Colorado lawmakers have rejected a proposal that would have forced them to publicly release the results of an anonymous survey they take each spring that helps decide the fate of bills competing for funding.
Democratic leaders at the Capitol claim the results of the annual survey, which they call 'quadratic voting,' are not considered public documents.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, disagrees. She proposed an amendment to an open records bill on Friday that, if passed, would have guaranteed public access to the survey results.
In a 20-minute speech announcing the proposal, Kirkmeyer said she agreed with transparency advocates who allege the secret survey process Democrats have been using since 2019 to privately rank bills violates the state’s open meetings law.
“We're not supposed to be making decisions behind closed doors or through some digital voting process,” she said. “That's not what's supposed to be happening. We're supposed to be having open and free debates that the public gets to hear our comments.”
To support the proposal, Kirkmeyer read aloud on the senate floor several KUNC articles detailing the survey process and the transparency concerns surrounding it.
“It's one thing if you talk amongst yourselves and talk about what you want to fund and not fund,” she told Democratic lawmakers. “It's another thing when you do a top-secret survey and decide on budget decisions. That's the part that's wrong—that decision part. It's a secret ballot.”
Kirkemeyer said Democrats should not be allowed to hide the results of the survey when lawmakers are using them to “determine if bills live or die.”
“Not letting people know what's going on, not allowing them to observe and participate— that's how we lose the public's trust,” she said.
The Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, rejected her proposal. No other lawmakers commented on it before it was voted down.
Democratic lawmakers denied an open records request from KUNC last year seeking several years worth of their quadratic voting results.
Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, told KUNC the survey results were more valuable if they were only used internally.
“We want people to be able to express their opinion in the survey and do it in a way where it's anonymous so that we're not getting undue pressure by peers,” he told KUNC. “One of the great things about the method is that it is, you know, sort of a blind survey. And so we're getting people's unvarnished, uninfluenced version of what they would really like to see funded.”
Hansen said the survey results documents could be withheld from the public because they were considered “work product,” a limited set of documents elected officials can keep private.
State law defines work product as "deliberative materials assembled for the benefit of elected officials, which materials express an opinion or are deliberative in nature and are communicated for the purpose of assisting such elected officials in reaching a decision within the scope of their authority."
Kirkmeyer’s proposal aimed to clarify the results of quadratic voting as public records under state law.
Democrats who participate in the anonymous bill ranking process have responded differently to requests to share the results. Some continue to withhold the results, although party leaders this year agreed to unveil them for the first time—with a caveat that they still don’t consider them public records.
Thesurvey results, releasedfor the firsttime this year,showed how Democrats ranked 140 bills since the survey went live March 24. The results were anonymous, however, making it impossible to connect bill rankings to individual lawmakers.
Jeff Roberts, the head of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said releasing the results was a good first step, but that the secret ballot process still violates the open meetings law.
“The public is entitled to know how their elected officials, their legislators, stand on certain issues when they actually do cast a vote for them," Roberts said. "Caucus meetings are supposed to be open. And, you know, voting or communicating electronically like they're doing—there's not a way for the public to participate in that, to observe that.”
