Wyoming Legislature Begins to Confront Public Records Access in the Digital Age

by: Wyoming Liberty Group

On August 14, at the second 2025-2026 interim meeting of the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee of the Wyoming Legislature, the members considered some draft bills from the Legislative Service Office that would amend the Wyoming Public Records Act. The committee also heard public testimony that was similar to testimony at the committee's first meeting in May. There were complaints that public records are not produced quickly enough, reproductions of public records cost too much, and some governments—particularly local governments—resist producing them at all, often illegally. It is another iteration of the proverbial sentiment that something aughta be done, one that is seldom easy to translate into law.

Fortunately, it seems the realities of the digital age are starting to emerge, albeit slowly.

Patrick Collins, the mayor of Cheyenne, testified at both the May and August meetings that the city is moving in the direction of publishing frequently requested information online without a specific request and has implemented software for submitting and managing specific records requests. Tara Evans, general counsel to the University of Wyoming, indicated that the school purchased a different software platform that permits quick access to e-mails and other documents for culling, reviewing, redacting and producing. It was Joey Correnti, executive director of Rural Wyoming Matters, who specifically urged that every agency in Wyoming should head in this direction and that there should eventually be a "statewide digital database that has all records."

The Wyoming Legislature itself shows that quick disclosure of records is simple, but by no means easy. The legislature's website largely keeps pace with the speed of legislative sessions. Bills are posted, votes are quickly recorded, bill digests are updated, and committee meetings and their topics are usually timely noticed. The Capitol renovation a few years back ensured that most, if not all, committee meetings are open for public comment on Zoom and otherwise broadcast and archived on YouTube, which was a welcome step forward for both public records and public meetings. But the legislature is a large, well-funded government body (like the City of Cheyenne and the University) compared to various towns across the state with populations measured in the hundreds.

It is largely a question of money and whether it's worth it to provide all state agencies and local governments with the means to disclose records automatically, broadly and quickly. The state could consider funding uniform e-mail servers, formats for all government documents and mandatory practices for how those records are kept. This would be expensive, but the cost would pale in comparison to funding full-time staff who spend their days reviewing, redacting and finalizing records for production. Perhaps advancements in artificial intelligence will make redacting sensitive documents easier and more uniform, but all it would take is one major error (such as, for instance, a massive disclosure of citizens' Social Security numbers) to make everyone reconsider so much transparency.

Digitization would not resolve the many debates about what records should be public. For instance, although the legislature's role is public and it quickly discloses a lot of legislative business, it has exempted itself from parts of public records law including the disclosure of legislators' e-mails. Many public records advocates consider this controversial, but many communications from citizens to legislators (and other government officials) are often very personal or otherwise sensitive. Especially in Wyoming, one could understand the reluctance of, for instance, a citizen in a small town candidly sharing details of a problem in local government with another public official when the officials causing the problem can acquire the e-mail under law. Such oversight could be chilled even more if those communications were automatically made public.

Digitization is important, but right now it is an aside since the bill drafts under consideration have nothing to do with it. While supporting digitization, Mr. Correnti's testimony opposed language in the bill drafts that would implement faster production deadlines without digitization, noting Wyoming's local governments are already strained by requests. It seems, at best, that the committee will continue a slower approach, including providing the public records ombudsman (a position only created in 2019) with a greater ability and resources to improve responsiveness to actual requests. But the record of the two committee meetings shows that digitization is the unavoidable future of public records law.

Steve Klein is a partner at Barr & Klein PLLC in Washington, DC.