But in practice, it's hard to figure out whether state and local government leaders actually follow the rules and turn over public documents to those who ask for them. Utah law does not require government employees to keep track of their responses to records requests.

In a series of requests for records under the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) late last year, The Salt Lake Tribune found that a few government offices keep meticulous records of requests for documents; those that have records keep them mostly for their own information. Some offices have files spread throughout with different workers in charge of them. But in many cases, GRAMA requests, once processed, are thrown in the trash.

Kane County Clerk Karla Johnson is perfectly willing to turn over public documents. But her tracking system is informal. "We never make people fill out anything," Johnson said. "As soon as it's filled, if the person is satisfied, I toss it."

In contrast, Deputy Utah County Attorney Chris Yannelli keeps a spreadsheet of all requests for documents, including who asked for the information, the time the county took to respond and how much was charged for copying costs. Yannelli says his job of reviewing records requests has gotten more complicated over the past four years. "The number of requests and the amount of time in answering them has quadrupled," he said.

The haphazard tracking of open records requests is one possible study item for a legislative task force responsible for suggesting changes to the law. In the first meeting Tuesday, lawmakers also will consider if governments are using excessive fees to discourage public requests for records, whether government records are being inappropriately used for commercial purposes and if the public's right to privacy is at odds with public classifications of some records.

"We need to make sure that GRAMA fulfills its intended purpose and isn't misused by government or misused by those who seek to harass public officials," said South Weber Republican Sen. Dave Thomas, co-chairman of the task force. "There's a public purpose for GRAMA. It shouldn't be used contrary to that purpose."

Before GRAMA, public records were controlled by a vague state law and local governments' interpretation of the Public Records and Writings Act. In 1991, freshman lawmaker Marty Stephens co-sponsored a bill to clarify state records policy.

The new law "provided far more certainty for local governments about what records could be released, what records had to be maintained and under what circumstances records must be classified as private," said Deputy Salt Lake County Attorney Karl Hendrickson, who helped draft the statute.

But while Hendrickson and Thomas insist access to Utah's public records is better under the law, others give less glowing reviews of the open records act.

Citizen activist Claire Geddes says lawmakers are slowly chipping away at the public's ability to look at government records. This year, legislators exempted records relating to investigations of animal illnesses, specifically to block access to the addresses of affected farms or dairies.

"Far too often, legislators are going in and putting more exclusions in," Geddes said. "You wonder where it's going to end up. It's a fight every year to make sure there aren't more records closed down."

Brigham Young University communications Professor Joel Campbell agrees. "I'm not sure GRAMA has fulfilled the promise when it was enacted," said Campbell, a lobbyist for the Society of Professional Journalists and Utah Press Association. "It's not as easy as we had hoped for the public to use this law and to get records."

The Tribune's informal survey of local and state government agencies shows public officials are reluctant even to disclose how they deal with records requests.

Reporters initially requested summaries of each agency's treatment of GRAMA requests since 1994. Most government workers balked at the request, acknowledging they do not keep track of the information in a centralized location or refusing to create a document with the information in it. Three government offices - Sandy City, the Utah County Attorney and the Department of Environmental Quality - responded with meticulous detail and did not charge for copying costs. The University of Utah offered to meet in person to go over various records requests, but would not create a summary. And the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control charged the newspaper $61 to research two years worth of records.

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Tribune reporter Kirsten Stewart contributed to this story.