This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When it comes to lobbyist-transparency requirements, Utah is about average among the 50 states — not too bad, but not too good.

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and watchdog organization, gave Utah a C grade for its lobbyist-reporting requirements.

The report card examined five questions:

• How are the positions lobbyists take on bills reported?

• How detailed are their expense reports?

• What dollar threshold must expenses reach to require reporting?

• How accessible to the public are lobbyist registration and reporting forms?

• What are the reporting requirements for the compensation lobbyists receive for their work on behalf of clients?

For each category, 2 is the best mark a state can receive, followed by 1, 0 and minus 1.

Utah received a 0 for reporting lobbyist activities on specific bills, a 1 for expenditure transparency, a minus 1 for expenditure-reporting thresholds, a 2 for form accessibility, and a minus 1 for reporting on lobbyist compensation.

The Beehive State did better than 16 states. Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming all got D's. Florida, Nevada, Oregon and West Virginia finished with F's.

Twenty-two states fared better than Utah, with California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin earning A's, and Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington scoring B's.

Joining Utah in the so-so C ranks are Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Everything isn't coming up rosés • One criticism of Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is its recently imposed central ordering system, which takes decisions about what products to stock out of the hands of the individual store managers.

Critics say that change has led to popular items often being unavailable to customers.

One patron, to bolster that claim, recently sent me a picture he took of the rosé wine section of the liquor store at Kimball Junction near Park City.

It was empty.

In fact, he says, the store has been out of rosé wines for three weeks.

"I am guessing that the DABC inventory management doesn't take in to account that many wine drinkers, like myself, prefer a nice cold rosé for the summer months," he wrote. "I had to go to the Park City liquor store on Snow Creek Drive (wasting gas and adding to pollution) to find some rosé wine."

Big sales event • Another customer tells me that he visited the DABC outlet near 3300 East and 3300 South and found a nice German Dunkel beer to his liking. It was on sale: Regular price $4.30; clearance price $4.29. The DABC sure knows how to do discounts.

Retail management • Then there is the Bountiful liquor store.

The longtime manager there finally got fed up with what some store bosses believe is incompetent management from the top — kudos to our stellar state bureaucrats — and took the $8,000 incentive recently offered for early retirement. He was replaced by a part-time manager, who also is responsible for two other stores. It's called job sharing with yourself.

Regional management reportedly didn't trust the workers who had been at the stores for years, so the locks were changed. When one longtime part-timer came in on a recent Saturday morning to mop the floors and clean the restroom, he found his key no longer worked.

After seeking explanations from an assistant manager and the absentee boss, he was told he cannot have a key anymore.

In disgust, he clocked out and walked off the premises, perhaps to buy his booze at another store — or in Wyoming.