Last November, the State Integrity Investigation released its report card grading the 50 states on various measures of good government. Colorado placed 13th overall, receiving high marks for our budget and auditing processes. Despite our ranking among the states, many of Colorado’s grades were embarrassing. Colorado placed 44th for ethics enforcement, below even some states that don’t have ethics commissions, with a failing grade. The state also placed 34th, with a letter grade of “F,” for public access to documents.

The State Integrity Investigation is an analysis of state government transparency and accountability conducted by the Center for Public Integrity. The project highlights areas that lead to decreased citizen confidence in government and increased risk of corruption.

The reasons for Colorado’s low score on access to public information are many. Too many documents are available only in hard copy or PDF, not in an open data format that could be easily used by citizens. Official calendars of public officials are difficult to obtain; in practice, one must file open records requests to receive heavily redacted versions of public officials’ calendars. Charges for access to public records, though recently capped by statute, remain high.

Perhaps the biggest problem with access to public records, however, is that there is no particular public official with general supervisory responsibility over public records requests. The State Integrity Investigation compared Colorado unfavorably to other states that have an entity responsible “to monitor the application of access to information laws” like Iowa’s Public Information Board. Instead, the only recourse for Coloradans who disagree with a public entity’s objection to providing records is to file a lawsuit in state district court.

This problem was highlighted by the official response to the State Integrity Investigation’s findings on access to public records. There wasn’t any. To my knowledge, no government official has publicly commented on the report’s findings. That’s because in Colorado, when it comes to public records access, the buck doesn’t stop anywhere. It isn’t the job of the governor, or the secretary of state, or the attorney general, or the General Assembly. All of these are viewed by state open records laws as merely the subjects of the law, required to comply with it, and not as administrators with an affirmative mandate to make sure public records are available to the public.

Litigation as a first resort doesn’t help the government, either. With very limited exceptions, a records requester who successfully sues to get public documents receives a mandatory award of attorneys’ fees. These awards, ultimately, are paid for by the taxpayers of Colorado.

Imagine having a public official who would be the first person all reporters would call when a report like the State Integrity Investigation is released, to answer as to whether Colorado is doing a good job making data available to the public. That person, or committee, would be tasked with making sure Colorado’s open records laws work for the public while dealing fairly with information that must be kept confidential by law. Colorado lawmakers should consider making someone responsible, as an affirmative mandate and not just an obligation to comply with sunshine laws, for ensuring Coloradans’ right of access to public information.

Luis Toro is director of Colorado Ethics Watch, a nonprofit, legal watchdog group dedicated to identifying and exposing ethics issues in city, county and state governments in Colorado.