COLUMN: Utah’s new hall of mirrors
Welcome back from spring break, Aggies, and congratulations to the men’s basketball team for their wins in Las Vegas.
I won’t dwell on that since you can find everything you want to know about the WAC tournament and more on page 8 of this very paper. Instead, I want to talk to you about what happened in Utah while we were all lounging in the Nevada sun.
Last week, our beloved Utah State Legislature and Governor passed and signed into law HB-477, which in a nutshell, takes our ability as Utahns to be informed of the goings-on of government and shoots it point-blank, right between the eyes.
Federal information falls under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) leaving states to define their own access laws.. Our particular government records law in Utah is the Government Records Access Management Act, commonly – and affectionately amongst those of us who make the most of it – referred to as GRAMA. HB-477 amends dear GRAMA to the point of nearly exempting the legislative branch from public access, especially concerning correspondence via newer technologies such as texting and e-mail, as well as making it more costly – in terms of dollars and time – for those people requesting access to whatever government records table scraps are left for us to scavenge.
This entire development took place in little over a week, with the Utah legislature rushing a vote with as little public input as possible and Gov. Gary Herbert pausing only briefly enough to smile for a camera and voice some focus-group tested concerns about kinks needing to be ironed out before dipping his quill and signing in the law with our blood while armed goons took GRAMA out to the salt flats and beat her with a sock full of quarters.
Overly dramatic? Hardly.
The enactment of HB-477 has received local and national criticism and it seems that overnight the state of Utah has claimed the top spot in terms of government secrecy. On the bright side, that’s at least one team in Utah that can snatch a No. 1 seed.
Paul Rolly of The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that the law makes suckers of the people of Utah. Donnie Welch of The Spectrum & Daily News wrote that HB-477 “feels more like a decision made by a government of a Third World country that does not believe in the democratic process.” In the same article, Welch quotes David Cullier of the University of Arizona, who said: “This legislation is the most horrific anti-FOI legislation I have ever seen. I think, in all seriousness, that Mexico’s FOIA law is probably better. Maybe even China’s FOIA laws.”
Not everyone has taken this news lying down. Already social media is running its usual course of repeal-the-law Facebook groups and petition signings and the national backlash is likely to give legislators food for thought before the implementation of the law in July. Still, history would tell us that your average online petition has about as much weight as the paper it’s printed on.
Public access to government records is just one more check on the democratic process of our nation and state. It is one more level of accountability that holds an elected official responsible for representing the wishes of his or her constituents and behaving in an appropriate fashion. Simply passing HB-477 does not mean the collected body of our state government are corrupt, back-door dealing scoundrels, but the new law eliminates the protections that keep such corruptions out of our system, opening the door for abuses and neglect.
Also, it is not just slimy reporters that rely on government documents. Interest groups – including Utah State University – use government records to keep tabs on what is going on at the hill and, lest we forget, individuals do occasionally like to know what’s going on in their government.
You’ve heard it all before, the calls to arms of people you don’t know, urging you to contact your local representative and voice your due concern on an issue you don’t really care about. I wish I could express better the devastating consequences that this bill has the potential to create in our state, but I cannot. All I can do is urge all of you to educate yourselves, or at the very least leave your ears open, for the debate that is certain to continue on this issue. For those of you with the conviction, it is shockingly simple to contact state legislators. Generally speaking their websites include an e-mail address for correspondence or even have a field where you can enter your piece and just hit send.
Utah is not know for it’s political activism. The stereotype claims that we are a state of polygamous rubes that are content to plow our fields while our ultra-conservative one-party government does whatever it dang well pleases. This time, however, the powers that be have taken a step against the fundamental concepts of democracy and responsible government and it’s high time the citizens of Utah started paying attention to what is going on.
Benjamin Wood is the editor in chief of The Utah Statesman. He can be reached at statesmaneditor@aggiemail.usu.edu