Opinion ID: 2567457
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: grama requires the county to conduct a conscientious and neutral assessment of the floros report

Text: ¶ 24 When the County received the newspaper's request, it assumed the statutory responsibility to determine the report's classification status by taking into account the entire scope of GRAMA, including its expressions of legislative intent, its presumptions favoring access, and its mandate that when competing interests fight to a draw, disclosure wins. [3] This duty is reflected in GRAMA's requirement that denial letters contain citations to the provisions of the statute supporting the denial. It would be incompatible with a governmental entity's responsibilities under GRAMA to apply to a record request a review methodology which presumes that a requested record has been properly classified and then proceed to canvass GRAMA for statutory language that confirms its designation. Here, the County was required to conduct a conscientious and neutral evaluation of the report's GRAMA status without regard to existing designations or classifications. [4] This obligation continues throughout the appeal process. If a governmental entity becomes aware that circumstances that contributed to the denial of a record request have changed during the appeal, or before another request is received for the same record, the legislative intent and statutory structure of GRAMA requires the entity to reassess the classification of the record and, if appropriate, alter its classification as permitted by section 63-2-306.