This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I wrote last November about a man based in Tallahassee, Fla., making public-records requests to the Utah Legislature for email and cellphone correspondences of then-Sen. Dan Liljenquist and then-Rep. Holly Richardson.
Liljenquist has since resigned from the State Senate to challenge U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch for the Republican nomination this year. Richardson has resigned to work on Liljenquist's campaign.
At the time, Hatch's campaign manager, Dave Hansen, told me the Hatch campaign had nothing to do with the request.
But someone sure is interested in these two.
Since my column in November, Chris Ritter's public-records requests became much more detailed and voluminous. He was joined in the requests by an associate, Amanda Salario, also based in Tallahassee.
Together, they have asked for communications of Liljenquist and Richardson regarding immigration, GRAMA, HB477, Utah's guest-worker bill, past immigration bills, health insurance for low-income children, redistricting, anything regarding a "plane crash" (Liljenquist survived a plane crash), anything regarding Bain Capital (a former Liljenquist employer), and on and on.
The probe also asked about communications with FreedomWorks, a tea party group that has publicly opposed Hatch.
I emailed Ritter and Salario, asking who they worked for and what their interest was. But they never responded.
No surprise there. People engaged in these sorts of things tend not to like the sunlight very much.
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A Republican scorned? • One Republican and tea party activist who has hosted conservative events featuring Patrick Henry Caucus types had been particularly critical of Richardson on Republican blog sites. He was hostile toward her position on illegal immigration and her vote for HB116, which allows for a guest-worker permit for undocumented workers.
She seemed to be his greatest target in the Legislature.
He never did mention, although others did on those blogs, that he had asked out Richardson's 20-something single daughter.
And she said no.
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Technical glitches • The Utah Jazz have launched a new app to tap into the social media market and, so far, have about 10,000 users.
So to promote the new program, the Jazz randomly selected 500 clients to receive two tickets each to the Dallas Mavericks game on Thursday.
But through a technical error, the email went to about 3,000 clients, offering two tickets each, and creating a potential fiasco at the ticket office that night.
As soon as the error was discovered, recipients of the offer were contacted through email, informed of the mistake and told they would be automatically put into a drawing for free tickets to a future game. They also were offered two free tickets each to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game this summer.
Jazz spokeswoman Linda Luchetti said most of the clients who were mistakenly offered the tickets were understanding and good-humored about it.
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Here's one way around GRAMA • Sen. Kevin Van Tassell, R-Vernal, got more than he expected when he traveled to Salt Lake City on Tuesday to participate in a pre-legislative caucus at the Capitol.
He got his car stolen.
Van Tassell, like many rural legislators, spent the night at the Little America Hotel. His car was in the hotel parking lot when it was taken.
Van Tassell's car was discovered the next day on a side street by a parking enforcement officer, but the thieves got away with most of the contents inside the vehicle, including Van Tassell's Senate Blackberry.
Van Tassell says, though, the main attraction for the thieves probably was the expensive clothes his wife had bought that day and left on the backseat.
He had rented a car to go home Wednesday, then had to return the next day to retrieve his vehicle once it was recovered.
"Coming from rural Utah," he said, "we're not used to this sort of thing."