Latest news with #SenateBill25-77
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Colorado Senate votes to override Polis veto of social media regulation bill
Sen. Lindsey Daugherty speaks during a bill signing at the Colorado Capitol on April 24, 2025. (Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline) The Colorado Senate voted on Friday morning to override a veto on a bill that would require social media companies to remove users who sell drugs and firearms to young people. If the House takes the same action, it would be the Legislature's first successful veto override in decades. 'This bill gives us the tools to help remove predators and traffickers who use social media to harm our kids. This is not about censorship. It's not about speech. It's about standing up for the safety and dignity of our youngest and most vulnerable,' said Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat who sponsored the bill. The chamber voted 29-6 to override. It needs a two-thirds majority in both chambers to become law. Senate Bill 25-86 would regulate social media companies by requiring they remove people from the platform who violate the terms of service by exploiting young people for sexual content or sell drugs or firearms. It would also set a stricter timeline for when companies would need to comply with a law enforcement request for materials and require annual data reports to the Legislature about illegal activity on platforms. The bipartisan supporters of the bill say it is about protecting children who use social media from predators. 'If we let this veto stand, we are choosing to protect the business interests of billion-dollar tech companies over the safety of Colorado kids,' Daugherty said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE But opponents, a group that spanned the political spectrum including left-leaning ProgressNow and the libertarian group Independence Institute, argued the bill could infringe on free speech and places too much power in the hands of social media companies to police their sites. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, ultimately landed on that side as well. 'This law imposes sweeping requirements that social media platforms, rather than law enforcement, enforce state law. It mandates a private company to investigate and impose the government's chosen penalty of permanently deplatforming a user even if the underlying complaint is malicious and unwarranted,' he wrote in his Thursday veto letter. 'In our judicial proceedings, people receive due process when they are suspected of breaking the law. This bill, however, conscripts social media platforms to be judge and jury when users may have broken the law or even a company's own content rules.' His office did not immediately have a comment on the override vote, but pointed to the nine veto requests various organizations sent. Democratic Sens. Julie Gonzales of Denver, Nick Hinrichsen of Pueblo, Janice Marchman of Loveland, Katie Wallace of Longmon, Faith Winter of Broomfield and Republican Sen. Mark Baisley of Woodland Park voted against the override. Polis could also face a veto override vote over his rejection of Senate Bill 25-77, which would set a longer timeline for some open records requests from non-journalists. The Senate laid over that override vote until next Friday. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gov. Polis vetoes bill that would extend Colorado open records response timeline
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks at the state Capitol on March 13, 2025. (Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline) Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed his first bill of this year's legislative session, rejecting a bill that would have changed the state's open records law. 'It would certainly be convenient for the Executive Branch to agree to weaken CORA, but as a representative for the people of Colorado, I support more, not less, openness and transparency,' the Democrat wrote in his Thursday veto letter, referring to the Colorado Open Records Act. Senate Bill 25-77 was a bipartisan measure that would have extended the timeline that a records custodian has to respond to a CORA request, except for requests from journalists. It also would have given entities more time to respond to a request if they decided the request was for financial gain, like obtaining information on a large group of people in order to solicit business. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The bill was sponsored by Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Fort Collins Democrat, Sen. Janice Rich, a Grand Junction Republican, Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, and Rep. Michael Carter, an Aurora Democrat. Kipp and Soper ran a similar bill last year that died in a Senate committee. 'I was really hoping that he would decide not to veto it,' Kipp said. 'I think it is a very fair bill that we worked for a couple years on in order to get it into a good place. We have several elements of the bill that are good for both requestees and for requesters, and I think it would make things easier.' The bill passed on a 45-19 vote in the House and a 27-6 vote in the Senate, which would satisfy the two-thirds requirement to override a veto if the Legislature pursues one. The lawmaking session ends the first week of May. Kipp said sponsors are having conversations about pursuing a veto override. Polis took issue with allowing public officials to make those determinations on who the requester is and what their motives are. 'The bill leaves the custodian with far too much power to define who is and is not a member of the media, and what is and isn't news,' he wrote. 'For instance, a public official may deem a request from a media outlet focusing specifically on climate change as not meeting the statutory definitions of 'newsperson' or 'mass medium' given the perspective of some elected officials that climate change is categorically not news.' The bill relied on existing definitions of 'mass medium' and 'newsperson' found in state statute related to courts and court procedures. Polis also objected to the creation of different CORA response timelines for different types of requests, ranging from three days for journalists and 30 days for businesses seeking records for financial gain. 'A newsperson, a member of the public, and a person seeking financial gain may all request the same information and, under this bill, get access to that information on different timelines,' Polis wrote. 'To ensure fairness and confidence in public transparency, all legitimate requests for public transparency under CORA should be treated equally under the law, without preference for some requestors over others.' But to Kipp, the bill's intention is for the government to not conduct 'market research' for businesses on the same timeline and cost for others seeking public records. The bill's bipartisan group of sponsors and supporters had argued that the bill was intended to give public officials a reasonable amount of time to respond to an increasing volume of requests. 'People should be able to get information that they want to get. So what we're mostly doing with this bill is trying to clarify the processes for requesters, and to give those public entities and records custodians just a little bit more time to fulfill those requests, because it's become just an overwhelming burden,' Kipp said. The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition's advocacy committee had asked Polis earlier this month to veto the bill, arguing in a letter that it would create unnecessary barriers 'for people seeking to gain a better understanding of state and local government activities in Colorado.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Colorado could allow longer time to fulfill open records requests
A view inside the Colorado Capitol toward the entrance to the Senate, Feb. 6, 2024. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline) Colorado could soon allow governments to take longer to fulfill requests subject to the Colorado Open Records Act under a bill in the state Legislature, but it includes a carve out for journalists. Senate Bill 25-77 passed a House committee Monday and now heads to the full House chamber for consideration. It passed the Senate on a 27-6 vote in February. The bill would give custodians of government records five days, instead of three, to respond to CORA requests. It would extend that timeframe to 10 days from seven if 'extenuating circumstances' exist, such as if a request that encompasses a large quantity of records that could not reasonably be gathered in five days. It would add an extenuating circumstance if the record custodian is not scheduled to work within the response period. 'For a lot of our smaller entities, it is really hard to comply with three days,' Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Soper is running the bill with Democratic Rep. Michael Carter of Aurora, Democratic Sen. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins and Republican Sen. Janice Rich of Grand Junction. It comes after a failed effort last year to amend CORA by labeling some people 'vexatious requesters.' A high volume of records requests can interfere with the ability of school boards and government offices to perform their core functions, sponsors and supporters say. Karen Wick, a lobbyist for Jefferson County, said that the county saw 217 requests in 2019, but that jumped to 650 in 2024. A recent request sought information about the number of acres affected by a tree removal, resulting in 36 hours of work that yielded over 1,000 emails and 300 documents, she said. 'When Colorado law requires us to respond within three to seven days, with this number of requests, we end up having to put our other normal work aside so we can fulfill them,' she said. Media would still be subject to the three-day timeline. Soper said that is because journalists are often very specific about their records requests, making them easier to complete. When Colorado law requires us to respond within three to seven days, with this number of requests, we end up having to put our other normal work aside so we can fulfill them. – Karen Wick, a lobbyist for Jefferson County But that provision is a sticking point for opponents of the bill, who argue it gives journalists preferential treatment over regular citizens who request records. 'Us citizens get to put up with a lot of the policy that the government puts out. But bills like this make citizens second class to the media and I question the fairness of that,' said Cory Gaines, who runs the Colorado Accountability Project Substack newsletter. Jeffrey Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, testified that an extended timeline creates another obstacle for records requests. He said that there have been more efforts to restrict, rather than expand, access to records in recent years. 'Fees already are a significant barrier to obtaining public records, which is why governments don't need a reason to take longer to process CORA requests,' he said. If a custodian determines that a request is 'for the direct solicitation of business for pecuniary gain,' such as a business wanting to reach out directly to people identified in a records request, governments would be able to charge the 'reasonable cost' of fulfilling the request, other than the $41.37 maximum hourly rate, and take 30 days to complete the request. The bill would not prevent those types of requests. Other provisions in the bill would let governments treat two similar CORA requests made by the same person within two weeks of one another as one request. It also would require that governments put their CORA process and record retention policy online, give a requester a breakdown of the cost for record retrieval if requested, and allow electronic payments for CORA requests if the government accepts electronic payment for other services. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
