CORA and Records Requests

Records requests must be made in writing, through any of the following formats:

• Email
• Physical letter - mailed to or dropped off at the main reception area of the Broomfield campus at 305 Interlocken Parkway
• Google form (if set up by the responding agency or program)

Each agency is responsible for its own records, and one of the employees for each agency is the "official custodian" of those records. The official custodian for CDA is the Director of Strategic Outreach and Engagement. This person is responsible for all of the agency's records, even though he or she may not actually keep track of these records on a day to day basis. The official custodian is responsible for answering requests for records or for directing the request to the appropriate division’s custodian or to the Communications Director if the request is from the media.

Record custodians hold public records in trust for all members of the public. Every time you ask to see a record, a custodian must balance your right to access public records with the agency's obligation to maintain the record and to perform its other jobs. The custodian must protect the integrity of the record and must prevent unnecessary interference with the agency's function. Your request to see records should be in writing and the request should be as clear and specific as you can make it. That way, the agency knows what you want to see, and if a problem arises you can also prove that you made your request and when you made it.

Once the agency receives your request, the custodian will decide whether there are responsive records and, if so, where or who has them. If the custodian cannot make the record immediately available for you to look at, the agency has three working days to make it available to you. If your request is large enough that the agency cannot respond within three days, the custodian will let you know in writing and will have an additional seven working days to make it available under the Colorado Open Records Act. 

The requester can contact CDA through the following ways:

• Email cda_info@state.co.us
• The CORA request portal if this is a request for the Animal Health or Animal Welfare divisions
• Mailing a request to 305 Interlocken Parkway, Broomfield, CO 80021

When a CORA request is received, the custodian of records will identify the responsive records, determine time and cost, gather the records, and then release or close the request.

The custodian of records may reach out to the requester before the three day time limit in order to gain clarification on the request. This may come as a phone call, if a phone number is provided, or through email.

If the request is narrowed or refined, the custodian will ask the requester to note this in writing. This re-sets the timeline for response for a further three working days, but may result in a reduced cost estimate. 

Agencies can and normally do charge for the time that it takes to find, review, and if appropriate, redact records. The Colorado Open Records Act requires that the charge must be "reasonable.”

Keep in mind that the agency's cost may include the time it takes to gather, review, redact, and organize the documents for release. CDA CORA policy sets the fee per hour of staff time at $41.30, with one hour of complimentary staff time. After that hour, the custodian of records will help employees determine how much time it will take to gather and review any responsive records. Government agencies cannot and do not profit from this service. When the number of physical pages produced pursuant to CORA exceeds 25 pages front and back, the Department shall charge $0.25 per page for all documents copied.

If the request is determined to take less than an hour of staff time, CDA will release the records without needing payment.

If the request will take longer than an hour of staff time to gather, review, redact, and provide  the records, CDA will provide a time estimate and a request for payment, calculated at $41.30 per hour beyond the hour of complimentary staff time.

The requester must pay the cost estimate before the records can be released. Payment may be made in the form of a check, e-check, or credit card. Physical checks must be mailed to the CDA office in Broomfield. Electronic payment may be made through CDA’s CORA payment portal. A link will be provided with the total estimated amount. 

Receipt of documents can be given either physically or electronically, depending on the requester’s preference. Physical copies may be provided, free of charge unless the copies exceed 25 pages. Electronic copies are provided via email or through use of a Google folder link, or may be downloaded onto a flash drive. Physical inspection of records is also possible, wherein the requester may come to the site of record keeping. 

No. Members of the media are asked to adhere to the same CORA policy requirements as any member of the public, including paying for estimated costs. The Director of Communications will work with these requesters.

If you would like to see records that by statute should be publicly available at any time such as meeting minutes or agendas, this will not constitute a formal CORA request. Those records will be made available at no cost.

The Colorado Open Records Act applies to virtually all levels and types of governments within Colorado. These include the state, its agencies and institutions, cities, counties, cities and counties, towns, school districts, special districts, and housing authorities, among others. Each of these organizations of government must meet the requirements of the Open Records Act.

The "public records" that are open for inspection under the Colorado Open Records Act include a very wide variety of materials. Books, papers, maps, photographs, tape recordings and electronic mail, among other written materials, are all open records. In order to be a "public record," the materials must be made by the government, kept by the government, or maintained by the government, and the record must also involve the receipt or expenditure of public funds, or the exercise of functions required or authorized by law or administrative rule.

The Open Records Act only makes public written information that already exists within the government. It does not force an agency or other government organization involved to create new records to respond to a request. It also does not require the government to manipulate or analyze information it might have in a new way in order to respond to a request.

Many of the computer records kept by governments in Colorado are open for inspection under this law. For example, email is widely used and is an open record unless it is otherwise exempt from public inspection. The same is true of records kept in government databases.

You ask for a record and the person responding is unsure if there are records responsive to your request within their agency. 

• They should direct you to the CDA CORA Liaison if they are unsure. The records may reside with another state agency, in which case the Custodian of Records can put you in touch with the correct person or agency.

You are told that an attorney for the government agency will have to review the request before any documents can be released. 

• Usually, if a records custodian asks an attorney to review a records request, it is because the custodian is concerned about releasing something confidential. As discussed above, some government records are confidential, and the custodian cannot legally make confidential records available to the public. The custodian may take three working days to review a request with an attorney, or up to seven more working days if your request is large.

The agency takes too long to make records available for inspection. 

• The custodian is required to produce records immediately upon receipt of a records request if the records are available. If the records are not immediately available, the custodian must make them available within three working days. If your records request is unusually large, the custodian is entitled to as many as seven additional working days to make the records available. In most situations, an agency will be able to comply with these requirements. However, there may be occasions when you do not get to see the records as soon as you should.
• The people who will work to make records available to you have other duties as well. In fact, their duty to help you with records is something they do in addition to their usual work obligations. In most cases, requestors do not face any significant delay. If you need records by a specific deadline, discuss the date and time with the custodian. Chances are very good that you will save time in the long run by fully communicating your needs to the custodian of records.

You visit an agency to find a particular document, but the agency has thousands of records and you do not know where to find what you are looking for, or you don’t know how to ask for the specific records you need. 

• State agencies must make records available for you to see.. They are not obligated, however, to help you narrow your search when you ask for a mass of similar records. If you make a broad, vague request to an agency, the custodian will have a hard time giving you what you need. The custodian must react quickly to your request and so, if your request is vague, you will probably get access to records that are not applicable to your request, instead of just the records you want.
• Generally speaking, if you can be clear about what you want, the custodian will help you identify responsive records. Before you contact an agency to ask for a record, identify as much information about the record as possible (which program they may belong to, the date range, any key words, etc.). The more information you can provide a records custodian, the quicker you will get the information. Under most circumstances, if you ask the custodian for help identifying a particular record, the custodian will help you find it.

Information that can be redacted from records includes any banking account information, social security numbers, email addresses not provided for communication with the agency, proprietary business information, or trade secrets. Contract and solicitation numbers are considered part of the public record.
The custodian of records can withhold certain records if withholding is in the public interest and may include records that are:

Contrary to any state or federal statute

Records related to an ongoing/open investigation

Trade secrets

Privileged Information (attorney-client documents or communication)

Confidential commercial, financial, geological, or geophysical data 

Deliberative process (so personal that disclosure is likely to stifle honest and frank discussion within government)

Records of investigations conducted by sheriff’s offices, prosecuting attorneys, or police departments or any investigatory files compiled for any other law enforcement purpose.

Additionally, CDA redacts information that is subject to the Livestock Information Security Act or Soil Erosion Program Landowner Confidentiality statutes.

The Colorado Open Records Act does not apply to federal government records. A different federal statute, called the Freedom of Information Act, applies to the federal government. In a similar way, this federal statute does not apply to Colorado state or local government, either. However, requests made citing FOIA will be treated in accordance with CORA statutes.

The Colorado Open Records Act contains several specific exceptions. Though access to government records is the general rule in Colorado, people and companies also want to know that the private information they must give the government will be respected as private, and not made public. For that reason, laws authorize, and sometimes require, that the government keep some types of records confidential. These laws protect the privacy of records such as personnel files, law enforcement investigations, research projects conducted by state institutions, real estate appraisals when property is being acquired for public use, and certain tax records, among others. Some state laws outside the Open Records Act protect specific records. Investigative records maintained by regulatory agencies and business and professional licensing boards may be exempt.

At CDA, records that are subject to the the Livestock Information Security Act or Soil Erosion Program Landowner Confidentiality statutes prevent certain information from being released.

Finally, a specific federal law sometimes governs whether a particular public record is confidential, notwithstanding state laws such as the Colorado Open Records Act. The effect of federal law must be evaluated in the context of a particular request for public records.

When people become parties to a civil lawsuit, they can get information from other parties to the lawsuit by using the "discovery" rules that apply in the particular court in which the lawsuit has been filed. Only parties to a lawsuit may use the discovery rules to get information. In this situation, they may get information from government agency parties and private parties alike. In contrast, anyone can use the Colorado Open Records Act to get information from government agencies, not just parties in a lawsuit.  

The interaction between the Colorado Open Records Act rules and the rules of discovery can be complicated and uncertain. There may be times when parties to a civil lawsuit can use the Colorado Open Records Act to obtain information concerning their lawsuit from governments in Colorado, whether or not the government involved is a party to the lawsuit. But there may also be times when parties to a civil lawsuit cannot use the Colorado Open Records Act to obtain information. That can happen in cases where a request for records under the Colorado Open Records Act violates a limit on discovery imposed by the court or under the rules of civil procedure or otherwise interferes with the judicial process.

If you give a document to the government that you consider private, you would not want any citizen to be able to get a copy. In fact, many members of the public do give information to the government, which they expect will be held confidential. This information may not be specifically confidential under the Colorado Open Records Act. Yet, the expectation that it will be private is reasonable. Does the government have to give this type of information to any citizen? It depends on the circumstances. The "public interest" exception is a specific exception in the Open Records Act. According to this law, an agency may hold public records confidential if the records custodian decides that making it available to the public would cause substantial injury to the public interest.

This is the case even if the record is something that would otherwise be available to the public under the Open Records Act. The reason this law exists is that the Legislature realizes that there will be situations in which information should be kept private, even though no law specifically states that it is private. Custodians know that this exception rarely applies. In situations where this exception has been tested, a court has normally ruled in favor of public disclosure. It is the rare case that a record will be held confidential using the public interest exception. In the first place, the custodian must ask for permission from the district court to use the exception. Also, the custodian must prove how the public interest will be injured; just saying so will not be enough. And, the injury must outweigh the public's compelling interest in access to its government's records to make sure the government is conducting its affairs fairly, efficiently, and effectively.

Essentially, the custodian - and then the court - must balance the public's interest in open government with the public's interest in protecting the privacy of individual citizens. In exceptional circumstances, the interests of an individual override the interests of the whole. This balance is evaluated by taking into account 1) whether the individual has a legitimate expectation that the record will not be disclosed, 2) whether there is a compelling reason to make the records available to the public, and 3) if there is such a compelling reason, how the record might be disclosed in a way that is least intrusive to the individual.

A custodian must hold documents confidential if they contain privileged information. The label "privileged" refers to information that is protected from disclosure under various legal rules used in litigation. Certain deliberative process documents can be privileged, confidential records, if their release would tend to harm honest and frank discussion within the government. Deliberative process records are documents that contain agency staff recommendations or opinions on legal or policy matters that are being considered for a final decision.

As an example, administrators of government agencies normally make the most important decisions in the agency. Before they do so, they ask for and receive input from their subordinates, including opinions and recommendations. This input is often in writing. These written documents are part of the agency's deliberative process, and are confidential. These records do not include the record of the final agency decision, or records created after the decision. The deliberative process exception is a good example of a balance struck in the Open Records Act among important principles.

On one hand, the bias in the statute is for all records to be open. On the other hand, government employees might not put their honest views and recommendations in writing if they know these writings would be available to the public. Decisions in government must be made upon the best information available to the decisionmaker from his or her staff. The rule that deliberative process records are confidential is a reflection of the need to have a well-functioning government outweighing the desire for open government in this instance.

The deliberative process exception in the Colorado Open Records Act places some special responsibilities upon the government claiming its protection. The government must provide to the person requesting the records a sworn statement that specifically describes each document withheld, explains why the document is privileged, and says why disclosure of the document would cause substantial harm to the public interest.