Coloradans in 2024 lost ground in the never-ending battle for access to government information.

Early in the year, the General Assembly exempted itself from major portions of the 52-year-old citizen-initiated Colorado Open Meetings Law. By summer, maximum fees for processing Colorado Open Records Act requests had jumped 23 percent. And at year’s end, high-court rulings closed the disciplinary records of school administrators and thwarted journalists’ hopes of once again obtaining the state’s database of law enforcement officers.

Looking back at the past 12 months, there weren’t a lot of wins for the public’s right to know.

The enactment of Senate Bill 24-157 happened, ironically, during Sunshine Week in March, the annual celebration of the open-government laws. The leadership-sponsored measure, quickly signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis, narrows the definition of “public business” as it applies to the legislature and lets lawmakers communicate by email and text message without having to worry about violating the open meetings law, which is supposed to ensure that “the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret.”