Making Government More User-Friendly
Three Bills Would Help Let The Sun In
By Jeff Roberts
Special to the GPHN
State lawmakers are expected to consider at least three measures that would expand public access to information in Colorado.
Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, has announced plans for bill that would open the records of nonprofits that serve people with developmental and intellectual disabilities – if those agencies receive more than half their funds from public sources.
The proposal likely would cover all of the state’s 20 Community Centered Boards (CCBs), including Denver-based Rocky Mountain Human Services. Questions about RMHS, formerly known as Denver Options, were raised last year when the agency reported unspecified budget problems, missed payments to service providers and cut ties with its founder.
In 2003, Denver voters approved a property tax increase for RMHS. Aguilar said Denver Councilwoman Debbie Ortega reached out to her about possible open-records legislation after Ortega had trouble getting detailed information about RMHS’ finances.
By requiring public disclosure of detailed CCB spending, “people could analyze the data and bring things to our attention that we may not know are happening,” said Aguilar, who has a daughter with developmental disabilities. “We can’t fix something if we don’t know there’s a problem.”
Another bill, proposed by Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, and Rep. Dan Pabon, D-Denver, is intended to ensure that electronic records maintained in spreadsheets and databases are made available to requesters in a similar format that can be searched and analyzed.
Government agencies in Colorado sometimes provide data only in PDF format or as printouts, frustrating users who wish to analyze a large number of records. Governments also sometimes withhold database records from the public if the data include confidential information. Although the language of the bill has yet to be finalized, one proposed version would require the disclosure of database records after any confidential information is removed from a dataset.
Also expected during the 2016 legislative session, which kicks off this month, is a bill to expand the Colorado Open Records Act to include the administrative records of the state Judicial Branch. The Colorado Supreme Court recently adopted new access rules for those records, but Rep. Polly Lawrence, R-Douglas County, has said that legislators should set public records policies.
“No branch of state government should be allowed to dictate to the public why it is exempt from policies that are meant to make it accountable to the taxpayers,” Lawrence said during a Supreme Court hearing last fall.
Jeff Roberts, a Park Hill resident, is executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Like CFOIC’s Facebook page or follow @CoFOIC on Twitter.