# Two Colorado Open-Records Bills Die in the 2026 Session - **Publisher:** FoCo Observer — independent local news for Fort Collins and Northern Colorado - **Published:** Jul 29, 2026, 12:31 PM MDT (2026-07-29T12:31:36.361465-06:00) - **Section:** State-government - **Canonical URL:** https://foco-observer.com/fort-collins/two-colorado-open-records-bills-die-in-the-2026/ Two Colorado open-records bills that would have moved in opposite directions — one opening the books on legislative caucus money, the other rewriting the state's public-records law in ways that both expand and narrow access — were both marked "Postponed Indefinitely" in the 2026 regular session, the designation the General Assembly uses to set a bill aside for the remainder of the session [^1][^2]. SB26-168, "Transparency of Legislative Caucuses' Money," would have reached money that currently moves through the legislature unreported. It defined a "legislative caucus" as any two or more legislators organized around a common interest, ideology, issue, or identity who accept, receive, or expend money other than their own, and required each one to file a quarterly report of all money received, accepted, or expended with legislative council staff — with those reports posted on a publicly accessible page of the General Assembly's website. Caucuses with no activity in a quarter would have had to file a no-activity report. Its prime sponsors were Sen. Mike Weissman and Rep. Yara Zokaie [^1]. SB26-107, "Modifications to the Colorado Open Records Act," was the broader of the two, and it cut both ways. On the access side, it would have required every public entity to post its CORA rules, policies, and records-retention schedule along with instructions for filing a request; entitled requesters to an itemized breakdown of research-and-retrieval fees; required custodians to accept credit-card or electronic payment wherever they already accept it for other services; and given requesters an extra free hour of research time for each calendar day a custodian responded late [^2]. On the other side of the ledger, the same bill would have lengthened the standard response window from three to five working days and the extenuating-circumstances extension from seven to ten additional days, and added a custodian's own work schedule as an extenuating circumstance. It would have let a custodian designate a request as made for the direct solicitation of business for pecuniary gain — appealable to district court — and answer it on a 30-day clock while charging the full reasonable cost of the response, setting aside both the free first hour and the statutory fee cap. It would have excluded from the definition of "public record" documents generated by devices or applications that assist people with disabilities or language barriers in place of verbal communication, and it would have let a custodian treat facially similar requests from the same person within 14 days as a single request for fee purposes [^2]. It carried four prime sponsors across both chambers: Sens. Cathy Kipp and Janice Rich and Reps. Matt Soper and Michael Carter [^2]. Both bills carry the legislature's "Open Records" subject tag, and both ended the session under the same status [^1][^2]. [^1]: https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-168 [^2]: https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-107 ## Sources - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-168](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-168) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-107](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-107) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-193](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-193) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sjr26-026](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sjr26-026) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hjr26-1032](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hjr26-1032) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1431](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1431) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1433](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1433) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1432](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1432) - [https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1118](https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb26-1118) ## More from FoCo Observer - [This story (web)](https://foco-observer.com/fort-collins/two-colorado-open-records-bills-die-in-the-2026/) - [State-government section](https://foco-observer.com/section/state-government/) - [Front page](https://foco-observer.com/) - [All pages for LLMs](https://foco-observer.com/llms.txt) - [News feed (RSS)](https://foco-observer.com/rss.xml)