Happy Sunshine Week, La Plata County.
No, this is not an acknowledgment of the early hints of spring or last week’s shift to daylight saving time, but perhaps something more thrilling: a celebration of open government and the public’s right to access government records.
“Public business is the public’s business,” reads the opening line of journalist Harold Cross’ 1953 book, “The People’s Right to Know,” which helped shape the intellectual foundation for the federal Freedom of Information Act and modern open-records laws.
While essays, court decisions and decades of policy debates have expounded on the importance of information access as a critical component of government accountability, Cross’ premise remains simple: The public has a right to know what its government is doing.
In Colorado, that right is enshrined in the Colorado Open Records Act, which gives residents the legal right to request records from state and local government agencies, and receive the products within a reasonable time frame.
This right has required near constant defense. For the past three years, a bill has been introduced to the Colorado Legislature aimed at easing the “administrative burden” records requests place on institutions. Variations of the bill have been mainly focused on extending the time requirement for the production of records from three days, to five.
The most recent interaction of the bill was struck down last week – a victory, said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
“It’s part of the job of the government to make sure that the public can have access to the records that tell them what their government is doing,” he said. “That’s part of their job, part of their responsibility.”
Across the country, Sunshine Week serves as a reminder that transparency is a cornerstone of American democracy, upheld by the continued accessibility of government records.
In that spirit, The Durango Herald, sought public records from seven government institutions across La Plata County. We asked for a list of all CORA requests the agencies received since January 2025. We didn’t request the records themselves; rather, just a log of the requests, including who made the requests and what they were seeking.
The responses revealed not only who is using public records laws – including journalists, attorneys, residents and national corporations – but how consistently publicly funded institutions track and maintain records, even those that pertain to transparency.
Local governments, including schools, municipalities and law enforcement, report increased public records requests – often from serial requesters.
Durango School District 9-R raised similar concerns in 2025 while discussing a now-failed bill that would have allowed governments to label certain requesters “vexatious” or “bad actors.”
“A lot of these school districts and other governments have staffs of public information officers,” Roberts said. “Responding to records requests and information requests from the public, that’s part of the job.
“So I don’t know that it necessarily takes resources away from educating students, especially when you look at the actual number of requests,” he said.
Even in the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office busiest year – 677 requests – that averages fewer than two requests per day.
Two months into the new year, Durango School District received nine requests – a relatively small number compared with other local agencies.
Among the agencies contacted by the Herald, the city of Durango receives some of the highest numbers of CORA requests each year. In 2025, the city received 657 requests, including requests made of the police department. So far in 2026, it has received about 100.
Five years ago, the city received closer to 150 requests annually. The sharp increase has prompted officials to adopt a more streamlined system for processing records requests.
The Herald filed a CORA request seeking logs of who was making public records requests and for what purposes. The city initially quoted the Herald $7,460 to produce the logs. But much of the information sought was already publicly available through the city’s online request database.
Each request submitted to the city is automatically uploaded to the database with a summary of the request, the date it was made, a reference number and the request’s status. Additional information, including the name of the requester, correspondence between the requester and city staff, and the cost associated with fulfilling the request, would have been included in the paid records.
Under Colorado law, requesters are entitled to the first hour of staff time free of charge. After that, agencies may charge up to $41.37 per hour for additional time spent fulfilling the request.
“We’d like to see the Legislature re-evaluate the fee provisions in CORA,” Roberts said. “The hourly rate is tied to inflation, and it’s gotten pretty expensive. When that rate is multiplied across a lot of hours, records can become very costly to obtain.”
The Herald declined to pay the city’s $7,460 fee, deciding the publicly available information would have to suffice.
The city of Durango is the only local government entity contacted by the Herald that makes its records requests public and searchable without submitting a CORA request. The transparency stems from a roughly $10,000 automated system the city purchased to help manage the growing number of requests.
City Clerk Faye Harmer said the system cuts processing time significantly – sometimes to half or even a third of the time required for manual handling.
“There’s no way staff could handle 600 requests a year,” she said.
Journalists are not the primary users of Colorado’s open records law locally. The types of requesters who use the Colorado Open Records Act, or CORA, vary from agency to agency.
In addition to media inquiries, local governments produce records related to background checks, employment data, bid contracts, purchasing records and for legal cases.
A resident seeking the identity of the person who filed a complaint against him with the La Plata County Building Department filed a request filed in April.
In 2026, county manager candidate Drew Sanders requested emails sent to county commissioners about him the day before officials publicly announced he would not receive the position.
The town of Bayfield – which notably receives most of its CORA requests as physical copies rather than digital submissions – received about 30 requests last year. Most came from three residents seeking records ranging from mug shots to town policies and planning documents.
Other organizations see far fewer requests from individual residents. Durango School District 9-R, for example, receives most of its requests from corporations rather than journalists, private individuals or local attorneys.
One example is SmartProcure, a data aggregation company that collects purchasing data from government entities and sells the information to third-party businesses.
La Plata County government received 158 CORA requests in 2025, and roughly 30 came from companies similar to SmartProcure.
“I almost feel like it’s a little bit of an abuse of the Colorado Open Records Act,” said acting county spokesperson Sarah Jacobson.
Companies like SmartProcure regularly submit identical requests to governments across the country seeking purchasing records.
Not every agency keeps organized records of their public records requests.
Fort Lewis College estimated producing its records request logs from 2025 to present would cost about $200.
“That’s just silly,” Roberts said.
College spokesperson Nardy Bickel said the cost reflects the fact that the college does not maintain a centralized log of requests. Staff would need to compile the records manually, which would take more than an hour.
Colorado law does not require public agencies to maintain records request logs.
“There’s nothing in the law that says how you should keep track of your records requests,” Roberts said. “When I request CORA logs, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The information varies from government to government.”
As a requester, Roberts said, the public often has little insight into how agencies organize their records.
“You’re at their mercy,” he said.
The variation in how agencies track and process requests highlights the broader challenge with open records laws: While the public has a legal right to information, accessing it often depends on how prepared or willing a government agency is to provide it.
Government agencies can request a 10-day extension for practically any reason, Roberts said. And that has never before been challenged in a Colorado court.
jbowman@durangoherald.com
