June 09, 2010 12:55 AM UTC

Suthers Hits Schools With Massive CORA; Garnett Hits Back

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Fort Collins Coloradoan reported this weekend:

More than 150 Colorado school districts are scrambling to fill a massive documents request from the state attorney general in connection with a lawsuit challenging the state’s school funding system.

Several school districts contacted by the Coloradoan, including the Poudre School District, said it was the largest records request they’d ever received…

The attorney general’s office used the Colorado Open Records Act to file requests in May with more than 150 districts that aren’t plaintiffs in the Lobato vs. State of Colorado suit, which alleges the state isn’t meeting its constitutional requirements in providing an adequate education to children. The attorney general is defending the state in the lawsuit.

The request asks districts to provide documents dating back to 2005 related to 26 items, including school board agendas and meeting minutes, documentation of school expenditures, amount of funding received for English Language students and Gifted and Talented students, and teachers’ names, salaries, education and experience.

The request was necessary for the attorney general to build its defense in the lawsuit, said Mike Saccone, spokesman for the agency…

That’s what John Suthers says about these records demands, but the school districts targeted don’t agree, and are earning as much media as they can protesting the hardship of Suthers’ “voluminous” request. Suthers’ Democratic opponent Stan Garnett waded into the argument today, calling for Suthers to “scale back” his request–from his camp’s release:

Garnett, who served eight years on the Boulder Valley School Board, two as Treasurer and two as its President, said his experience there, and his 28-year law career – 22 years managing complex litigation – give him great concern about the wisdom and need of the current Attorney General’s actions.

“I’ve been hearing concerns about this document request from friends on school boards across the state,” said Garnett. “This is a very difficult time for public education in Colorado. School districts are struggling with possible layoffs and increased class sizes and cutting the most basic services. An unprecedented request such as this could cost many school districts thousands of dollars out of their operating budgets and shows that the Attorney General’s office is out of touch with the realities most school districts are facing…”

“In my many years of managing complex litigation, I learned that there were many ways to gather information for litigation,” Garnett added. “As Attorney General, I would scale back the scope of this request, and look for innovative ways to develop the information needed in this litigation that are not so burdensome to school districts struggling to balance their budgets.”

Obviously opinions on this will be skewed by one’s view of the lawsuit in question, Lobato v. Colorado, positing that Colorado unconstitutionally fails to provide adequate funding for education. If you’re at all sympathetic to your local schools, though, it’s tough for Suthers to look anything other than, well, villainous, hitting them with this CORA demand for what conservative pundits gleefully describe as “a mountain of paper.” Especially with an opponent saying he’d do it less onerously and confrontationally.

Garnett’s job would still be to defend the state, of course–what we’re talking about is the difference in approach between a lawyer people nevertheless can work with and consider reasonable, versus punitive clerical maneuvers that give lawyers a bad reputation. Which would you rather be selling?