Colorado AI Governance Guide for Local Governments

A Colorado local government should not use one label — “AI,” “chatbot,” “decision support,” or “facial recognition” — as a substitute for a coverage analysis. Different systems may trigger different duties based on:

• the public entity and department involved;
• the system's intended and actual use;
• whether personal data is processed;
• whether the output materially influences a consequential decision;
• whether the use involves facial recognition or biometric processing;
• whether the system is offered directly to the public;
• whether minors, students, applicants, employees, patients, benefit recipients, tenants, or other protected populations are affected;
• whether a vendor develops, operates, hosts, or changes the system; and
• which records, accessibility, security, civil-rights, employment, education, and appeal requirements apply independently.

The Colorado Open Records Act generally requires most public records to be available for inspection, subject to statutory exceptions. The Colorado Secretary of State describes a public record as including most writings made, maintained, or kept by a government office and recognizes electronic delivery of records.^[8]

What this may mean for AI

Depending on their purpose, content, custody, and relationship to public business, relevant records may include:

• prompts submitted by employees or contractors;
• generated drafts or final outputs used in agency work;
• recommendations, rankings, scores, flags, or classifications;
• system and model version identifiers;
• input-data descriptions;
• notices and adverse-outcome explanations;
• correction, reconsideration, and appeal requests;
• human-review notes and final actions;
• incident reports, test results, monitoring records, and audit logs;
• vendor documentation, release notes, and material-update notices; and
• messages or records held in a vendor-hosted environment.

This does not mean every prompt, temporary output, or technical log is automatically a public record or must be kept permanently. The records custodian and counsel should classify records according to the applicable statute, exemption, retention schedule, legal hold, and operational need.

Questions for the records custodian

1. 01Which AI-related records document the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other public business of the entity?
2. 02Which records are transitory, drafts, duplicates, or working material, and which form part of the official record?
3. 03Which records contain confidential, privileged, security-sensitive, personnel, student, health, criminal-justice, or other protected information?
4. 04Can the agency search, export, review, redact, and produce relevant records without depending entirely on the vendor?
5. 05Does the contract preserve records when a request, audit, investigation, appeal, or litigation hold is pending?
6. 06Which local retention schedule has been approved for the entity, and how does it map to each AI record category?

Recommended governance action

Add an AI-records section to the system inventory. For each system, record the likely official records, custodian, repository, retention rule, export method, confidentiality issues, and disposition process. Do not allow default vendor deletion settings to determine the public entity’s retention practice.

Colorado public entities should follow the retention schedule and records-management authority applicable to the entity. Colorado State Archives maintains records-management resources, and the Colorado Municipal Records Retention Schedule is used by municipalities after approval for the particular municipality.^[14]

Beginning January 1, 2027, a covered deployer under SB 26-189 must retain records reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance for at least three years after the consequential decision, or longer when other state or federal law requires. The act identifies system-version information, change logs, and documentation of material mitigation changes as examples.^[2]

Practical implication

The three-year ADMT period is a statutory floor for covered compliance records, not a universal destruction date. Employment, student, benefit, public-record, audit, litigation-hold, grant, contract, or other rules may require a different or longer period.

Minimum inventory fields

• system and vendor;
• department and owner;
• intended use;
• actual decision or workflow supported;
• affected population;
• covered-domain assessment;
• system and model version;
• developer documentation received;
• material updates and dates;
• inputs and personal-data categories;
• outputs and decision weight;
• notice location;
• adverse-outcome workflow;
• correction and review pathway;
• records custodian;
• retention schedule and legal holds;
• accessibility owner;
• last test and review date; and
• suspension or termination authority.

Colorado’s technology-accessibility framework applies to state and local public entities, including local departments, agencies, special districts, and instrumentalities. Colorado OIT’s official guidance explains that the standards apply to technology in use and to technology created, purchased, or updated. HB 21-1110 established the state and public-entity accessibility requirements, while HB 24-1454 provided only a limited good-faith immunity period that ended July 1, 2025; it did not eliminate the underlying accessibility duty.^{[9][10][20][21]}

Public-facing AI may include:

• chatbots and virtual assistants;
• application or benefit-screening portals;
• employment and recruiting interfaces;
• resident request or complaint tools;
• translation, transcription, and document-generation services;
• AI-generated notices, letters, forms, and PDFs;
• automated telephone or voice services;
• maps, dashboards, and data visualizations; and
• correction, reconsideration, appeal, and human-review request forms.

Procurement and implementation implications

1. 01Treat accessibility as a mandatory product and contract requirement, not post-launch remediation.
2. 02Require accessibility documentation, testing access, defect reporting, remediation timelines, and cooperation with accommodation requests.
3. 03Test the full workflow, including authentication, notices, generated content, forms, attachments, error messages, and escalation to a person.
4. 04Provide an effective alternative-access route when a barrier is identified.
5. 05Confirm that model or interface updates do not silently break accessibility.

SB 26-189 separately requires its notices and disclosures to be reasonably accessible to consumers with disabilities and people with limited English proficiency, consistent with applicable law.^[2]

Colorado’s HB 24-1147 requires specified disclaimers on covered communications that are generated or substantially altered by artificial intelligence and falsely depict what a candidate or officeholder said or did. The law provides civil remedies and penalties in the circumstances it covers.^[15]

What this does not mean

The law is not a universal disclosure rule for every AI-assisted local-government communication. Election officials, public-information staff, elected officials, campaigns, and counsel should determine whether a particular communication falls within the statute and should maintain authentication and rapid-response procedures for false election content.

Beginning January 1, 2027, a covered developer must make specified documentation reasonably understandable to deployers while protecting trade secrets and legally protected information.^[2]

The documentation includes:

• intended uses;
• known harmful or inappropriate uses;
• categories of training data, including personal data, to the extent known;
• known limitations, risks, and circumstances in which the system should not be used;
• instructions for appropriate use, monitoring, and meaningful human review when applicable; and
• information reasonably necessary for the deployer to meet its statutory duties.

Developers must also give deployers notice of material updates, intentional and substantial modifications, and relevant changes to intended use, limitations, or risk mitigation within a reasonable time. Covered developers must retain specified compliance records for at least three years.^[2]

Procurement implication

A promise that a system is “compliant” is not enough. The contract should require the documentation the public entity needs, identify when and how updates will be delivered, preserve version history, and provide a remedy when the vendor withholds information needed for lawful deployment.

Before covered ADMT materially influences a consequential decision, a deployer must provide clear and conspicuous notice that covered ADMT was or will be used and explain how the individual may obtain additional information. A prominent public notice reasonably accessible at the point of interaction may satisfy the advance-notice requirement.^[2]

When covered ADMT materially influences a consequential decision that results in an adverse outcome, the deployer must provide, within 30 days:

• a plain-language description of the decision and the role of the covered ADMT;
• a simple process for requesting additional information;
• available information concerning the system name, version, developer, and types, categories, and sources of personal data used; and
• an explanation of the individual's correction and meaningful-human-review rights and how to exercise them.

The notices and disclosures must be reasonably accessible to people with disabilities and people with limited English proficiency, consistent with applicable law.^[2]

After an adverse outcome involving covered ADMT, a consumer may request instructions for obtaining and correcting factually incorrect or materially inaccurate personal data used in the decision. The statute does not require correction of opinions, predictions, scores, or protected evaluations.^[2]

The consumer may also request meaningful human review and reconsideration to the extent commercially reasonable.^[2]

Under the enacted definition, meaningful human review is conducted by a trained person who:

• has authority to approve, modify, or override the consequential decision;
• considers relevant and available primary evidence;
• does not default to the system output; and
• has enough information to understand the output's intended use, material limitations, input categories, and principal factors without requiring disclosure of protected source code, model weights, or trade secrets.

Local-government workflow

For each covered decision, designate:

• the office receiving a request;
• acceptable submission channels;
• the person authenticating the requester;
• the system and data owner;
• the reviewer and backup reviewer;
• the reviewer's decision authority;
• the primary evidence available;
• the deadline and communication channel;
• the record of the review and result; and
• the process for correcting source data and rerunning or reconsidering the decision when appropriate.

A person who merely restates the model’s score without authority, training, primary evidence, or the ability to change the outcome is not a meaningful reviewer.

HB 26-1263 applies to operators that develop and make publicly available, or offer to consumers, conversational artificial-intelligence services that primarily simulate human conversation through adaptive text, visual, or audio communications.^[5]

The statutory definition includes significant exclusions. Depending on the product’s design and use, excluded services may include certain commerce-related or transactional assistance and customer-service tools; narrow-topic tools that cannot generate specified sexual content or sustain self-harm dialogue; tools designed for internal business use; certain healthcare uses; certain limited educational tools; and conversational features embedded in another application that are not designed to simulate emotional companionship. Counsel should review the enacted text before classifying a municipal chatbot.^[5]

The act includes requirements concerning:

• disclosure that the user is interacting with artificial intelligence rather than a person;
• commercially reasonable or generally accepted age-estimation methods;
• additional protections for known minor users and account holders;
• protocols for suicidal ideation or self-harm prompts;
• restrictions on representations that outputs are equivalent to or endorsed by specified licensed professionals; and
• annual reporting to the Attorney General concerning the self-harm protocol.

Local-government meaning

A city or county that simply purchases a vendor chatbot should not assume that every operator duty belongs only to the vendor. Counsel should examine whether the public entity, vendor, integrator, or more than one party develops, controls access to, makes publicly available, or offers the service.

At minimum, a local chatbot contract should identify:

• who is the statutory operator;
• where the AI disclosure appears;
• whether accounts or profiles are created;
• whether the service is available to minors;
• what age-assurance, privacy, safety, escalation, and reporting controls apply;
• what the bot is prohibited from representing;
• how emergency or self-harm prompts are handled;
• which transcripts and safety events are retained;
• how the public entity can suspend the service; and
• how operator compliance is documented.

Do not confuse the chatbot-safety law with SB 26-189. A public chatbot may be subject to one, both, or neither framework depending on how it is offered and whether it materially influences a consequential decision.

This guide provides general policy and governance information. It is not legal advice, a comprehensive statement of Colorado law, or a substitute for review by a city, county, school-district, special-district, public-safety, or agency attorney. Laws, regulations, proposed rules, guidance, records schedules, and bill statuses may change. Officials should verify current requirements, final Attorney General rules, local authority, and the facts of a particular use before acting.