The Estes Park newsroom left the Colorado Press Association’s annual conference with four awards recognizing its work covering open records, government accountability, public safety, and press access.
The awards were presented Saturday during the closing ceremony of the CPA’s three-day Local News Solutions conference at the Delta Hotels in Thornton.
Estes Valley Voice editor and publisher Patti Brown won the organization’s 2025 First Amendment award, recognizing her work covering denied Colorado Open Records Act requests with the Estes Valley Fire Protection District and the Park Hospital District and her willingness to stand up to the U.S. State Department, which told her she couldn’t attend and report on a meeting about a new community support group for the local J-1 visa program.
The CPA contest judged entries produced in 2025 from member media organizations divided into classes based on story output. The EVV competed in Class 1 as a daily and online publication producing 120 or fewer original stories per month.
Along with the work of covering the PHD, Brown and senior editor Suzy Blackhurst won best editorial collaboration for “We have said it before, we will say it again: the public’s business must be done publicly.”
The commentary examined Estes Park Health’s efforts to deny the Estes Valley Voice access to public records. It also addressed the denial of access to an official recording of the public portion of a meeting and the identity of a contractor paid to prepare reports.
After three Colorado Open Records Act requests, the Estes Valley Voice filed suit against the Park Hospital District in March 2025 over the district’s withholding of a Letter of Intent to affiliate with UCHealth. About 10 days before the scheduled court date, the district released the letter and said the issue was moot and court action was unnecessary.
Lawyers for both sides, however, were called to a conference with the judge in June 2025 to discuss the matter. During the conference, the Park Hospital District’s attorney said the district knew it could not prevail. The court ordered Estes Park Health to pay the Estes Valley Voice’s legal fees.
Steve Zansberg, the Estes Valley Voice’s attorney, offered to waive his firm’s $9,281 fee if the Park Hospital District’s attorney would tell the public how much taxpayer money the hospital board spent to defend what was an indefensible case.
The offer was refused.
The Estes Valley Voice subsequently filed a Colorado Open Records Act request for the legal bills.
Special districts, such as the Park Hospital District, are government entities, and their finances, including their legal bills, are a matter of public record.
Initially, the Park Hospital District told the Estes Valley Voice it did not have itemized bills from its attorneys at Hall Render and instead only received aggregated legal bills each month.
Then the Park Hospital District said it did have itemized legal bills but that reviewing and redacting information unrelated to the CORA case would take too much time.
The Estes Valley Voice is pursuing an open and transparent accounting of how much taxpayer funds the PHD spent to defend withholding a public record in a proper Colorado Open Records Act case.
“What is deeply concerning is that the publicly elected Park Hospital District board members have never publicly discussed the lawsuit or the settlement offer. As a board, the members did not deliberate or vote on whether to accept or reject the offer in a public board meeting. Instead, certain members appear to have pursued the lawsuit and appeal without consulting the full board or accounting publicly for those decisions,” said Brown.
“It is one thing to consult with legal counsel in an executive session for advice, but boards can not make decisions in executive session, and the public has a right to know about how a board spends its tax dollars,” said Brown.
The Park Hospital District has exceeded its $200,000 annual budget for 2026 by more than $225,000 and has had to go back to UCHealth to renegotiate a new memorandum of understanding about how much taxpayer money it can retain to meet its administrative obligations, including its legal fees.
The acquisition deal with UCHealth requires the special district to turn over property tax revenue to UCHealth annually for the next 50 years. The Park Hospital District expects to collect $4,650,132 from property owners in 2026, minus the $200,000 administrative allowance.
Other awards received
Other award-winning work included “Fire District faces stress but not crisis after multiple resignations” by Brown, which received third best news story, and “U.S. State Department shuts the door to local media during Sunshine Week,” for second best editorial collaboration. The latter was awarded to Brown and Estes Valley Voice editorial cartoonist Dick Mulhern.
“Fire District faces stress but not crisis after multiple resignations” covers an Estes Valley Fire Protection District board meeting following the resignation of the district’s chief and three other staff members. Brown reported on the search for a new district chief and the fire district’s plans for the interim.
“After covering the fire district over the past few years and seeing the district accept the resignations of three fire chiefs, and then seeing some other staff members resign, the stress was palpable in the firehouse, but it was also evident that the district’s firefighters were committed to serving the community despite the administrative drama, and that the newly elected board was working diligently to right the ship. The community needed to know that, and that’s what I hoped our reporting would show,” said Brown.
“U.S. State Department shuts the door to local media during Sunshine Week,” examines a directive by BridgeUSA, a brand name used by the U.S. Department of State for its J-1 exchange visitor programs, that the press could not report on an Estes Park Community Support Group meeting.
The meeting involved representatives from local government, area businesses, and taxpayer-funded entities. Despite being told the meeting was closed to the press, Brown attended and reported on it.
“How absurd to tell the media it cannot report on a publicly advertised meeting attended by publicly elected officials and local business leaders about a summer work and cultural exchange program that brings more than 500 internationals to town to work in our local businesses,” said Brown.
“The Estes Valley Voice may be a small, hyperlocal new publication, but we take the First Amendment and the state’s sunshine laws seriously, and we are deeply honored to receive recognition by the Colorado Press Association for our work,” said Brown.
Two other writers associated with the Estes Valley Voice also received awards. Toni Tresca, the Estes Valley Voice arts and entertainment editor and editor of the Bucket List Community News in Denver, received first place for excellence in audio digital storytelling for “Digs into December in Denver,” which aired on the Bucket List radio show on KGNU.
Lily Delgado, who also writes for the Bucket List, took second place in the category of best crime and public safety reporting for “No driver, No problem? Denver prepares for Waymo arrival.” In February, the Estes Valley Voice published Delgado and Camryn Montgomery’s CU Boulder capstone article “Where local politics meet global conflicts: Boulder’s struggle over Gaza, free speech and civic order reflects a growing tension in American democracy.”
Congratulations to the EVV team on the outside recognition of the quality of your news coverage and journalistic efforts.
Congratulations on your award Patti. You certainly deserved it for all the work you have done on that hospital business.
Congratulations to the teams of writers receiving these awards! Keep up the good work.