Colorado judge orders Jena Griswold's attorneys to continue negotiating for missing leadership report
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold was previously ordered to turn over public records involving consulting work paid for with public funds. However, Griswold's team said the documents no longer exist.
A week after Griswold was elected as the next Attorney General, her team of lawyers from the Attorney General's Office was back in court to determine whether more efforts need to be made to obtain them.
A Denver district court judge says her office should have kept those documents but didn't.
"The court sort of emphasized that in the first round they found that the report existed, and the secretary had an obligation to preserve that report and did not," said Former Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Taheri, who helped spearhead the cause brought by the Public Trust Institute.
"This may end up being a case where the secretary, having destroyed that document, we're never going to be able to see it," said Taheri.
An invoice in the court record shows the state paid an outside firm, Sage River Consulting, nearly $25,000 to conduct "leadership development" and make "findings, conclusions, and recommendations." Former Secretary of State's Office employees told CBS Colorado that Griswold refused to take custody of the documents because they're highly critical of her and she didn't want the information subject to open records requests.
"That's unfortunate that there is no consequence for an elected official who received a document that we have every reason to believe was a very negative portrayal of her leadership skills," said Taheri.
The court ordered Griswold's team to negotiate in good faith with Sage River Consulting, which is no longer operating, to obtain documents they say they've deleted but might be able to revive at a cost.
Tehari now feels this case may have hit a dead end.
"When the department was negotiating with them, it was a very slow process and still somewhat hostile," she said.
Griswold was not in court Tuesday, but a spokesperson for her office told CBS Colorado:
"The records requested are from over five years ago, from a vendor that the Department of State no longer has an active contract with. The Department complies with all record retention obligations, and any suggestion otherwise is incorrect.
Ms. Taheri's complaints at this point are directed at the vendor and not at the Department of State. We will continue to work on a solution that works for all parties – as we had been doing before Ms. Taheri brought this before the Court. The Department of State has previously provided Ms. Taheri with all records responsive to her request in our possession."
