Slower Responses, Stricter Rules: How Colorado is Changing Your Access to Public Records

The Bottom Line

If you ever need public records from a school, city, or state agency, expect to wait a little longer. This bill gives government offices more time to fulfill requests, but it cracks down on businesses pulling data just to sell you things while making the fee structure more transparent for everyday citizens.

What This Bill Actually Does

Currently, government offices in Colorado have three working days to respond to a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request. This bill changes that standard to five working days, and extends the allowable delay for "extenuating circumstances" from seven days to ten working days. It also allows agencies to hit the pause button if the specific employee holding the records is on vacation or out of the office. To balance that extra time, the bill forces public entities to be more transparent: they have to post their record retention policies and instructions online, and if they miss their new, longer deadlines, they have to give the requester one free hour of research time for every day they are late.

Right now, businesses often use CORA to scrape massive amounts of data—like newly licensed contractors, recent homebuyers, or hunting license applicants—just to build marketing lists. The bill creates a new category for requests made for the "direct solicitation of business for pecuniary gain." If an agency flags your request as a commercial fishing expedition, they can take up to 30 working days to respond and charge you the actual cost of fulfilling the request, bypassing the usual first-hour-free rule and the $30-per-hour fee cap. Requesters can sign a statement promising they aren't using the data for sales, or they can appeal the agency's decision in district court.

The bill also loops in a few modern updates. First, it protects K-12 students by forbidding the release of any information that could be used to directly contact or message a kid (expanding the current ban on just addresses and phone numbers). Second, it protects individuals with disabilities by exempting communications produced by assistive devices used in place of verbal speech from public records laws. Finally, to prevent people from gaming the system by breaking large requests into smaller ones to get free research time, the bill allows agencies to bundle requests for "facially similar content" made by the same person within a 14-day window.

What It Means for You

As a resident, you have the right to know what your local government is doing—whether you're looking into city zoning permits, school district spending, or neighborhood traffic studies. This bill means you'll need to pack a little more patience. Because the standard response time bumps up to five working days, you can't submit a request on a Tuesday expecting answers by Friday. You'll need to plan ahead, especially if the specific employee who holds the emails or documents you need happens to be on leave, which now legally pauses the clock until they return or another solution is found.

On the flip side, this bill gives you much more leverage if a government agency drops the ball or tries to overcharge you. If an agency misses its deadline, the new daily penalty kicks in: you get an extra free hour of research time for every calendar day they are late. For massive requests that usually cost hundreds of dollars to fulfill, a delayed response could actually save you serious money. Furthermore, you now have the explicit right to demand a reasonable breakdown of costs so you can see exactly why a records request is costing you $150 instead of $30.

If you're a parent, the privacy upgrades are a big deal. The law closes a loophole by blocking the release of digital contact information for public K-12 students—meaning data scrapers can't use public records to get ahold of your kid's school email address, messaging handles, or social media profiles. And when it comes time to actually pay for a records request, the days of hunting down a physical checkbook are over. As long as the agency takes digital payments elsewhere—like for parking tickets or rec center passes—they must accept your credit card for records fees.

What It Means for Your Business

If your business model relies on scraping public records to generate sales leads—think real estate agents looking for code violations, roofers tracking hail damage reports, or marketers building email lists—this bill fundamentally changes your operations. If a records custodian determines your request is for the direct solicitation of business, your wait time jumps from a few days to 30 working days. Even worse for your bottom line, the agency can charge you the full, un-capped cost of fulfilling the request. The standard $30-per-hour cap and the "first hour free" rule fly out the window.

You also won't be able to game the system by breaking up a massive request into smaller chunks to maximize those free hours. The bill allows agencies to bundle multiple requests from the same person for "facially similar content" made within a 14-day window. This means if you ask for January's permits on Monday and February's permits on Thursday, the agency can treat it as a single request and charge you accordingly. If you rely on regular data pulls, you'll need to consult your operations team and re-evaluate your budget for data acquisition.

There is a silver lining if you're not a data broker. The bill explicitly protects standard business contracts and automated data pulls. If you are requesting copies of government contracts or using computer data extraction methods that require minimal human intervention, you are exempt from the 30-day commercial delay. To navigate this new landscape, businesses should start submitting a signed statement with their CORA requests affirming the data won't be used for direct commercial solicitation, assuming that is truthful. If an agency wrongly flags your request as commercial, your only recourse is to appeal the decision in district court, which costs both time and legal fees.

Follow the Money

From a taxpayer perspective, this bill is essentially a wash. The official nonpartisan fiscal note projects a net $0 impact on state revenue and expenditures. Government agencies might bring in a bit more cash by charging commercial data brokers the full, un-capped cost of their specialized requests. However, that extra revenue will likely be offset by the money agencies lose when they miss deadlines and are forced to give everyday citizens free hours of research time.

Local governments, school districts, and state agencies will face a minor, immediate administrative hurdle. They will need to spend some staff time updating their websites, publishing their document retention policies, and tweaking their online portals to accommodate the new deadlines and credit card payment rules. Because these changes are minimal and can be handled by existing staff, no new tax dollars or state appropriations are required to fund the bill.

Where This Bill Stands

SB26-107 is currently Dead. The latest official action came on 03/05/2026: Senate Committee on State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Postpone Indefinitely.

That means the bill is no longer advancing this session. In practice, measures that are postponed indefinitely or otherwise declared lost generally stay dead unless they are reintroduced in a future session.