At The Salt Lake Tribune, we often rely on public records to give our readers a glimpse of what their government leaders are doing when no one is looking.
Such was the case last week, when we reported the behind-the-scenes dismay some Salt Lake City Council members expressed as the Legislature unveiled a long-anticipated bill to create a land authority on the west side and contribute hundreds of millions of public dollars to the construction of a Major League Baseball stadium on North Temple near Redwood Road.
Revealing exchanges among council members showed there was more consternation at play than was shown in a diplomatic joint statement released by Mayor Erin Mendenhall and the council after the first draft of the bill came out.
To arrive at this expansive story and add context to these conversations, we also conducted interviews with council members and sought statements from the mayor and the Larry H. Miller Co., the influential Utah business leading the charge to bring big league ball to the Beehive State.
But we started, as we often do, with the records.
Here’s the full cache of text messages provided in response to our records request. They appear as we received them, complete with redactions from the city:
When you’re done, check out our full story and see how we turned the raw records into a revealing narrative.
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