January 12, 2021
CFOIC Executive Director
A judge Monday ordered Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s office to publicly disclose all but four pages of withheld emails about an advisory group formed to examine single-family housing rules.
The mayor’s office had invoked the deliberative process privilege in the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) to deny Florence Sebern’s request for documents concerning the Group Living Advisory Committee, and it had claimed the records were protected by attorney-client privilege.
But Denver District Court Judge Michael Vallejos, who examined the emails and attachments in private, determined that most do not reveal a “give and take” and, therefore, are not deliberative. While meetings about the committee and its formation “may have had plenty of robust deliberation, those were verbal and not reduced to writing or a transcript,” the judge wrote.