Report at center of lawsuit against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold may have been destroyed
Five months after filing an open records request with the Colorado Secretary of State's Office, Suzanne Taheri still doesn't have what she's looking for, but she says, at least now she knows the information does - or did - exist.
"They wouldn't even own up to the fact that there was a report, and there was a survey," said Taheri.
Taheri, who served as Deputy Secretary of State under Republican Wayne Williams, says she saw a $25,000 invoice on the state's transparency portal for leadership development in the Secretary of State's Office. She wanted to know what the public got for its money.
It was 2021, just two years after Secretary of State Jena Griswold was elected. Her office had become a revolving door. A purchase order shows the State hired SageRiver Consulting to make "findings, conclusions, and recommendations."
Taheri asked the Secretary of State's Office to see the consultant's report.
"If there's dysfunctional management going on, we, the citizens, and those at home have a right to know about it. If they paid $25,000 to get an assessment of it, what were they paying for? Did they actually follow any of these recommendations?" asked Taheri.
Griswold's office told her they had no records to show for the money spent. When she asked to check with the consultant, the office refused. So, she filed a lawsuit.
"The harder they make it, the more it makes me want to see it," said Taheri.
A Denver District Court judge ruled in Taheri's favor, ordering Griswold to "seek to obtain the records from SageRiver," which recently posted a notice online stating that it is "temporarily closed."
In a court filing Thursday, the Attorney General's Office, which is representing Griswold, said the consultant who conducted the leadership development is now retired and she "shredded all hard-copy documents and attempted to delete and erase all electronic files." The consultant said it's "possible, but unlikely" the files are "in archived electronic storage."
Regardless, she says she gave Griswold's office a summary of a survey and a final report.
The Secretary of State's Office wouldn't say what happened to the documents but told CBS Colorado, "The department complies with all record retention obligations and obligations under the Colorado Open Records Act."
"We don't know if any changes were made; we don't know if the taxpayers got their money's worth. We know nothing," said Taheri. "Twenty-five thousand dollars is a decent amount of money to pay a consultant to have zero work product."
Taheri said the state's retention policy requires all state agencies to maintain records, like the ones she's seeking, for 10 years. But former employees tell CBS Colorado that Griswold refused to take custody of the consultant's report because it was highly critical of her and she didn't want it subject to open records requests.
The consultant says she's willing to hire someone to search her archived electronic storage, but that will cost $4,000.
Jena Griswold is term-limited as secretary of state and won the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in Colorado's primary election in June. She faces Republican Michael Allen in November's general election.
