HB 25-1242

HB 25-1242 is a Colorado bill that aims to enhance government transparency. It removes certain provisions related to the state legislature's meetings and requires law enforcement conduct and discipline records to be made available to the public upon request, with personal officer information redacted. The bill also updates the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) by clarifying how requests for public records are handled, reducing fees for record retrieval, and setting stricter time limits for responses. Additionally, it modifies the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act to make more police interaction reports available to the public within a shorter timeframe. This bill has been signed into law, meaning its provisions will now be enforced in practice.

Official Summary

Section 1 of the bill repeals provisions in the Colorado open meetings law that specifically apply to the general assembly that were enacted in 2024 by Senate Bill 24-157. Section 2 requires that the database created and maintained by the peace officer standards and training board that includes specified information related to peace officer conduct and discipline be sortable in addition to being searchable and that it be available upon request to any member of the public with only personal information of peace officers redacted at no cost to the requester. Sections 3, 4, and 5 make the following changes to the Colorado open records act (CORA): Specifies the manner in which service of requests for public records must be made; Requires that a requester of public records submit with the request an affidavit of service, which creates a rebuttable presumption of the date that service is made; Clarifies that any rules made by a custodian for the inspection of public records cannot increase any costs charged to a requester and cannot expand the date and time for inspection of public records; Removes the requirement that a requester must request that the custodian notify the requester that requested public records are in active use, in storage, or otherwise not readily available; Clarifies that computation of time for response periods is in accordance with the generally applicable law for computation of time and does not include the day that service is made; Permits computation of time for a request that was mailed to begin on the third day after the date of mailing; Changes the reasonable time to respond to a request for public records from 3 working days to 5 days; For a custodian to not be required to produce a digital public record in a searchable or sortable format, requires documentary evidence that producing the record in that format would violate the terms of a copyright or licensing agreement or documentary evidence, including an opinion from legal counsel, that producing the record in that format would result in the release of a third party's proprietary information; Although a custodian is allowed to deny inspection of a personnel file, allows inspection of any writings that reflect or discuss the exercise of official government functions by any public employee subject to certain permissible redactions; Allows for the first 5 hours of time expended in connection with the research and retrieval of public records to be free of charge to the requester; Caps the amount of the hourly fee that can be imposed for research and retrieval of public records to $25; Allows a $50 fee to be imposed for attorney review which is limited to review of requested public records for attorney-client privileged communication; and Invalidates any fee imposed by a custodian if the custodian does not provide information in writing to the requester concerning an estimate of time to be expended and fees to be charged in connection with responding to the request. Sections 6, 7, 8, and 9 make the following changes to the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA): Adds to the definition of "official record" any incident report or other record of an interaction between any on-duty peace officer and any member of the public; Modifies the provisions on the response period to state that a custodian shall respond to a request for criminal justice records 3 days after the day the request is received unless extenuating circumstances apply, in which case the 3-day response period may be extended for a period not to exceed 10 days. The extenuating circumstances set forth in CORA are the extenuating circumstances applicable for requests under the CCJRA. Requires that records in a completed internal investigation be available for public inspection within 21 days of a request being submitted and whether or not the investigation involved a member of the public; Removes the court's discretion and the requirement that the court find that improper denial of records is arbitrary or capricious to award court costs and attorney fees; and Applies the same parameters as those established under CORA for search and retrieval and attorney fees.(Note: This summary applies to this bill as introduced.)

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