Pubdate: Sat, 13 Feb 2016 Source: Denver Post (CO) Copyright: 2016 The Denver Post Corp Contact: http://www.denverpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122 ABSURD RETREAT ON OPEN RECORDS Lawmakers need to rectify an inexcusable situation at the Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Colorado Department of Revenue. The agency refuses to release basic ownership information for marijuana businesses without exorbitant fees-fees that don't exist when the public retrieves the same information for other licensed businesses, including liquor stores. The department apparently would prefer to keep secret any ownership information, with or without fees. And it said as much when first contacted by reporter David Migoya, whose Kafkaesque interactions with the agency ( our description, not his) appeared this month in The Denver Post. ButMigoya persisted, and the agency retreated to the position that it would give him what he wanted but only after receiving the prohibitive sum of $ 10,000. The public should be able to find out not only who owns the hundreds of marijuana businesses that have sprouted during the past few years but individual owners' stake in those businesses as well. This is fundamental ownership data, not protected under any normal licensing arrangement. It's not enough that the state freely publishes the names and locations of businesses that sell, grow and distribute marijuana products. It's also not enough that the state, when prodded, will release a list of the nearly 1,200 owners of marijuana businesses. The two data sets are nearly useless unless they're connected. Who owns which businesses? And how much of each entity do those individuals own? Revenue officials obviously know the answers-they couldn't do their job if they didn't and if the information weren't handy. And yet they responded to a request for the information as if it were an exotic inquiry that would trigger an exhausting ordeal of compilation, redaction and other burdensome chores. Denver, facing the same request from The Denver Post, supplied a compete dossier on the ownership of the city's 633 marijuana licenses within 48 hours. At no cost. For that matter, as Migoya's article mentions, the state itself supplied The Post with complete ownership information just two years ago, also at no cost. The transformation of the state's attitude toward disclosure is baffling, but apparently has something to do with a law passed in 2015 that the agency would like to interpret in the most expansive way possible. Senate Bill 115 required confidentiality of "any individualized" records related to a marijuana licensee, such as credit reports and testing results. One of its sponsors, Rep. Dan Pabon, D- Denver, actually told Migoya the bill's intent was to bar disclosure of "sensitive information" that he believes includes the identities of licensees. Can Pabon be serious? There is no reason to grant marijuana business owners any special anonymity compared to other licensed businesses. And it's up to the legislature to ensure transparency in what is already a billion-dollar industry. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom