Zansberg: Colorado’s Open Records Act much improved

On Thursday, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law Senate Bill 17-40, which was introduced by Sen. John Kefalas (D, Fort Collins).

All Coloradans owe both men, and several other elected officials, a huge debt of gratitude. The new law makes express a guarantee that those of us in the “records requester community” had previously argued was implicit in the Colorado’s Open Records Act: the right of all Coloradans to receive digitized copies of public records that the government maintains in a digitized format.

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In the House, Pabon, along with his colleagues Mike Weissman and Chris Kennedy, worked long days and nights on the final two days of the 2017 legislative session, meeting with government lawyers from the Secretary of State’s Office, CU Boulder and the Attorney General’s office, along with the bill’s proponents (including Lauren Gustus, Chris Koeberl, Shayne Madsen, Elena Nunez, Peg Pearl, and Jeff Roberts) to hash out a compromise bill that was quickly approved by both houses on the final day of the session.