GRAMA Case Update and Some Sage Advice

Standard-Examiner managing editor Andy Howell this morning provides his readers an update on the status of the St-Ex's case against the Emerald City council, concerning the council's denial of his newspaper's council applicant information GRAMA request.

HOT SEAT: Based on legal advice, we have decided not to pursue our case against the Ogden City Council over public access to applications for a vacant council seat. Instead, we will work to close what I call a loophole in the state's Government Records Access Management Act that allows for applications for appointment to an elected position to be treated the same as regular job applications with a government entity.

As an added bonus, Editor Howell throws in some anecdotal information -- and some sage advice -- for those who have future political aspirations in our 21st-century information age:

What concerns me, however, is that during negotiations with the
city, it was mentioned that some of the 39 applicants feared they and their
supporters would be harassed by bloggers if their applications were made public.

My advice to these applicants is if you can't stand the heat, stay out
of Ogden politics.

A Weber County Forum Tip o' the Hat to the Standard-Examiner for having kept the City Council's feet to the fire on the GRAMA denial issue. And we agree with the editors' ultimate decision. It's time to apply the Std-Ex's legal resources productively, we think, in a manner best calculated to prevent the occurrence of similar problems in the future.

As for Mr. Howell's sage advice, we couldn't have said it better ourselves. Political insiders, machine-cronies and back-room dealers, who've become accustomed over the years to dealing in secrecy, are now put on notice that the lunpntownsfolke will continue to shine a very bright light on the doings of our local government. Public scrutiny ain't necessarily harrassment, by the way.

And in our own cranky way, we'll re-phrase Andy's sage advice slightly, in our own decidedly UN-diplomatic way:

Cockroaches don't like the light of day, and will scurry away when you pick up whatever it was they were hiding under. So long as electrons continue to flow back and forth along the internet information highway, we'll continue to shine a very bright light on everything our public servants do.

That goes double for the six-legged varieties.