Ace Reporter Schwebke Peels Back the Facts

The Standard-Examiner reveals more discrepancies in the Secret Study Story

We honestly don't know what's come over Standard-Examiner reporter Scott Schwebke recently, but we'll remark that his journalistic performance has been most excellent of late. While most of our readers gentle were out playing on the long Memorial Day weekend, Ace Reporter Schwebke was slaving away, adding another reportorial gem to his already excellent series of articles exposing Boss Godfrey's $200 thousand secret Gondola study.

Yesterday's front-page article reveals these further essential facts, wherein the stories of all the "players" grow increasingly divergent:

• A spokesman for Lewis, Young Robertson and Burningham Inc., the Salt Lake City-based company who prepared the study (over a year ago) claims UTA paid for the study that measures cost and revenue projections for a proposed gondola system stretching from Ogden’s downtown intermodal hub to Weber State University.
• UTA has failed to provide a copy of the purported study pursuant to the Standard-Examiner's GRAMA request, claiming it doesn't have a copy of the study. UTA has of course previously denied either paying for the year-old study, or agreeing for the payment for such a study.
• Key gondola proponents, including developer Chris Peterson, Ogden Mayor Boss Godfrey and Lift Ogden chairman Bob Geiger, claim they don’t know who funded the study.

Boss Godfrey of course continues to admit having a copy of the study, and even claims "I would love to have (the study results) come out." Yet he nevertheless declines to voluntarily provide a copy to the Standard-Examiner, preferring instead to play "cat and mouse" with the home town newspaper's pending GRAMA request. Ominously, Boss Godfrey apparently continues to contend that this year-old study is merely a "draft," raising the distinct possibility that he'll claim that it's "work product," a category of information legally excluded from GRAMA document production requirements.

We'll resist the impulse to engage in any microanalysis at this time. We believe it's impossible to draw further conclusions until our favorite Ace Reporter relentlessly digs out further facts. Scott Schwebke's reporting on this story has nevertheless been most revealing thus far -- like the journalistic equivalent of peeling back the layers of a rotten onion.

We do believe it is fair to draw one early conclusion at this juncture however: Somebody ain't telling the truth.

In spite of low-volume site traffic over the weekend, we have had some reader comment on this story in the previous comments threads. In the interest of keeping our new Secret Gondola Study article category on-topic, we'll thus dutifully move some of those earlier comments over here.

In the expectation of the usual flood of post-weekend readers, we now establish this new article thread.

The floor is open, gentle readers.

The world is waiting to know what you think.