Colorado lawmakers' third attempt to slow pubic records responses fails in committee vote

Seth Klamann, The Denver Post on Mar 5, 2026

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DENVER — For the third consecutive year, Colorado lawmakers have failed in their bid to weaken transparency laws and to give government officials more time to respond to public records requests.

The Senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee rejected Senate Bill 107 in a bipartisan 3-2 vote on Thursday. Government officials who testified in favor of the proposal described waves of public records requests that have strained their staff members in recent years.

But journalists from several news outlets, including The Denver Post, warned that state and local agencies already can — and often do — unilaterally delay their own response times. The journalists also described investigative stories that relied on timely access to government records.

The proposal would have made several changes to the Colorado Open Records Act, which generally gives Coloradans access to documents and information held by government entities. But its most substantial change would have given agencies five working days — instead of three — to respond to requests.

Agencies already can choose to extend their response time on a request to seven working days, and the bill would’ve increased that to 10 days. Together, the changes would allow up to three weeks for responses, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition pointed out.

To assuage concerns about that change, the bill would’ve also required government agencies to provide more free research time if they exceeded SB-107’s expanded timelines.

“What this bill does is modernize CORAs in ways that are fair to everyone,” said Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat, who sponsored the bill with Republican Sen. Janice Rich of Grand Junction. CORAs are the colloquial shorthand for public records requests.

But the lawmakers who voted against the bill argued that the proposal would make the government less transparent, both in reality and in public perception.

“I believe government should provide accountability and transparency every chance it gets to its people,” Sen. Katie Wallace, a Longmont Democrat, said shortly before voting against the bill. “When governments start hiding or even appearing to hide, it’s a bad thing for representative democracy.”

The bill’s demise comes less than a year after Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a similar version of the proposal during the 2025 session. That bill had substantially similar goals, though it included a carveout for members of the media that Polis opposed. Another version died during the 2024 session.

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