Colorado § 24-71.5-104 - Legal material in official electronic record.

§ 24-71.5-104. Legal material in official electronic record.

(1) If an official publisher publishes legal material only in an electronic record, the publisher shall:

(a) Designate the electronic record as official; and

(b) Meet the requirements of sections 24-71.5-105, 24-71.5-107, and 24-71.5-108.

(2) An official publisher that publishes legal material in a record other than an electronic record may designate an electronic record as official if the requirements of sections 24-71.5-105, 24-71.5-107, and 24-71.5-108 are met.

Source: L. 2012: Entire article added, (HB 12-1209), ch. 138, p. 502, § 1, effective August 8.

OFFICIAL COMMENT

This act does not direct a state to publish its legal material in any specific format or formats. The act leaves policy decisions regarding format of its legal material to the state.

There are no publication standards for legal information shared among the states at this time, and within a single state there may be multiple publishing practices for legal material. For example, today in a single state, the state's code may be published in a yearly paperback edition and electronically, court reports may be published in hardbound volumes, and the administrative regulations may be available in a looseleaf format or only in an electronic format. All states are transitioning from a print-only publishing environment to either an environment in which legal materials are published in a mix of formats or one in which legal materials are published in electronic format only. Many states publish the same legal material in both print and electronic formats. A state may designate as official as many formats of its legal material as it wishes. If legal material in an electronic record is designated as official, the requirements of the act must be met regardless of whether the state publishes the same legal material in another format.

As a matter of courtesy to the user of electronic legal material, if the electronic version is not designated as official, the state should include information that displays with the legal material that explains the source of or the procedure by which the public can obtain a copy of the official version of the legal material.

Where the legal material is published only in an electronic format, the official publisher is required to designate as official the electronic format. This is a common sense requirement; if legal material is available from the state government in one version only, it follows that that version must be official.