The Colorado Open Records Act sits at Title 24, Article 72, Part 2 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, and the Office of Legislative Legal Services, in its summary of the Act, describes its reach as quite expansive, applying to virtually all levels and types of government in the state apart from the federal government and tribal governments. It covers writings, books, papers, photographs, tape recordings and electronic mail made, maintained or kept by the state, any agency, institution or political subdivision, and any elected or appointed official, for use in exercising functions required or authorised by law or involving the receipt or expenditure of public funds. The office's own advice to officials is blunt: as a general rule, anyone who may be subject to the law should err on the side of treating all communications as potentially releasable, including records kept on a personally owned private device.
Any person may inspect, and person here takes in corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships and associations as well as individuals. The custodian is defined broadly as the official custodian or any authorised person with personal custody and control of the record, which for the General Assembly means each legislator is the custodian of their own records. There is no central office: as the Secretary of State puts it, a person must request records directly from the appropriate government office or the custodian, and that office has no authority to decide whether another agency has wrongly refused a request. For Colorado records held locally, see the Colorado county pages.
- Three working days: records must be made available within three working days, with up to seven more where extenuating circumstances exist or compiling takes significant time.
- The day of receipt is free: agencies count the clock from the first working day after the request arrives, so a late evening email starts the next morning.
- Twenty five cents, or nothing: a printed standard page is capped at twenty five cents, and no per page or transmission fee may be charged for records sent electronically.
- Forty one dollars thirty seven: the statewide maximum hourly research and retrieval rate since July 1, 2024, chargeable only after the first free hour and only under a published policy.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Colorado's own systems: the Colorado Secretary of State on the Open Records Act, the Office of Legislative Legal Services summary of the Act, the General Assembly page on the maximum hourly research and retrieval fee, the Office of Information Technology records request page, the Department of Public Safety records request page, the General Assembly record of Senate Bill 25-077, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Three working days, counted the state's way
The Act mandates a quick turnaround, requiring records to be made available for inspection within three working days of receipt of the request, with that period extendable for an additional seven days where extenuating circumstances exist, the example the legislature's lawyers give being a request reaching a legislator during the legislative session. State agencies spell out the arithmetic. The Office of Information Technology explains that the day on which the request is received does not count against the deadline, that a request arriving inside business hours starts the three day count on the next working day, and that anything arriving after five in the afternoon or on a day the office is closed counts as received the following working day, so an email timed at 5:09 on a Monday evening is answered by close of business on Friday.
A request submitted on a state holiday counts as received the first working day afterwards. Where a request will take longer than three working days, the custodian is expected to say so as soon as possible rather than at the deadline. Colorado nearly lengthened all of this in 2025: Senate Bill 25-077 would have moved the general period to five working days with a ten day extension while keeping the three day clock for a mass medium or a newsperson, and the General Assembly's own bill page records that it was vetoed by the Governor on April 17, 2025, which is why state agencies still publish the three day rule in 2026.
What a Colorado request costs
A custodian may charge no more than twenty five cents for a printed standard page, or the actual cost of providing a copy, printout or photograph in another format, and where a specific fee for a certified or other copy is set by law that figure applies instead. Two prohibitions matter more than the cap: no per page fee may be charged for records provided in a digital or electronic format, and no transmission fee may be charged for sending records by email.
Research and retrieval time is free for the first hour. Beyond that, a custodian may charge an hourly fee only if it has posted on its website or otherwise published a written policy specifying the conditions of research and retrieval and the amount of the fee, which makes the policy itself the thing to ask for when a bill looks high. Where a request will take more than an hour, the custodian may require a deposit equal to the estimated staff time, then take an additional payment or make a partial refund once the actual time is known.
Where the entity accepts cards or electronic payment for anything else it provides, it must accept them for records fees and deposits too, although it may pass on the processor's charge.
The hourly cap, and who sets it
Colorado is unusual in fixing a single statewide ceiling on records labour and then indexing it. Section 24-72-205(6)(b) requires the Director of Research of Legislative Council Staff to adjust the maximum hourly fee for research and retrieval for inflation on July 1, 2019 and every five years after. The rate went from thirty dollars to thirty three dollars fifty eight in 2019, and effective July 1, 2024 rose to forty one dollars thirty seven, an increase of seven dollars seventy nine produced by inflating the earlier figure by the change in the Denver Aurora Lakewood consumer price index for all items and all urban consumers between the first half of 2019 and the first half of 2024, with the 2024 index taken as the average of the January, March and May figures because the half year index was not yet published.
Before charging the higher rate, a government entity must revise and publish its records policy to include it, so an agency still quoting the old figure in its policy cannot bill the new one. The next adjustment falls due on July 1, 2029. Agencies are free to charge less, and some do: the Office of Information Technology publishes a rate of thirty dollars an hour, while the Department of Public Safety publishes the full forty one dollars thirty seven.
Criminal justice records run on a different statute
Anyone asking Colorado law enforcement for records is usually outside the Open Records Act altogether, because records of official action and criminal justice records fall under the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act. The Department of Public Safety sets out the differences plainly: that Act does not impose the three day deadline, requiring instead a response within a reasonable time; the substance obtainable through it is narrower; and its legal standard is less prescriptive, entrusting more discretion to the agency.
It also adds a precondition no Open Records Act request has. Under section 24-72-305.5 the names, addresses, telephone numbers and other information in records of official action and criminal justice records may not be used to solicit business for pecuniary gain, and the official custodian must refuse access unless the requester signs a statement affirming that the records will not be used for the direct solicitation of business for pecuniary gain.
A requester asking a sheriff or a police department for records should expect that form, and should expect the reasonable time standard rather than a date.
When a request is refused
A custodian must allow inspection unless a ground for refusal in the Act applies. Some are absolute: inspection contrary to a state statute, contrary to a federal statute or regulation, or prohibited by Supreme Court rules or a court order. Others turn on the public interest, and the legislature's summary lists investigative files kept by law enforcement and others, licensing examination scores, and the email addresses, telephone numbers and home addresses a person has given to an elected official, a state agency or a political subdivision.
Correspondence of elected officials is excluded from the definition of public records where it is work product, where it has no demonstrable connection to functions required or authorised by law and does not involve public funds, or where it is a constituent communication that clearly implies by its nature or content that the constituent expected confidence, along with the official's reply to it. Where a court finds that a custodian improperly denied the right of inspection, it must award court costs and reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.
The criminal penalty that once sat in section 24-72-206, a fine of up to one hundred dollars or up to ninety days in county jail for a wilful and knowing violation, was repealed in 2017, so costs and fees are now the whole of the sanction.
Retention, and asking in a way that works
The Act says nothing about how long a record must be kept, leaving custodians and agencies to set their own schedules, and the General Assembly's own policy recommends deleting email within thirty days in most circumstances, which is a reason to ask early rather than later. State agencies develop their own retention schedules where the State Archives' general schedules do not cover a record. On the request itself, agencies ask for a detailed written description including search terms and a date range, and the Secretary of State notes the practical point that being specific speeds the answer and avoids being given too much or too little.
Where an agency needs clarification it will ask, and some set their own internal cut off for a reply: the Office of Information Technology closes a request if clarifying information, or a fee that has been quoted, is not provided within ten working days, which means an unanswered email from a custodian can end a request without any decision on the records at all.
Questions about public records requests in Colorado
Related Colorado records
Colorado's other public records guides on this site are the Colorado background check guide for the Bureau of Investigation criminal history service, the Colorado court records guide for the judicial branch case search, the Colorado arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the Colorado county pages for every county office.