Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Public Records

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser Faces Scrutiny Over Access to Lawsuit Records
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser Faces Scrutiny Over Access to Lawsuit Records

By Adam Herbets | The Center Square (The Center Square) - Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has filed dozens of lawsuits against the federal government, priding himself on his ability to fight and win cases against the Trump Administration, but he has yet to answer questions about the costs of those lawsuits to taxpayers. His office publishes a partial list of cases but otherwise keeps the full list behind a $331 paywall. While the partial list highlights "the total amount of federal funds successfully defended" by Weiser's lawsuits, it doesn't tell taxpayers the cost of pursuing the lawsuits. It also doesn't show whether taxpayers paid outside firms to do any of the work. Unlike a number of neighboring states, Colorado state law does not requir...
Whoever holds power, Colorado records should remain public
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Whoever holds power, Colorado records should remain public

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project CFOIC updates their CORA/Open Meetings guide CFOIC has been a great help to me in learning how to do public records requests (and they continue to be as I encounter issues with getting records, etc.). They recently updated their excellent guide on open records requests and open meetings law based on recent changes. It’s linked at bottom. If you are doing requests or thinking about it, bookmark it. In the spirit of paying forward the help I received, I am happy to help you in what ways I can if you are thinking of doing some records requests and/or if you have a topic you want to investigate but don’t know where to start. Message me or email through my newsletter. https://coloradofoic.org/op...
Colorado Mountain Town Revolts After AI Cameras and Robots Spark Privacy Concerns
The Colorado Sun, Approved, Local

Colorado Mountain Town Revolts After AI Cameras and Robots Spark Privacy Concerns

By Nancy Lofholm | The Colorado Sun Controversy is being stirred by a Silicon Valley refugee who says Paonia is “on the cutting edge of violating citizens’ privacy.” Now he’s running for mayor. First, it was the robots. They were trundling along sidewalks in Paonia last summer gathering data on how accommodating those thoroughfares were for people with disabilities. The wandering robots took townspeople by complete surprise. Then came the surveillance cameras mounted on poles and walls last fall. They were capturing those doing business at the town hall, coming and going from the town’s water plant, and dancing in front of the town park’s bandstand. Even those with impressive Western swing moves weren’t happy to unknowingly be caught on camera.   ...
Court Orders Release of Larimer Autopsy Report in Transparency Dispute
Approved, Commentary, Complete Colorado, Local

Court Orders Release of Larimer Autopsy Report in Transparency Dispute

By: Cory Gaines | Commentary, Complete Colorado Abortion is obviously a polarizing topic.  While this column touches on the subject, it’s not the actual focus.  Rather, it’s about something I hope we can all agree on: transparency. Government officials should not be hiding information from us based on what they think is good for us to know, or for some ideological reason; a lesson the Larimer County Coroner recently learned the hard way. In February 2025 a young woman died due to complications from a late term abortion.  According to reports in various pro-life media outlets (regular progressive Colorado media, of course, have run from this story like the plague), along with the autopsy report that followed, Planned Parenthood in Fort Collins performe...
JeffCo Parents Demand Answers After Hidden School Safety Audit Surfaces
Colorado Public Radio, Approved, Local

JeffCo Parents Demand Answers After Hidden School Safety Audit Surfaces

By Molly Cruse | CPR News Two weeks ago, Lindsay Datko filed a public records request for a school safety audit from JeffCo Public Schools. Datko — a parent of three children in the district and executive director of the parent advocacy group Jeffco Kids First — said she first learned about the audit through school committee meeting minutes. But when she requested the records through Colorado’s open records law, she said the district initially told her only hard copies existed and that they had been destroyed. Now, Jeffco Public Schools parents and advocates are demanding answers.  The unreleased audit was conducted by a student safety company called Gaggle. The report uncovered more than 150 “imminent threats” just weeks before the September 2025...
DataRepublican never spoke in a meeting. A million people are listening now.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

DataRepublican never spoke in a meeting. A million people are listening now.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Jennica Pounds was in the corner, as usual. It was a meeting at Snap, and the way it worked was simple: her communication partner, Brent Mills, typed notes to her on a laptop. She typed back. Mills translated her shorthand for the room. Most meetings, nobody looked at her screen. That was fine. It had worked for years. Then Evan Spiegel stopped mid-sentence. “Wait,” the CEO said. “I want to know what Jennica is saying.” Forty years. That was the first time anyone in a meeting had done that. Jennica Pounds—known online as DataRepublican, small r—is deaf and nonspeaking. She spent more than fifteen years inside some of the biggest technology companies in the world: Amazon, eBay, Snap, Upstart, where she was a senior distinguished m...
Jeffco Parents Demand Answers After Hidden Safety Audit Flagged 153 Threats
DENVER7, Approved, Local

Jeffco Parents Demand Answers After Hidden Safety Audit Flagged 153 Threats

By Maggie Bryan | Denver7 A safety audit completed a month before the Evergreen High School shooting flagged 153 threats in Jeffco schools, including a hit list with around 15 names. JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Jefferson County Public Schools parents are demanding answers after learning school district leaders received a third-party safety audit flagging 153 imminent threats — including a hit list with 15 names — a month before the shooting at Evergreen High School, but never released it to the public. The audit was conducted by student safety firm Gaggle, which was given access to the district's Google Workspace, including Google Drive and email accounts belonging to students, from February to April 2025. In the report, the company said it looked for questionable cont...
Weiser’s record: 27,000 complaints. 17 settlements.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s record: 27,000 complaints. 17 settlements.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice When a Coloradan files a consumer complaint with the attorney general's office — a contractor who vanished with a deposit, a lender charging illegal interest, a landlord who pocketed a security deposit without cause — the office receives it, logs it and adds it to a database. The complaint may help build a future case. It informs trend reports. For the person who filed it, that is usually where it ends. Coloradans filed a record 26,993 complaints with Attorney General Phil Weiser's Consumer Protection Section last fiscal year. That's nearly three times the number filed when Weiser took office in 2019. His March 2026 press release describes the growth as "over 200 percent." His office's own annual figures put the actual increa...
Colorado Supreme Court sides with transparency in child abuse hotline case
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado Supreme Court sides with transparency in child abuse hotline case

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The CFOIC article linked at bottom details a recent ruling by the CO Supreme Court. Five years on from when the suit was first filed, the state’s highest court ruled that the Colorado Sun and 9News have a right to some records from the state’s child abuse hotline pertaining to group homes for children. The State of Colorado, in particular the State Department of Human Services (CDHS) had argued that releasing the statistics would violate state statutes pertaining to confidentiality, mainly due to there only being three group homes from which statistics were sought.** Quoting with links intact: “CDHS contended the information could be used to identify individual informants, children or family members — in ...

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