This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
Earlier this month, a community activist filed a records request with Salt Lake City government asking for a map of council districts and precinct-by-precinct results in the 2007 election.
The documents were provided the next day.
But easily accommodated requests weren't driving discussion this month when state legislators amended open-records laws to restrict public access. Lawmakers supporting HB477 focused on notorious requests such as one for more than 30 years' worth of documents that left the small town of Alta swamped with thousands of dollars in legal fees.
The actual burden the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) places on cities, counties, school districts and other local governments is unclear. Neither side of the ongoing debate over HB477 has cited hard data quantifying the issue: Most entities haven't been tracking how many staff hours are being placed into GRAMA requests, logging how many they get, or tracking how much the public is paying for the records.
Some of the only data available is from Salt Lake City, which in June began keeping a database of most of the GRAMA requests it receives. The database shows the city's median response rate was six calendar days — well within the 10 business days required by law.
Of 406 requests logged by Salt Lake City, the staff was able to provide a same-day response about a quarter of the time. The longest request took 85 days to complete, the data show.
Brian Hall, director of training at the Utah League of Cities and Towns, said each municipality should decide whether to track staff time spent answering GRAMA requests.
"If they think it's becoming an inordinate amount of time, they may want to track that," Hall said.
Politicians made their case by citing a handful of requests they say amounted to abuses of the law.
"Dozens and dozens of records requests come every year from the media and other groups that are so broad that they require hundreds of attorney and staff hours and encompass thousands of pieces of information — sometimes per request," said a post on the official blog of the Utah House of Representatives. "Because of such fishing expeditions, the language in GRAMA is being changed to clarify what governments can do to recoup burdensome costs on behalf of the taxpayer."
In a hearing discussing the changes to GRAMA, Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, pointed to Alta. Beginning in 2002, a group of citizens began sending Alta record requests that they hoped would yield a way for Alta to supply water to their lots in the Albion Basin, said Alta Mayor Tom Pollard.
"It essentially shut down a municipal operation because all we did was handle GRAMA requests," Pollard said.
Alta was a defendant at the Utah State Records Committee, an administrative body that hears GRAMA disputes, nine times in eight years. Most municipalities didn't have a case before the board during that time.
Finally, one requestor wanted every document Alta created since its incorporation in 1970. The requestor paid $40,000 in copy fees, but GRAMA currently limits the processing fees government can charge requestors.
Alta accumulated $24,000 in legal fees processing the request, but was able to bill the requestor only for $1,500 of those legal fees.
"Government should be completely transparent, but at the same time there's got to be a line," Pollard said last week.
Pollard said he did not know everything about the new legislation, but said he supports anything that addresses burdensome GRAMA requests.
Open-government advocates argue that what happened to Alta was an anomaly. Among Utah mayors, there's no consensus that records requests pose a problem.
Moab Mayor David Sakrison, who also sits on the board of the Utah League of Cities and Towns, said he can recall only one onerous records request in his 11 years running Moab.
"Most of them have been pretty benign," Sakrison said.
A citizens group filed the lone onerous request, Sakrison said, when Moab tried to annex some state School and Institutional Trust Lands into town. The request asked for documents about how the deal was reached.
Sakrison said even the easy requests can consume some staff time, but he believes government is best done in view of the public. Sakrison said he opposes the new records law.
"I don't think it's good policy," he said, "and I really don't see the need."
Some argue that too little attention is being paid to why requests should have to be so onerous in a time when more and more government data and documents are stored digitally.
David Donald, data editor at the Center For Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., said data stored digitally or in column-and-row format can be exported in minutes, even if the records are stored on proprietary software. Other forms of electronic data, like e-mails, can be searched with simple queries.
But government agencies can still balk at requests for electronic data.
Donald argues providing information is a function of the government and the information should come at little or no cost because taxpayers already contributed to its creation.
T.J. Tsakalos, a deputy Salt Lake County district attorney who reviews some of the GRAMA requests received by county government, said the most onerous requests arrive as an election nears. Journalists and political opponents are both investigating candidates, he said.
But recently, Tsakalos said, people opposed to the Unified Police Department fee filed GRAMA requests with the county. One request, Tsakalos said, sought a year's worth of e-mails for at least 20 employees. Tsakalos said he persuaded the requestors to narrow the query to e-mails discussing the fee.
"Even that, we had to work on that over months," Tsakalos said.
The county had to send a technician to employees' computer terminals to retrieve the emails, Tsakalos said. The county only charged the requestors the cost of the blank CD onto which the emails were copied.
"Some can be done within an hour or so, and some take many, many, many hours," Tsakalos said. —
What does the passage of HB477 do?
Repeals the legislative-intent language of GRAMA, which had recognized the public's interest in obtaining records and directed government to favor public access in a balancing test with privacy interests. Requestors must now show it is in the public interest to release some records by a preponderance of evidence.
Exempts the state Legislature from disclosure of most records.
Prohibits text messages, voice mails, instant messages and video chat recordings from disclosure in most cases.
Gives government agencies more time to respond to requests if the requestor seeks a "substantial" number of records.
Allows entities to charge fees that include the costs of overhead and administration in addition to the actual cost of providing a record.
Exempts records created for "reasonably anticipated" litigation.