This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

There is one clear conclusion to be drawn from the recent flurry of activity in the Utah Legislature: The people of Utah are not to be trusted with their own government.

First legislators passed HB477, disabling the state's once-exemplary open records laws. They followed up with a law making it much harder to put referendums on the ballot and another allowing the process of issuing state liquor licenses to go behind closed doors. All are based on the idea that Utah would have better government if it weren't for all those pesky citizens.

If you feel otherwise, now would be a good time to contact your elected representatives and say so. After all, if the people don't care about their rights enough to defend them, they probably oughtn't to have had them in the first place.

The great irony in all of this is that the phantasmic cover story lawmakers concocted to excuse HB477 is a supposed deep respect for the messages they receive from the voters.

Imagine, they cry, that a crime victim, someone who has declared bankruptcy or has a terminal illness e-mails their representative, arguing that their own life story is a reason to support, or oppose, a certain bill. Under the law as it stood, HB477 backers claimed, those personal details might be splashed all over the front page of the newspaper.

But that is false.

The law as it stood made clear provisions for separating the public from the private. A review panel was empowered to examine questionable documents. The very core of the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act was a recognition that government policy must balance the need for public access to public documents with the need to keep confidential those records that included private data.

But HB477 erased that "Legislative intent" section of the law, removing its recognition of both the need for transparent government and the need for truly personal information to remain personal.

The new version, set to go into effect July 1, allows government agencies to presume that records should be closed unless a citizen can show, "by a preponderance of the evidence," that they should be open instead.

That places a great burden on the public, and goes far beyond any reasonable need to keep any individual's private medical or financial data on a need-to-know basis.

A law that protects government secrecy is being sold on claims that it protects personal privacy. The people of Utah should make it clear they resent the fact that they are not only the excuse for such subterfuge, but also the victims.