and sometimes wacky spectrum, whom in the government would you trust to endorse as the most fabulous or vulgar thing ever?

More important, which county wonk, city clerk or state bureaucrat do you think should decide whether former gubernatorial hopeful Heidi Ganahl’s far-right “news” website, “The Rocky Mountain Voice,” is as much journalism as is the Sentinel, or the Denver Post, or Donald Trump’s Truth Social blog?

In what appears to have been a well-intentioned move by this year’s state legislature to make Colorado’s critical open records law more effective at getting the public, and especially the media, government records for use in news reports, the same lawmakers messed it up.

Senate Bill 25-077 got so bad that after passing with very bi-partisan support, Gov. Jared Polis vetoed the measure last week.

He did the right thing. It was a good try with dangerous results.

For years, lobbyists for news media like the Sentinel, led these days by Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, have pushed lawmakers to make the Colorado Open Records Act easier and cheaper to get public information.

Few things rise to the level of importance for government accountability as does media access to public records. It’s that access that enables reporters to give the public accurate and critical details about how the tax dollars are spent. Access to those records empower journalists to tell the public what elected and appointed officials really do, as opposed to just saying what they do.

For generations, hundreds of serious problems in government have been identified by journalists, and problems were resolved, because of this important tool.

The problem, many government leaders and critics of the act say, is that it can be time consuming and sometimes difficult to find and dispense information held by the government.

While reporters are clamoring for ways to make retrieval of information requests faster and easier, some lawmakers, inspired by local government officials, want to make it more expensive and more restrictive. Another problem, they point out, is that the same law that empowers journalists empowers political enemies to comb records in hopes of finding something useful to use against a political opponent.

In an attempt to address that issue, legislators proposed giving “real” journalists better treatment than anyone else in an effort to sort them from “nuisance” records requests. The change was touted as a way to get the media what they asked for better and faster.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Polis, in his veto message, spells out the problem.

“Essentially, under this bill, speed to access public information is determined by who you are,” Polis said. “A newsperson, a member of the public, and a person seeking financial gain may all request the same information and, under this bill, get access to that information on different timelines. To ensure fairness and confidence in public transparency, all legitimate requests for public transparency under CORA should be treated equally under the law, without preference for some requestors over others.”

Even worse, the bill would empower, or plague, some government employee keeper of the records to decide whether a requester is “legit” media, fake media or just a troublemaker.

You don’t have to peruse many reader criticisms on the Sentinel website to understand my hesitancy at letting aficionados of Donald Trump or Congressperson Lauren Boebert decide whether we’re the real deal.

Just as important, however, is that no one should be ranking who among the public is more deserving of access to city council travel expenditure records or emails between elected officials about what books they’d like to see banned.

The state open records act makes it clear that anyone, and everyone, in Colorado has the right to inspect the records we all pay for and own.

While I, and many journalists, can appreciate that there are lots of state lawmakers who realize and value the work that we do using the state open records laws, they undermined the power of that very law by setting up an impossible game of ordaining the “real” journalists and elevating them about everyone else.

We all, equally, deserve access to those records, the Sentinel and Ganahl, because they belong to all of us. 

The real problem here is that so many government employees and officials see distributing public records and information as a separate and additional government task. A real fix here would be to help all government workers and officials understand that accountability and transparency are just as important as scheduling trucks for streetsweeping or mailing out property assessments.

While a veto in Colorado would normally put this problem to rest for now, there’s a new threat linked to this measure.

The bill’s sponsors, state Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta and state Sen. Cathy Kipp, D-Fort Collins, say they’ll work to override Polis’ veto.

Officials at COFIC say the bill sponsors may have the support in both chambers to win two-thirds of each house for a veto override.

Don’t do it.

As a tired journalist working for a newspaper that struggles to come up with the money we need for open records requests to keep the public in the know, this is not a win. It’s a loss for everyone.

“It would certainly be convenient for the Executive Branch to agree to weaken CORA,” Polis said. “But as a representative for the people of Colorado, I support more, not less, openness and transparency.”

I do, too. Tell your state lawmaker to oppose a veto override.

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com