Monday, March 21, 2011

Salt Lake Tribune: House Republicans Say They Will Repeal HB477 - Updated

Of course,the House Majority Leader, Ogden's Very Own Brad "Free Lunch For Me!" Dee, is still defending the bill, and the way it was passed

By Curmudgeon

Trib reporting this afternoon that the Utah Republican Caucus, meeting in yet another secret session, has agreed to repeal HB 477:
Of course,the House Majority Leader, Ogden's Very Own Brad "Free Lunch For Me!" Dee, is still defending the bill, and the way it was passed. He blames all the complaints on the press:

Dee, R-Ogden, blasted newspaper and television coverage that he said was “extremely biased,” and said changes will be made to state’s records act.... “There must be something done to GRAMA...” Dee told the Trib.

He was a little vague though on why something must be done to GRAMA except to provide a thin and tattered fig leaf of justification to cover the Republican majority's shame at having their raid against accountable, open, transparent government blow up in their faces.

Lockhart and Dee said legislators believe GRAMA... has been used for fishing expeditions, trying to make public intimate details of lawmakers’ private lives in order to humiliate them. “I know of requests for other representatives that concern me a great deal,” Dee said.

So, did Speaker Lockhart [who also blamed everything on press exaggeration] or Free Lunch Dee offer any examples of private correspondence that had been unearthed by GRAMA requests? Ah, no. Not a single example. [Probably because, as both of them know, the GRAMA statute already protects private communications from being made public by GRAMA request.]

Notice how carefully Free Lunch phrased his concern: there have been, he said, "requests" made under GRAMA that concern him greatly. He did not say those requests were successful or that the purely private correspondence he was concerned about was made public.

And as for this from Dee --- Some members in their “other capacities” advise young people who communicate by text messages, he said, and those shouldn’t be made public. --- he's being completely disingenuous. Of course say communications between a legislator who is also, say, a psychologist and the children he counsels should not be made public. What Free Lunch leaves out of his "Chicken Little The Sky Is Falling" whine is the fact that such communications were not made public under the GRAMA statute which protected purely private communications.

But hey, why let honesty get in the way of peddling a belated rationale to explain away, if you can, the disaster the House Majority's HB 477 has turned out to be. Blame it on the press and be dishonest about what the GRAMA law said and did --- Rep. Free Lunch Dee at work.

Update 3/22/11 9:26 p.m.: Trib now reporting Sen. Waddoups says Sen. Republicans will block repeal. Waddoups says no Republican Senator has told him he favors swift repeal:
Time to contact your state Senators and let them know Waddoups needs to hear from them that they support swift repeal:

4 comments:

Biker Babe said...

Brad Dee has a facebook page (I know you despise FB, Rudi, but ...) and he is asking for comments ... but he is also completely blocking people off his page if he doesn't like their comments ...

this is his FB page

take a gander, like his page and make a comment ...

just do it

BB

Bob Becker said...

Trib now reporting Sen. Waddoups says Sen. Republicans will block repeal. Waddoups says no Republican Senator has told him he favors swift repeal.

Time to contact your state Senator and let them know Waddoups needs to hear from them that they support swift repeal.

Bill C. said...

The way the leadership keeps repeating the same silly concerns about protecting rep privacy, which really isn't threatend, there must be something huge and totally incriminating they don't want exposed. Crooked money from Clive? Insider shinanigans concerning nucular power and stealing water from the Green? More million $$$$ handouys to Anderson Construction?
As crooked as they've been up to this point, it's haed to see how they could behave worse, and to think they have gotten away up to this point.

Clark Kent said...

“I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you, that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys every one it touches. Its upholders as well as its defiers.” - Clarence Darrow

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