Public Records - Rocky Mountain Voice

Follow the money: Why every Colorado taxpayer should check their county budget

2Jun

By External OutletNo Comments

Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Follow the money: Why every Colorado taxpayer should check their county budget

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Check your county’s budget I wanted to offer you an example and some encouragement about checking your county (or city) budget. For my example, I chose to focus in on my home county’s (Logan) Human Services budget. I’ll lead you through the process before looking at an interesting pattern I found. I started, and I recommend you start, by simply inquiring at your county (or through the commissioner’s office) for their budget archives. This was how I arrived at Logan’s archives, the first link at bottom. Budgets are big and complex. You need some way to wrangle the complexity down to size. One way to do that is to do what I did: pick a specific topic and stick to the summaries. You might look at salaries over t...

JeffCo Parents Demand Answers After Hidden School Safety Audit Surfaces

19May

By External OutletNo Comments

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.

12May

By Jen SchumannNo Comments

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

12May

By External OutletNo Comments

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.

23Apr

By Shaina ColeNo Comments

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

9Apr

By External OutletNo Comments

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 ...

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

7Apr

By External OutletNo Comments

Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I have mentioned (and used) the TOPS system, our state’s online checkbook register, multiple times. It’s a great way to see who our state is paying and for what. I noticed recently (within the last 6 months) that the people who run it made it significantly harder to use: I’m not sure why, but at some point they made it so you can only go month by month.** I had a reader kindly volunteer his time and skill at computer programming to come up with a way to automate TOPS searches so I, and now you since the program is public, don’t have to click and wait month by month to find what we need. The program this person came up with lives online and is linked first below. They titled it a TOPS scraper. It’s pretty i...

“Single most insecure person I’ve ever encountered”: Former Griswold aide breaks silence ahead of AG race

2Apr

By Jen SchumannNo Comments

Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

“Single most insecure person I’ve ever encountered”: Former Griswold aide breaks silence ahead of AG race

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Reese Edwards didn’t plan to speak out. He spent less than a year inside Colorado’s Secretary of State’s office before leaving in 2020, frustrated and burned out enough to walk away. He wasn’t looking to revisit any of it. Now, with Jena Griswold running for attorney general, he’s speaking up—and doing it on the record. “I love democracy with an almost religious belief,” he told RMV. “The idea of people deciding for themselves how they will govern themselves. That’s why I took the job.” Edwards, who served as Director of Government and Public Affairs, is now going on record with a warning. He says what he witnessed inside the Secretary of State’s office—erratic leadership, blurred lines between political ambition and public duty ...

Cherry Creek Schools Face Scrutiny After 14 Contracts Signed Improperly

27Mar

By External OutletNo Comments

DENVER7, Approved, Local

Cherry Creek Schools Face Scrutiny After 14 Contracts Signed Improperly

By Natalie Chuck | Denver7 Revelation comes just months after the former superintendent resigned and his wife, the head of human resources, was place on administrative leave amid an ongoing investigation. GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — Denver7 Investigates has learned that 14 employment contracts, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, were signed improperly in the Cherry Creek School District. The revelation comes after one parent and district alum filed an open records request to see an interim superintendent's contract. "I wanted to see what the terms of his contract were," parent Molly Lamar told Denver7 Investigates. The contract for Toby Arritola, who was previously the district's executive director of strategic initiatives, was signed Feb. 2...

Denver Declines To Release Completed Probe Into Police Division Chief After 14 Months and $110K

5Mar

By External OutletNo Comments

CBS Colorado, Approved, Local

Denver Declines To Release Completed Probe Into Police Division Chief After 14 Months and $110K

By Brian Maass | CBS Colorado A CBS Colorado investigation has learned the City of Denver has spent $110,000 on a 14-month investigation of Denver Police Division Chief Magen Dodge, but is refusing to release the completed investigation, which was finalized three months ago. "I have determined based upon a balancing of the factors... that the potential harm in disclosing the investigation report prior to the completion of the disciplinary process significantly weighs against the public interest at this time," wrote Andrea Webber, Records Administrator for Denver's Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Denver Police Department. Webber said a disciplinary process is underway, justifying the city's refusal to release the outside investigation report. ...

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Tag: Public Records

Follow the money: Why every Colorado taxpayer should check their county budget

JeffCo Parents Demand Answers After Hidden School Safety Audit Surfaces

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

Jeffco Parents Demand Answers After Hidden Safety Audit Flagged 153 Threats

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

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

“Single most insecure person I’ve ever encountered”: Former Griswold aide breaks silence ahead of AG race

Cherry Creek Schools Face Scrutiny After 14 Contracts Signed Improperly

Denver Declines To Release Completed Probe Into Police Division Chief After 14 Months and $110K

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