***Report and commentary.***
The legal and press teams of Governor John Hickenlooper took an entire ten business days to hand over four* pieces of audio in response to an open records act request filed by Complete Colorado.
We filed the Colorado Open Records Act on January 6, the same day we learned reporters who showed up to cover a meeting between the governor and the influential group ‘Colorado Forum’ were told the event had been mistakenly put on the calendar of public events, and therefore, were not welcome to attend.
On January 11, Senior Deputy Legal Counsel for the governor Mark Bolton told us, “Your request encompasses a large category of records and is without sufficient specificity to allow the Office to prepare or gather the records within the three-day period.”
Bunk.
The category: Audio recordings of the Governor.
Specificity: Made on January 6, 2015.
Transparency delayed is transparency denied, and our governments do no favor to their constituencies nor to their reputations when they purposefully delay and stall as the Hickenlooper office did in this instance (and others).
*Technically speaking, the Governor’s office provided us with five audio files, but two of them were of the same event, the meeting with Colorado Forum. The audio files were broken into a recording of the initial remarks, and the question and answer session which followed.
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