Most Utah lawmakers believe Taylor's 23 years of dutiful public service make her a good government attorney.

"She brought the office of Legislative Research and General Counsel out of obscurity and gave it a very credible reputation - comparable to that of any of the big firms in town," says Senate President John Valentine. "That's her real mark on history."

Taylor, 54, will retire at the end of this month. On Wednesday, she got a punch-and-cookies send-off.

Lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, are falling over each other to write her epitaph. She helped develop the state's award-winning electronic bill-tracking system. The Deseret News labeled her "the mother of more than 8,000 state laws." Salt Lake City Democratic Sen. Pat Jones calls Taylor "nothing but professional."

But that doesn't necessarily mean she was a good lawyer for the citizens.

"That office generated a bunker mentality," says Dani Eyer, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. "In handling the people's business, there did not seem to be a sense of the government's business being the people's business - and a corresponding openness."

On Taylor's watch, public access to lawmakers' work - their e-mails, initial requests for audits, notes on legislation - was cut off.

Lawmakers spliced and diced the Open Meetings Law to exempt their partisan caucus meetings - where everyone knows the real lawmaking happens. In 1996, they were caught breaking their own rules with a hastily called bipartisan closed meeting to discuss East High School's Gay/Straight Alliance. The ACLU eventually got attorney's fees.

And Taylor managed the 14 lawyers who wrote unconstitutional legislation - for example, the state's 1991 ban on elective abortion and a 2001 bill that prohibited payroll deductions to pay union dues - that ended up costing taxpayers millions of dollars in litigation and attorneys' fees. This year, lawsuits are brewing over a new omnibus education bill and restrictions on local referendums - legislation drafted by Taylor's employees.

"I don't think her legacy would be one associated with open government," says Society of Professional Journalists attorney Jeff Hunt.

To be fair, Taylor worked for statesmen who decided a few years ago that they don't need constitutional analysis of legislation - they go with their guts. Those same statesmen are now heaping praise on her.

She told the Deseret News she doesn't get to decide if a legislator should sponsor unconstitutional legislation. "They decide. We are here to help them draft it as best we can," Taylor said.

"She didn't write or advocate for legislation," Valentine says. "But she was the first to warn if something was unconstitutional."

So basically, she was ignored or overruled - for years.

And, in the end, she did as she was told.

walsh@sltrib.com