Watchdog group gives state agencies a “B” for openness

SALT LAKE CITY (May 15, 2005)- A state-wide audit gave Utah cities, counties, school districts, police and sheriff’s departments a solid “B” average for how well they stick to the state’s public-records law.

Government workers also earned an average “B” for how they treat the Joe Public who comes in and asks for public documents.

The Utah FOI Audit was designed to answer two questions:

* How well do local governments and law enforcement agencies comply with Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), the state law that governs the public’s right to access public documents?

* How do government workers treat citizens who ask to see public documents?

“Overall, Utah earns a ‘good’ for complying with the public-records law,” said the audit’s principal investigator, Brian L. Massey. “But that’s only part of the story. There were big differences among the five groups we audited.

“Judging from the audit,” he added, “a citizen generally would have an easy time accessing a public document from the city or county. It would be much harder at a police or sheriff’s department. On average, school districts are in between.”

The auditors were allowed to grade the attitudes of the people they encountered in public offices, so there would be both subjective and objective measures of the way such public employees treat average citizens, Massey said. While some freedom of information audits in other states have been conducted by professional journalists, the designers of the Utah study wanted to measure how regular residents were treated when they asked for documents guaranteed them, under Utah law.

The audit was conducted by the Utah Foundation for Open Government (UFOG), which is part of the Utah Headliners chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). It was supported by a $5,000 grant from the National Freedom of Information Coalition (www.nfoic.org) and contributions from Utah media.

“With this audit, SPJ shines a light on what it is like for ordinary citizens to find out what their government-paid for by their taxes-is doing,” said Linda Petersen, president of UFOG and Utah Headliners.

“Access to government records is not just access to words on paper, computer disks or computer screens,” she said. “It is access to those who carry out the public’s work for the public’s good, and to their actions on our behalf. That’s important. There is no greater public good than that of the governed knowing how they are being governed.”

Twenty-six volunteer auditors visited 141 city councils, county commissions, police and sheriff’s departments and school districts in 25 of Utah’s 29 counties and the Salt Lake Valley from March 17 to April 14. The volunteers fully or partly completed audits for 135 of the organizations, or nearly 96 percent.

At city hall and county commissions, they asked to see the mayor’s or commission chair’s most recent expense report. They asked police and sheriff’s departments for their most recent “dispatch log,” or the report of calls to which they responded. At the school districts, the auditors asked to see the superintendent of schools’ employment contract.

Each is a public document under state law, said Jeff Hunt, a Salt Lake City attorney with expertise in GRAMA.

On average, city and county governments earned an “A-” for their compliance and attitude toward the auditors. Police and sheriff’s departments averaged a “C+” each on the audit’s “attitude grade.” But on the “compliance grade,” police departments averaged a “D+” and sheriff’s departments averaged a “C-.” School districts earned an average “B-” on both grades.

At two-thirds of the audited governments, the volunteers were showed the requested public documents on the spot, on either an oral or written request. “That is above and beyond GRAMA,” said Massey, “which requires only that a government take a written request and respond within 10 business days.”

City and county governments did the best at doing more than the law requires, according to the audit.

Doing no more than what the law says is what 37 local governments and law enforcement agencies did. Another 18 failed the audit. About three-fourths of those were police and sheriff’s departments that either refused to accept an auditor’s written GRAMA request or did not respond to a written request within 10 business days.

The survey found that city and county governments were not as likely as the rest to ask an auditor to identify him or herself beyond what the law requires. Police and sheriff’s departments and school districts were the most likely to ask an auditor to give a reason for his or her request to see a public document. But GRAMA does not require that.

Also, the survey found that workers at nearly two-thirds of the audited governments and law enforcement agencies sought the permission or advice of superiors or co-workers before responding to a request to see a public document.

“That could suggest that some local governments may be willing but not be institutionally prepared to handle a citizen’s request for a public document,” Massey said, “or that they may misunderstand or not know enough about what GRAMA requires of them.”

For example, two auditors who visited the Price city police department reported that “we were asked at least four times who were where with and why we wanted to see” the dispatch log. Then they were told that “we couldn’t see it, even with a written request, without a good reason.”

That was a typical comment from the law enforcement audits. But not all police and sheriff’s departments were that resistant, Massey said.

In contrast, the employee at the Carbon County Commission who handled the auditors’ request “got up and got the document, showed it to us and even explained confusing things on it,” the two auditors wrote.

That was typical for city and county governments, Massey said, although not all of them were that open.

In all, the audit covered 37 city councils in Utah county-seat cities and the Salt Lake Valley. They audited 25 city police departments and the Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communication Center. Twenty-four county commissions, 25 sheriff’s departments and 24 school districts were also audited.

Most of the volunteer auditors were communication or journalism students from Brigham Young University, Snow College, the University of Utah and Weber State University. The rest were not students. No working journalist participated as an auditor.

Massey is a board member of UFOG and Utah Headliners-SPJ, and an assistant professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Communication. UFOG and Headliners board member James A. Fisher, an assistant professor-lecturer at the U’s communication department, served as the audit’s co-investigator. Sallie Young, an editor at the Valley Journals, coordinated the activities of the volunteer auditors.

The Headliners Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists provides free training in Freedom of Information compliance to public agencies.