A ballot measure filed Friday would enshrine people’s “fundamental right to know” the affairs of governments, thereby overturning a 2024 law that, critics said, now allows lawmakers to shield their activities from the public.

Supported by by groups that aren’t always on the same side, the coalition behind Initiative No. 237 includes the Colorado Press Association, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, Colorado Public Radio, the ACLU, Colorado Common Cause, the Independence Institute, League of Women Voters of Colorado and the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, along with advocates on all sides of the political spectrum.

“It’s either wildly encouraging or scary that the breadth of this coalition is truly ideologically opposed in every way, yet everyone sees the same danger,” Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute told Colorado Politics.

The measure would add a new section to the state constitution’s Bill of Rights, saying “the fundamental right of the public to know the affairs of all levels of state and local government shall apply to all public records and public meetings.”

It also states that any local ordinance, rule, regulation, charter or statute that conflicts with the new section is declared inapplicable.

That would include the 2024 law that largely exempted lawmakers from the state’s open meetings law.

That law came after two lawsuits filed against the Colorado General Assembly — which the latter lost — that challenged lawmakers’ right to hold meetings in secret via messaging apps and to hold secret caucus votes on the state budget.

At the time of its passage, then-Speaker pro-Tem Chris deGruy Kennedy of Lakewood, one of Senate Bill 157’s House cosponsors, noted that under the bill, the definition of public business is limited to introduced or draft legislation.

The state’s open meetings law, prior to the passage of SB 157, defined open meetings as any gathering of two or more people to discuss public business, whether in person, by phone or other electronic means, including text message and email.

The 2024 law exempted only members of the Colorado General Assembly from the open meetings law.

Under the law, lawmakers could discuss bills and public policy via email or text message without it being subject to the open meetings law. Those communications would still be available through an open records request, so long as the requestor knows who was in the conversation and when it took place.

Critics have argued that was a tall order even before SB 157 became law.

The law also allowed lawmakers to hold in-person meetings without disclosing those meetings in advance, so long as they didn’t discuss public policy or bills.

At the time of its passing, deGruy Kennedy insisted the legislation does not shield the public from being able to see what lawmakers are doing. 

“We’re not trying to pretend that we got it perfectly right, but I have not yet heard better solutions,” he had told House members.  

Then-Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, the bill’s Senate sponsor, also commented several times about the difficulty in finding a way forward on the issue, and that solutions to the ability of lawmakers having conversations around legislation without violating the open meetings law had been elusive. Lawmakers had claimed the previous law impeded their ability to have open and sometimes frank conversations that they wouldn’t always want to be made public.

In an email last week, Caldara — one of the ballot measure’s proponents, along with Beth Hendrix of the League of Women Voters of Colorado — said Colorado’s governments “are increasingly acting in secret, behind closed doors, away from the scrutiny of citizens and the media alike.”

“It became so blatant that the Colorado Legislature even exempted itself from the state’s beloved open-meetings law — which is a little like Weight Watchers exempting itself from calories,” he said.

Caldara told Colorado Politics that polarization, both at the state and nation level, means a great distrust for people in power: “There are things people can’t witness and can’t get records on, and they understand that this is their government and should be able to witness it in action.”

As for the changes mandated under SB 157, when the legislature exempts itself from the open meetings law, “that means there’s 100 people in the whole state that thinks it’s a good idea and six million who think it’s wrong,” Caldara said.

Jeff Roberts, who heads the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, wrote that, if the ballot measure passed, Colorado would become one of nine states “with constitutions that expressly mention the right to inspect government documents or attend government meetings, or both.”

Roberts added that “fortifying the right to know in a state constitution can serve two purposes: 1) giving weight to public access when legal disputes arise and 2) possibly constraining legislators who might want to dilute the open-government statutes.”

The constitutional ballot measure, if approved by voters, would thwart ongoing efforts by lawmakers to change the state’s open records law.

Last year, Polis vetoed a measure that would have changed who could seek open records and how long a public entity would have to respond to an open records request.

Currently, a public entity has three business days to respond, although the public entity can claim an extra seven days to fulfill the request.

This year, lawmakers are once again trying to change the open records law, and most of what was in the 2025 bill is in the 2026 version of the legislation.

Under Senate Bill 26-107, the amount of time for responding to a request would be extended from three to five days, and the extension from seven to 10 days.

It would add an “extenuating circumstance” for even more time when a “custodian of records” — the person responsible for responding to the request — when the custodian is not scheduled to work within the response period.

While the bill did not put journalists into a separate category as the 2025 legislation would have, the 2026 version includes a carve out for those who seek public records for “pecuniary gain” and provides a 30-day response period for that request.

The requestor would have to sign a statement at the time of the request that it is not for the direct solicitation of business for financial gain. The records custodian would make a determination if that is true and, under the bill, that can be challenged in court.

The bill has been assigned to the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee but does not yet have a hearing date set.

The ballot measure must first go through a “review and comment” hearing with the staff of the Colorado General Assembly’s Legislative Council, after which it heads to the Secretary of State’s Title Board.