Yesterday, the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee considered a bill to modernize and update the Colorado Open Records Act, and the bill passed 4-1 with five amendments. It now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Luis Toro issued the following statement:
“As we highlighted in our 2013 report, 21st Century Sunshine, CORA is in desperate need of modernization for the digital age. Ethics Watch has participated in a task force over the past year working to modernize CORA, specifically on the issue of digital records. Currently, data that exists in searchable formats like Excel is turned over in unsearchable format like paper copies or pdfs by records custodians, a process allowed by the current CORA law. The task force worked all year to craft a compromise bill that would address the concerns of requestors and records custodians.
Ethics Watch remains committed to the core concepts of CORA reform from the working group that would ensure digital records are accessible in a searchable format. We are still reviewing the amendments passed yesterday to make sure they will not have the effect of reducing public access to government records.”
