Utah senators Monday approved an amendment to the state records law -- without a governor-backed provision that would have tipped the scale against a presumption of public disclosure.
The 24-2 approval of HB122 came following a Senate Republican Caucus in which representatives of the Utah Media Coalition were allowed to present objections to the controversial provision.
Ron Gordon, executive director of Utah's Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, had pushed to delete original legislative intent language in the law that allows for the release of records when the public interest is of equal weight to the government's need for privacy.
Lisa Roskelley, spokeswoman for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said HB122 was by no means a priority for Huntsman.
"People in our office attend meetings on all sorts of legislation and this was one of them," Roskelley said. "There are policy issues we see with the bill."
Roskelley reaffirmed Huntsman's belief that transparency is fundamental to good government.
"So we'll see what this bill does at the end of the day," she said.
Meetings last Friday between senators, Gordon, media representatives and legislative counsel spurred speculation that GRAMA could get deflated.
"To strip the legislative intent language is huge. That's a major change in the statute," media attorney Jeff Hunt told Senate Republicans in their noon caucus.
That intent language is the lens through which the entire GRAMA statute works, Hunt added.
"This isn't about the media," Hunt said. "This is about the ability of people to get information from their government."
Rep. Greg Hughes's HB362 passed the House on Monday 71-2. The measure would require that individuals who make more than 12 government records request in a year's time must pay full costs for any additional requests.
