What is it that the State Legislature is trying to hide?

A bill that passed out of committee last week lets governments squirrel away important public notices on their own websites rather than publishing them in newspapers and other news sites that actually reach the public. That would mean the public isn’t really notified of much of anything if people don’t regularly look at the thousands of government websites in Colorado.

Which they don’t.

These public notices are an important way for governments to get the word out on new laws, public meetings, zoning and land changes, proposed budgets, property auctions and tax rate changes, not to mention election dates, polling locations and ballot initiatives.  

The public notices proposal feels a little like letting the fox guard the henhouse. “When a government publishes notices only on its own website, it becomes both the subject of the notice and the gatekeeper of access,” Colorado Press Association CEO Tim Regan-Porter tells me.

“Public notice requires third-party publication so that the entity being noticed does not control the visibility, prominence, or permanence of the notice.”

Jeff Roberts, president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said that if this bill is successful, it would be another blow of many recent blows to government transparency. “A lot of people in Colorado still rely on their printed local newspaper to stay informed about what’s happening in their communities,” Roberts said. “And when they flip through that paper, they might see a public notice that’s relevant to them. It’s less likely they will see it if it’s just on a government’s website.”

Legislators in recent years have erased decades of safeguards meant to ensure that the public’s business is conducted in public.

• In 2024, the legislature exempted itself from the Colorado Open Meetings Law to allow members to privately communicate about public business via email, text messaging and disappearing message systems like Signal. Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute told our reporter Marianne Goodland that the legislature exempting itself from the open meetings law is a “little like Weight Watchers exempting itself from calories.”

• Democrats recently have passed or proposed bills that lengthen wait times to as much as three weeks for records requests from journalists and ordinary folks trying to hold government agencies accountable. Their reason? “Vexatious requesters.” My question: “Says who?”

• Lawmakers have increased fees for such records to raise barriers to access. In recent years, we’ve been charged thousands of dollars at the Denver Gazette for some such requests.

• The legislature also recently passed another bill to make name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts between public universities and student athletes confidential. Ironically, Gov. Jared Polis, who noted at the time an “unfortunate trend of legislative proposals that ultimately impede access to official records,” signed the bill anyway.

Lawmakers generally argue such changes improve efficiency or modernize processes, but critics see them as limiting public oversight and access to government operations.

And let’s be clear: This lack of transparency is not at all what the public wants. Coloradans have repeatedly voted to require high levels of openness and transparency in the legislative process.

The Sunshine Amendment, adopted by voters in 1972, established strict rules for open meetings at the Capitol and laid the groundwork for a raft of other transparency measures over the years.

And it’s happening again: The cumulative perception of shrinking transparency has just sparked a citizen-led initiative to amend the Colorado Constitution to create a fundamental “right to know.”

So why the yawning gap between public will and legislative willfulness?

My colleague Eric Sondermann, political columnist and longtime political consultant in the state, blames Democrats’ dominance of state government.

“Colorado’s emergence as a solidly blue, one-party bastion has inevitably produced, as night follows day, a certain degree of arrogance,” Sonderman recently wrote.

With a supermajority, Democrats see these public protections as hindrances and inconveniences to passing their agenda without challenge.

“One-party rule, regardless of the party, tends toward excess,” wrote Sondermann.

I also think the enormous number of lobbyists constantly pressuring legislators at the state Capitol interferes with the sacred connection between the public and their representatives. During a typical legislative session, approximately 500 to 600 lobbyists are registered to influence state lawmakers, our reporters have found, which means there are roughly five lobbyists for every legislator.

Interestingly, the brand-new transparency proposal aimed at the state ballot is an incredibly bipartisan effort, which includes such strange bedfellows as the conservative Independence Institute and the liberal League of Women Voters. The diverse alliance also brings together the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, Colorado Common Cause, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, the Colorado Press Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

“It’s either wildly encouraging or scary that the breadth of this coalition is truly ideologically opposed in every way, yet everyone sees the same danger,” Caldara told our reporter.

The proposal amends Article II of the state Constitution — the Bill of Rights. It declares that “because all political power is vested in and derived from the people, and by right all government originates from the people … the people have a fundamental right to know the affairs of all levels of state and local government.”

And because the General Assembly and other governing bodies and officials in Colorado “have increasingly infringed on the fundamental right to know,” the ballot initiative seeks to forever guarantee access to public proceedings and public records.

In the meantime, I’d urge you to reach out to your representative as soon as possible and remind them emphatically that they work for you.

And then this fall, you’ll get a chance to etch transparency more permanently into the state Constitution. My guess is the initiative will pass with flying colors.

The public, it seems, will have the last word after all.