This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

As the Utah Republican Party fights in court to keep its stranglehold on Utah elections, the party's legislative leaders are looking at concentrating their own power. Healthy debate is the loser.

Rep. LaVar Christensen has introduced a bill this session that would shift subcommittees that manage legislative operations at the Capitol so they are no longer bipartisan. These are supposed to be non-political groups that oversee logistics, including the Research and General Counsel Subcommittee, the Budget Subcommittee and the Audit Subcommittee. For years they have operated with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, but House Bill 220 would give a majority to the controlling party.

This is the politicizing of that which wasn't political. These committees manage the legislative staff, including the attorneys who draft legislation and the auditors who inform decision-making. If that staff becomes beholden to one party instead of being professionally detached, the minority party faces political opposition simply to obtain information and get bills drafted.

Perhaps the best example that Democrats are being marginalized even beyond their low numbers comes from the Commission for Stewardship of Public Lands. The Commission paid $640,000 in taxpayer money for a legal analysis from a Louisiana law firm on suing the federal government over public lands, but the lawyers have refused to give the report to the two Democrats on the commission because the Republican chairs of the commission aren't giving their permission. The justification is that the Democrats might expose their case to opposing lawyers in the federal government.

The absurdity of withholding the report is that the pitfalls of this lawsuit are very well known to everyone. The idea that the report describes some secret weakness that the government hadn't considered goes hand in hand with the ridiculousness of the entire enterprise. (Maybe they have a surprise witness, like the ghost of James Madison.)

It's like the humongous price tag the Louisiana guys are quoting to run this gambit. There is such a thing as a $14 million lawsuit, but this isn't it. There is not a lot of discovery in this case. The facts are well known. It's really just about putting forth legal theories and seeing what sticks. And the early expenditures — which have included public opinion polls and lobbyists — make it clear that there is a political element to this legal challenge.

But those kinds of reality checks don't get the attention they deserve when the skeptics are locked out of the conversation. We're already in a situation where GOP leaders can effectively call the shots in private by sending more than 80 percent of the Legislature into closed caucus meetings.

This is where we've arrived. If everyone in the room is of one mind, it's time to let more people in the room.