{"id":13408,"date":"2026-02-20T17:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-legislators-deny-records-request-related-to-luxury-vail-retreat-with-lobbyists\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:31:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:31:05","slug":"colorado-legislators-deny-records-request-related-to-luxury-vail-retreat-with-lobbyists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-legislators-deny-records-request-related-to-luxury-vail-retreat-with-lobbyists\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado legislators deny records request related to luxury Vail retreat with lobbyists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Lindsey Daugherty speaks during a bill signing at the Colorado Capitol on April 24. (Sara Wilson\/Colorado Newsline file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A proposed lawsuit claims leaders of a Colorado legislative caucus violated the Colorado Open Records Act when they denied a request for records related to a Vail retreat, which is already the subject of ethics complaints.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Opportunity Caucus is a nonprofit organization composed of moderate Democrats in the Colorado Legislature. Members of the caucus in October attended a retreat in Vail with lobbyists, which the caucus has described as an \u201corganization and educational retreat\u201d for its members.<\/p>\n

Complaints filed with the state\u2019s Independent Ethics Commission allege legislators broke the state\u2019s law prohibiting elected officials from receiving gifts. The complaints, submitted by pro-democracy organization Common Cause Colorado, allege the caucus accepted payment for luxury resort expenses from a pro-business dark money group, One Main Street.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit claims the caucus and its leadership, chair Sen. Lindsey Daugherty of Arvada and vice chair Rep. Sean Camacho of Denver, violated CORA by denying a request for records showing a list of caucus members, a list of attendees to the Vail retreat, materials presented at the retreat and various records related to the costs of the retreat.<\/p>\n

Daugherty and Camacho received written notice of the complaint Thursday morning and have 14 days to produce the records before the plaintiff files the lawsuit in Denver District Court, per CORA rules, according to the plaintiff\u2019s attorney, Scott Moss.<\/p>\n

The plaintiff, Derrick Blanton, is a Denver resident described in the complaint as a longtime progressive activist. He sent CORA requests to Daugherty\u2019s and Camacho\u2019s legislative emails as well as their caucus emails, and forwarded those requests to the Office of Legislative Legal Services. All of the requests were denied. Daugherty and Camacho both said they do not have any records responsive to the request, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

According to a statement from Daugherty, the Opportunity Caucus members \u201crespect and follow Colorado\u2019s open records laws and the public\u2019s right to transparency.\u201d She said the caucus relied on guidance from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Legal Services \u201cto ensure we met our obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, Daugherty and Camacho are the appropriate records custodians for the request for information under CORA, as \u201cit is not plausible that the Co-Chair of a Caucus fails to keep not only their own Caucus\u2019s records of its own events and finances, but even simple lists of their own members or event attendees, basic records of spending and funding within the past year, or the policy materials whose value to Caucus members both Co-Chairs praised\u201d in their responses to the ethics commission complaints.<\/p>\n

Caucus leadership also denied the request on the grounds that the caucus is not a government body and the retreat was not government work, rather it was work in the legislators\u2019 \u201cprivate capacity,\u201d according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

The legislators\u2019 responses to the ethics commission complaints contradict that claim, the proposed lawsuit says. The requested records are public records, it argues, because the Opportunity Caucus is a \u201cde facto policymaking body of the General Assembly and thus is part of the state government\u201d \u2013 language pulled directly from the legislators\u2019 responses.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit would seek a ruling saying the denial of Blanton\u2019s requests violates CORA and ordering the defendants to produce the records.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proposed lawsuit alleges violation, but group leaders say they relied on advice from nonpartisan state legal advisers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,14,15,1228,28,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-ethics","tag-headlines","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18961,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13408\/revisions\/18961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13408"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}