Shawn Mitchell, Open Records & Following Colorado State Law

As part of my reporting for my nationally syndicated column, I sent Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests to various legislators a month ago asking them for their correspondence with an array of operatives representing organizations and corporations with business before the Colorado legislature. According to the text of CORA, legislators are statutorily required to respond to these requests within a "reasonable time" which "shall be presumed to be three working days or less" and "shall not exceed seven working days."

Pursuant to this law, I received a prompt response from a number of legislators, some of which detail the planning Republicans have long been engaging in to grind the upcoming legislature to a halt over giving public employees more of a voice in state government (more on this in the coming weeks).

However, I received no response from the legislator now leading the charge against allowing state workers to have a voice in their workplace - Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R). You can read my full CORA request to Mitchell at the bottom of this post, which I emailed to him at his shawn.mitchell.senate@state.co.us - the email he lists on his official state website.

It is difficult to believe that Mitchell's refusal to follow Colorado state law and respond to my request is an accident. I have sent Mitchell two CORA requests - the original one, and then a reminder about the original one a month after he refused to answer. Just in case his email was down or my email got caught in a filter, I also left a phone message at his office. I still have received no response at all. And interestingly, a poster at ColoradoPols now says the same exact thing is happening to him in regards to his CORA requests of Mitchell.

Let's be clear - Mitchell knows the law. He is, after all, "an attorney in private practice in Denver and Adams County" and was previously Special Counsel to Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, according to his campaign website. And as Colorado's state government makes clear, "Under Colorado law, 18-8-114 C.R.S (1989), it is a Class 1 misdemeanor for a person to knowingly make a false entry or alter any public record or to destroy, mutilate, conceal, remove, or impair the availability of any public record."

What's amazing about this, of course, is that the Colorado right-wing machine is attacking Ritter for supposedly issuing an executive order in a "back room" deal. This attack is echoed by Rep. Cory Gardner (R) on Jon Caldara's television show, Independent Thinking (which airs in Colorado tonight and which I was a guest on as well). This, even though Ritter's office long ago responded to CORA requests about its conversations with state workers and labor officials. This, even as Mitchell, the legislator leading the attacks on Ritter, has refused to even respond to basic inquiries he is legally required to respond to.

In the coming weeks, I'll be investigating my options about how to get Sen. Mitchell to follow Colorado state law. I frankly have no idea whether he has any correspondence as it relates to my CORA request. He may not. But what I do know is that he is required to respond to a CORA request either way - and that hasn't happened after repeated attempts to get him to do so.

As I said, it is difficult to believe that Mitchell's silence is an accident - two emails and a phone message should be more than enough to get a response (just one email got a response from the other legislators I CORA'd), and certainly a month is far longer than the statutorily required limit of 7 days for a response. But I'll wait to hear Mitchell's explanation to make any concrete conclusions about what's going on here - that is, if he decides to follow the law and respond to my CORA request and give me a response.

That said, if Mitchell is, in fact, simply ignoring state law, as the situation seems to suggest, there is something quite disturbing about it. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you probably agree that state legislators are, at minimum, supposed to follow state law. There is also something quite hypocritical about a right-wing machine that simultaneously attacks a governor for supposedly being secretive when the leader of that machine has yet to follow state law and respond to the very open records request the governor himself has already responded to.

October 10, 2007

The Honorable Shawn Mitchell
200 E. Colfax
Denver, CO 80203

Dear Sen. Mitchell:

I am writing to make a request for records pursuant to the Colorado Open Records Act, Colorado Revised Statutes 24-72-201. I am requesting that you provide records relating to discussions with any or all of the following individuals and groups:

1. Dick Wadhams

2. Hans Gullickson

3. Sandy Fuentes

4. Cameron Lynch

5. Brad Jones

6. Amy Rathburn

7. "Face the State"

8. Alex Cranberg

9. Bruce Benson

10. Bob Schaffer

11. Focus on the Family/Focus on the Family Action

12. Tom Minnery

13. James Pfaff

14. James Dobson

15. The Independence Institute, including:

a. Jon Caldara

b. Jessica Peck Corry

c. David Kopel

d. Kay Cullar

e. Amy Oliver

f. Anne McIntyre

g. Julie Mallon

h. Nancy Miller

i. Pam Benigno

j. Ben DeGrow

k. Marya DeGrow

l. Linda Gorman

m. Randal O'Toole

n. Penn Pfiffner

o. Jay Ambrose

p. Arthur "Trey" Fleisher

q. Kirstin Haslers

r. Fred Holden

s. Dennis Polhill

t. Barry Poulson

u. Beth Skinner

v. Frank Zaveral

In accordance with this request, I ask that you produce copies or originals of all materials made, maintained or kept, including but not limited to:

Documents
Memoranda
Calendar entries
Telephone logs
Telephone or other messages
E-mails (both official and private, including e-mails that may appear in the Inbox, Sent, Trash or Deleted folders).

My request applies to all correspondence, both sent and received, involving any discussions with the individuals or groups outlined above. Please include copies or originals of any and all writings not specifically mentioned in this request but which a reasonable person would include. As the open records statute requires, a response is required within three days.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

David Sirota
Nationally Syndicated Newspaper Columnist
Creators Syndicate

Bookmark/Search this post with: