In which we remember another time the Utah Legislature attacked open government
It was a big enough deal that a couple of my editorials were published on The Tribune's Page One
What a journalist gains when becoming an editorial writer is the ability — the duty — to express his or her own opinion, something most reporters and editors aren’t supposed to do. What a journalist loses on becoming an editorial writer is a spot on the front page.
In March of 2011, though, this editorial writer won a spot on the front page of The Salt Lake Tribune. Twice.
I’m subjecting you to this blast from the past because the Utah Legislature is now, as it was then, trying to amend state law to make it a lot more difficult for the people to know what their government is up to.
Fourteen years ago, the Legislature had just passed the infamous HB477, a bill that essentially gutted the state’s exemplary open records law. The Government Records Access and Management Act — GRAMA to its many friends — sets up a process by which anyone in the state could win access to most public records, even when some government agency or official doesn’t want you to.
It isn’t a law just for the benefit of journalists, though reporters make frequent use of it and know how to pull its levers. It seeks to make the records kept by state and local government available to all members of the public. You know, the folks who paid for the records and supposedly own them.
In the waning hours of the Utah Legislature’s 2011 regular session, a bill to take the teeth out of GRAMA was rapidly introduced and quickly passed. It was deliberately kept out of the public eye until it was too late to stop the freight train.
Except, as it turned out, it wasn’t.1
The reversal of HB477 was accomplished by a widespread public outcry seldom seen in Utah. The Tribune was a part of that, though it is unlikely that members of the Legislature would have listened to our campaign if were the only ones on the case.
Other newspapers in the state picked up the cause, in their reporting and in their editorials. The ACLU and others were outspoken in opposition. The Society of Professional Journalists gave the Utah Legislature its Black Hole Award for the worst example of government secrecy. Large numbers of Utahns engaged in peaceful protests at the Capitol building.
It wasn’t just liberals and the press opposing the secrecy bill. I remember at least one witness at a legislative hearing pointing out that if it were easier to hide government actions from the public, Democrats (i.e. then-Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson) could get sneaky, too.
The Tribune’s contribution to the save GRAMA effort was mostly in the newsroom’s extensive and energetic coverage of the legislative process. But the Editorial Board also weighed in.
Dean Singleton, then the publisher of The Tribune, ordered up a scathing editorial demanding that then-Gov. Gary Herbert veto the legislation. I drafted an editorial and Dean sent it back, saying it wasn’t harsh enough.
I was a little surprised by that reaction from the boss. He had been known to chide me and other editorial writers on the staff for being overly critical of politicians from George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice on down. Being too hard on a politician, Dean told us, doesn’t win anybody over in an argument.
In this case, though, Singleton wanted to bring out the long knives. He wanted us to say that Herbert, if he didn’t veto the bill, “will be revealed as a political hack who is more concerned about preserving his own viability within the radical fringes that control the Republican nominating process in this state than he is about doing the people's business in the light of day.”
So we did.
Editorial: Is Herbert for secrecy or accountability? — The Salt Lake Tribune, March 7, 2011
The last line of defense against a brazen assault on the people of Utah and their right to knowledgeably participate in their own government now lies in the office of Gov. Gary Herbert.
If the Republican governor is to retain any claim to being the governor of all the people, not the pawn of special interests and panderer to the right wing of his party, he must veto House Bill 477.
And if he does not use all the political pull at his disposal to persuade lawmakers to sustain that veto, the governor will never again be able to say that he is a champion of transparency in government….
When Herbert soon signed the bill anyway, Singleton was really steamed. It was explained to us that the publisher had thought he had a good relationship with the governor and that he had won from him a promise that he would not sign the bill without discussing it with Singleton first. Which, we were told, he did not.
So we wrote another editorial, again lambasting Herbert for supporting the measure and demanding that he call a special session of the Legislature to have it repealed. [I can’t find a link to that one.]
Both of those editorials were published on the front page of The Tribune, for what we hoped would be maximum impact.
Holders of the Institutional Memory at The Tribune thought we might have done that once or twice in previous decades. I know it hasn’t happened since. Page One editorials are rare in American journalism. We generally keep our reporting and opinion functions very separate. News on the front page and most other pages. Opinion in its own corner. We call it a firewall, or describe it as the separation of church and state. [I suppose opinion is the church, reporting the state.]
Front-page editorials, a tool seldom used — Nancy Conway, editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, April 30, 2011
… HB477 was such an egregious assault on open records and public access that a strong stand against it was an easy call. … It is our responsibility not only to inform the public but also to cry foul when government does something not in the public's best interest. That said, it wasn't a decision made lightly. It engendered serious discussion and considerable back and forth.
Once the decision was made to put the first editorial on page one asking the governor to veto the bill, the decision to put the second on page one was easier. When the governor signed the bill we felt that act merited equally strong comment and play….
Herbert did call a special session and the law was repealed. And there was much rejoicing.
The Tribune won more than a few honors for its campaign, news and opinion, to beat back the assault on government transparency in Utah, including the Investigative Reporters & Editors Special Recognition Award for Service to The First Amendment.
The latest assault on GRAMA by members of the Republican legislative supermajority is a little less horrible than the last one. It wasn’t sprung on us in the final hours of the session and sponsors seem at least a little bit amenable to making the bill less horrible.
The risk, though, is that the firehose of attacks on good government at the federal and state levels will have so worn out Utah voters that they won’t rally in defense of open government the way they did in 2011, and that the enemies of GRAMA will, this time, prevail.
Again, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Here’s a good history lesson on the 2011 GRAMA battle from our friends at The Deseret News.
Transparency at risk? Utah lawmakers consider revamp of public records law — — Lois M. Collins, Dennis Romboy & Art Raymond — The Deseret News, February 17, 2025