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Denver Publishing Co. v. Board of County Commissioners of the County of Arapahoe9/12/2005
he same message. Requiring disclosure of the entire e-mail message under the circumstances would contravene the General Assembly's intent to protect such communications and make what is otherwise a private communication a public communication simply because it was sent in the same message. In reaching such a conclusion, not only would we "discourage public service, we would create an arena of gossip and scandal instead of facilitating a forum of open and frank discussion about issues concerning public officials and the citizenry they serve." Wick, 81 P.3d at 365-66. In contrast, were we to prohibit disclosure of the messages altogether, we would be limiting access to public business and deprive the citizens of Colorado of what the General Assembly has deemed a necessity to our democratic government. Additionally, such a conclusion would serve to encourage public employees and public officials to include private communications in e-mail messages to shield public communications from the provisions of CORA.
We see no problem, however, requiring that such messages be redacted by the district court to exclude from disclosure those communications within the messages that do not address the performance of public functions. CORA does not mandate that e-mail records be disclosed in complete form or not at all. Nor do we believe that it is practical, given the widespread use of e-mail for private and business uses inside and out of government, to require public officials and public employees to maintain a distinction each time a message is sent or, equally as important, when an e-mail message is received. Accordingly, we believe this resolution best balances the competing interests involved and is consistent with the General Assembly's intent to do the same.
In applying our analysis to the messages at issue here, we believe the privacy interests involved are protected consistent with the intent of the General Assembly. In addition, we believe our analysis eliminates the constitutional privacy concerns raised by Baker and Sale and contested by DPC in this appeal. Messages, or portions of messages, that are found to be "public records" pursuant to our analysis as applied by the district court on remand are not likely to give rise to any argument that they are entitled to constitutional privacy protection.
III. Conclusion
We conclude that the court of appeals and the district court did not correctly interpret and apply CORA's "public records" definition. Accordingly, we reverse in part, affirm in part, and remand with directions.
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