I called Gov. Gary Herbert's office yesterday to learn how he plans to proceed now that the GRAMA Working Group has finished its business.

Spokeswoman Ally Isom gave me this statement: "The governor is looking forward to meeting with Lane Beattie and hearing the results of the working group, but at this point there is no announcement about a special session pertaining to the recommendations."

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Several members of the GRAMA Working Group have suggested that the state set up some kind of a notification system to let constituents know any communication to a state official is subject to disclosure.

At the every bottom of the state's website, there is a link to the current “Privacy Policy Statement.” It's easy to miss, frankly. And it is not as clearly written as statements I found on other governmental entities sites.

Lane Beattie, GRAMA Working Group chairman, told a legislative interim committee this morning that a key issue for the group is determining whether text messages are a “record.” So far, views of text messages are split among group members.

The Emerging Technology subcommittee has suggested leaving text messages unaddressed in Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act while technology evolves. The statutory definitions subcommittee is still wrestling with whether texts are a ...

I just spent four hours at the State Records Committee's monthly meeting and it was, I must say, way more interesting than CSPAN.

Seriously.

On today's agenda: A Salt Lake Tribune GRAMA for emails involving SUU President Michael Benson's decision to retain basketball coach Roger Reid; City Weekly's effort to get correspondence between Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and campaign donors, including Jeremy Johnson, while they were being investigated by state and federal agencies; and decisions on whether to approve retention schedules proposed for certain records by various state and local entities.

An example of that last item: The once-in-a-lifetime permit you dre...

Does Cupid play politics? That 'something special' might be your mate's political ideology
Researchers discover spouses select partners based on social and political attitudes

HOUSTON -- (May 11, 2011) -- Though "variety is the spice of life" and "opposites attract," most people marry only those whose political views align with their own, according to new research from Rice University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Political scientists found that political attitudes were among the strongest shared traits and even stronger than qualities like personality or looks.

In an article published in the April issue of the Journal of Politics, researcher...

The GRAMA Working Group's subcommittees presented reports today, which you can read here.

I will post other reports from the statutory definitions group later this afternoon.

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Here is Jeff Hunt's analysis of the intent language that introduces the Government Records Access and Management Act.

He outlined two options in this paper: leave the intent language intact, or eliminate it. During the statutory definitions subcommittee meeting on Monday, a third option emerged: Tweaking the language so it is consistent with another section of the statute. That alternative seemed most paltable to the group.

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I am going to start a new thing: Press Release of the Day. Here's today's winner. Not vouching for it. Just saying it made me laugh.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Get your very own Hawaiian birth certificate at www.proveyourbirth.com

Exact replica certificate, personalized with your name and birth date, makes a great conversation starter and is all the proof you need to fend off annoying billionaires and others suspicious about where you were actually born

Americans are breathing a collective sigh of relief now that the White House has released a copy of President Barack Obama's official long-form birth certificate.

The release of the certifi...

What does Utah Sen. Steve Urquhart think should be done with GRAMA? Read this new post on his blog....

I thought some of my readers might be interested in seeing how Judge Hilder ruled at a key moment in the Tolton versus Town of Alta case. I have selected a few key pages from his 2007 order to give you a sampling of how the case progressed. You can read them here....

I've read many interesting comments on my story about the Tolton versus Town of Alta GRAMA fight. Here's something extra: a copy of Tolton's consolidated GRAMA request, filed in February 2003, after the State Records Committee hearing.

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Steve Maxfield, chairman of the SaveGRAMA.org group, sent a letter to the GRAMA Working Group Friday asking that members of the State Records Committee be asked to join subcommittees that will hash out any recommendations for revising the state's open records law.

Leaving the committee out of the official process was a "fatal error," Maxfield said. Here's his letter.

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Lane Beattie, chairman of the GRAMA Working Group, on Friday sent around an email listing topics that will be the focus of the yet-to-form subcommittees. The group's subcommittees will met for the first time on Wednesday.

The topics:

1. Emerging technologies

2. Costs and timeliness

3. Simplification and centralization

4. Statutory definitions

You can read more about what is included under each topic here.

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Inquiring minds — well, mine, at least — want to know what's happening with the GRAMA Working Group's subcommittees, which were supposed to get underway this week.

I just got off the phone with chairman Lane Beattie and here's the latest.

Briefly, not much has happened yet.

"it's been more difficult to pull together than I'd hoped," Beattie said.

Beattie said spring break and busy work schedules have complicated getting subcommittees launched. But he expects that by tomorrow, he'll send group members a list of key issues around which subcommittees will form and ask them to select concepts they'd like to work on. He expects some group members will want to weigh-...

Texas has a novel approach to open records requests. Any governmental entity covered by the Public Information Act that wants to whithold documents or information from a requester must first seek a ruling from the Texas Office of the Attorney General.

In other words, the onus is on the governmental entity to ensure it is properly withholding records.

The entity is required to make the request even if the record appears to fall within a permitted nondisclosure category, unless it can show the AG's office has already ruled on the exact matter.

The entity must seek a ruling within 10 days of receiving a request. And, the AG's office must respond within 45 business days.<...

Utah Data Points, a website featuring analysis by political science professors at Utah universities, has a new post looking at how voters rank importance of certain factors in the open records debate.

Kelly Patterson, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, found voters rank access to government records far higher than "citizen's right to privacy when communicating with legislators." Only 2 percent thought legislators' own privacy was an important consideration. You can read the analysis here.

If you haven't seen it before, also check out the site's analysis of the speed (or lack thereof) in how HB477 was passed.

At its last meeting the State Records Committee handed out a chart staff created that compared the current GRAMA law and changes proposed in HB477. The chart also listed commentary about the changes and noted corresponding lines in the bill text. I found the chart helpful, and thought others following the ongoing debate about the open records act might, too. Here it is: The Chart....

I did a little GRAMA "outlier" fact checking in today's story, which you can read here. I thought you might be interested in seeing the GRAMA request filed by the Jordan River Restoration Network, which is discussed in the story. You can read the request here....

Access to meeting minutes were the basis for a lot of past GRAMA fights, a problem many municipalities and government entities solved by putting those records online so that anyone, at any time, can peruse them. The Town of Alta, for instance, began posting minutes on its website in 2005.

Now, Utahns are about to get another avenue for tracking local government activity. On May 15, city and county governments, and local and special service districts will begin posting revenue and expenditure data on transparent.utah.gov. Entities with budgets under $1 million are exempt from the posting requirement, which was approved by the Utah Legislat...

Ogden Sen. Stuart Reid is not the only lawmaker concerned about how his personal, private communications are dealt with in GRAMA. Here is how the current statute defines what is and what is not a public record. The questions: Is the statute clear enough? Comprehensive enough? Too narrow? Too broad?

WHAT A RECORD IS . . .

"A record means a book, letter, document, paper, map, plan, photograph, film, card, tape, recording, electronic data, or other documentary material regardless of physical form or characteristics that is prepared, owned, received, or retained by a governmental entity or political subdivision; and where all of the information in the original is reproducible by...

This is what happens when lawsuits and GRAMA requests get out of hand. It all started in 1994, when Mark Haik sued the Town of Alta over water service. The dispute lasted five years. Then, in November 2003, Haik sent a simple three-sentence GRAMA request to the town asking to inspect planning commission records. The town said that wasn't a sufficient description of what Haik wanted to look at. By May, tensions were focused a drink Haik either did or did not consume during a planning commission meeting. The town refused to allow Haik access to the records until he paid the $3.20 tab. Thus, began the lemonade dispute, which you can

Jeff Hunt, a media attorney and member of the GRAMA Working Group, objected during the group’s first meeting to the way legislative staff had framed 36 policy questions. At the second meeting, Hunt introduced 22 questions of his own that reframed the policy issues to be debated by the group. Here are Hunt’s questions.

Welcome to the new blog!

I plan to use The GRAMA Debate blog to provide background and context to stories about the GRAMA Working Group and other issues raised as Utah debates changes to the state's open records law.

In today's story about Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden, and his vote against repealing HB477, I mentioned a memo sent by Michael Wilkins to other members of the GRAMA working group.

Here's the memo Wilkins distributed last week, outlining his preliminary thoughts about what the group needs to look at as it moves forward. http://local.sltrib.com/upload/2011/...