Salt Lake Tribune: Utah’s Out-of-touch Lawmakers

Perpetual motion... can't be explained with reason or logic

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, Genius
Albert Einstein Quotes
1879-1955

Mainstream Utah voters vote the way that Sutherland tells them to. Then they protest. Then they re-elect them. Perpetual motion. Can't be explained with reason or logic.

Stink, Tribune Reader
Tribune Reader Comment
March 31, 2012

Eye-opening op-ed piece in this morning's Tribune, in which Maryann Martindale, Executive Director of the Alliance for a Better UTAH makes the case that "The Sutherland Institute’s new Legislative Scorecard demonstrates that Sutherland’s top-ranked legislators are the most out of touch with mainstream Utah voters, while those ranked lowest are the lawmakers most in sync with the majority":

• Utah’s out-of-touch lawmakers

The Alliance for a Better UTAH examined the voting records of Sutherland’s "top" and "bottom" legislators on issues that were of paramount concern to Utahns in the 2011 and 2012 legislative sessions.

Her organization's findings?

... [T]he data seem to suggest that legislators’ voting records were ranked against a scorecard prepared by the Eagle Forum, not the mainstream Utah voter.

For political wonks who closely follow the "antics" of our knuckleheaded Utah legislature, these comparisons come as no surprise, we guess.

Ms. Martindale's money quote:

If legislators are duly elected to do the people’s business, it appears that Sutherland’s bottom-ranked legislators are the ones deserving of the highest scores.

And the beat goes on...

Carl Wimmer. Utah's New Mr. Big?

The picture kind of says it all

Via Mike Ridgway:

This picture kind of says it all, when it comes to how redistricting is done in Utah, (via the Salt Lake Tribune):

Carl Wimmer: Utah's New Mr. Big?

Big guy with finger on map, Carl Wimmer. Smaller guy being read the riot act, Chris Herrod.

Any questions?

Deseret News: State Liquor Stores to Stay Open After All

In addition, stores won't have to reduce operating hours as initially planned

By: Ray

News Flash...Gov. Herbert and legislative leaders get their collective heads out of their a**es.

The Deseret News has the story:

• State liquor stores to stay open after all

Here's the lede:

SALT LAKE CITY — Nine state liquor stores won't run dry after all — at least not this year.
Gov. Gary Herbert and legislative leaders worked out a way for the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to shift $1.4 million within the agency to keep the stores open until February 2012. About 100 full- and part-time jobs were saved as a result.
In addition, the money means stores won't have to reduce operating hours as initially planned. All locations will maintain current hours.
"That's a big deal to people," said Vickie Ashby, DABC spokeswoman.

The Tribune is carrying the story, too:

• Most Utah liquor stores to stay open

Don't let the cat get your tongues, O Gentle Ones.

Salt Lake Tribune: Fire Waddoups

Members of the Senate majority might be well-advised to put out a help wanted sign for a new president

Hmmm... It's not just the Standard-Examiner who believes state senator Mike Waddoups is clueless. The Salt Lake Tribune also lays into "the incredibly callous" Utah Senate President this morning:

• Fire Waddoups

The Trib editors sum it all up thusly:

It is that cluelessness about those in circumstances less favorable than his own that should clue other members of the Senate majority that they might be well-advised to put out a help wanted sign for a new president.

Are you listening, Weber County Senators Christensen, Jenkins and Reid?

Standard-Examiner Editorial: OUR VIEW: Fix Liquor Stores Fiasco

Daily Utah Chronicle: Voting on autopilot hurt citizens’ rights

We have no doubt that it gives the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature a lot of satisfaction to include the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control in its budget-trimming. But even the most "moral" budget cut needs to make sense. No matter how many times you figure it out, it is not thrifty to save $2 million and lose potentially $18 million.

Standard-Examiner Editorial
OUR VIEW: Fix liquor stores fiasco
April 8, 2011

I've referred to the political principles of the Utah Republican Party before as "Big Brother Republicanism." In light of this session, a better term fits—feudalistic Republicanism. The term captures the Utah Republican Party's disdain for public oversight, input, checks and balances of and to its government. It captures the spirit of expanding the power of the government and rich lobbyists (the noble families) and shrinks the power of the public (the serfs). It also captures the feudalistic spirit of contempt and condescension that the Utah Republican Party has for the voting public.

Stewart Thorpe, The Daily Utah Chronicle
Voting on autopilot hurt citizens’ rights
April 5, 2011

Top notch Standard-Examiner editorial this morning, exposing yet another legislative blunder which needs to be fixed, flowing from this year's wacked-out 2011 legislative session:

• OUR VIEW: Fix liquor stores fiasco

And over at the Utah Daily Chronicle, columnist Stewart Thorpe has another great idea. After the legislature gets done fixing this year's bad legislation, maybe it's time for knee-jerk GOP voters to help fix up the Utah legislature itself:

• Voting on autopilot hurt citizens’ rights

Seems our Utah legislature gets loonier with each passing year. Perhaps the time has come, even for GOP loyalists, to turn off the autopilot and "cull the herd."

Just a thought.

Standard-Examiner Editorial: OUR VIEW: Waddoups is Clueless

Kudos to the Standard for tellin' it like it is

Spot-on editorial in this morning's Standard-Examiner, dealing with the state legislature's misguided failure and refusal "to accept almost $100 million from the federal government to extend unemployment benefits to 23,432 Utahns for 13 more weeks." This morning's editorial bears this concise and accurate headline, which, (now that we think about it,) pretty much summarizes the whole story of the Utah legislature this year:

• OUR VIEW: Waddoups is clueless

Loved the scatological reference, a drastic departure from the SE Editorial Board's usual staid and Sunday school-style delivery:

We've had to deal with a lot of horse manure coming from the Utah Legislature this year and unfortunately the piles continue to emanate from its leadership.

And speaking of reeking barnyard "cluelessness" "emanating in piles from legislative leadership," check out this morning's ABC4 story, which deals with yet another legislative "false economy," i.e., the legislature's genius attempt (another Waddoups brain-child) to "save just about $2 million" by closing down "nearly a dozen" state liquor outlets this summer:

• Closing Utah liquor stores will cost millions

Thanks to folks like Mike Waddoups, cluelessness abounds in the Utah legislature, no?

Kudos to the Standard for tellin' it like it is. And watch your step... so's you don't trip over Sen. Waddoups' "road apples," which are scattered everywhere from Logan to St. George.

Update4/6/11 12:00 p.m.: Per the Ever-Gentle Curmudgeon:

The SL Trib this morning has a story up about "Last Minute Lockhart," who conceded that "the audit" the legislature did on the state liquor store monopoly's budget "may not have been" quite as thorough as it should have been:

• Liquor store outcry: Utah lawmakers having second thoughts

And another story on a bill to allow health insurance companies to raise premiums for old folk and large families which Speaker of the House "Last Minute Lockhart" got introduced in the closing moments of the session and rushed to adoption without debate [sound familiar] which the Guv vetoed. Last Minute Lockhart and the boys are of course planning a veto-override session:

• Lawmakers may be in mood to reverse governor

Clueless Waddoups, Last Minute Lockhart and Free Lunch for Me Dee are beginning to look like they're trying out for the part of Steve Urqel by repeating the line: " Did I do that?"

Sunday Morning Emerald City News Roundup

Plenty of interesting tidbits in this morning's S-E

By Dan Schroeder

Plenty of interesting tidbits in today's Standard-Examiner:

Trentelman tells us what a nice guy Sen. Knudson is even though he voted for HB477 twice. No sympathy for Sen. Reid, however:

• HB477 is dead; we can keep fighting or move forward

Schwebke tells us that there's an open space plan under consideration, but doesn't tell us much about it:

• Ogden may alter open space plan

Grondahl depicts our mayor running down a sports field in spiked shoes, trampling everyone in his wake:

• Grondahl Cartoon

Saal ridicules WCF (no such thing as bad publicity, right?), and speculates on the mayor's goals for his last nine months in office:

• Ogden City, we are at your disposal

And the fine-print agenda list includes a tiny item informing us that on Tuesday the council will voluntarily hand the mayor even more power to divert funds to his pet projects:

• Agendas

Update 4/3/11 8:30 a.m.: The SE editorial board slams the Ogden Police Department's "dysfunctional" "double-dipping culture":

• OUR VIEW: Double-dipping at the department

Paul Rolly: Legislators’ Privacy’ Argument for GRAMA Overhaul is a Ruse*

*English Translation: All BULLSHIT!!!

Paul Rolly this morning uncovers more unadulterated B.S. from the GOP Corporatist thug faction in the Utah legislature, who still cling to their paranoid pro HB477 lies and delusions, despite the stinging bitchslap they received from Utah civil libertarians and just plain ole regular Utah voters this week:

• Legislators’ privacy’ argument for GRAMA overhaul is a ruse

Full disclosure, folks. Your blogmeister is a life-long Republican who's sickened by the marked general deterioration in quality of Utah GOP office holders within the past ten years.

And no. And in spite of recent attempts by some Utah GOP "Leaders" (so called) to sway your blogmeister back onto the Utah GOP "straight and narrow," these highly paranoid GOP authoritarians will soon learn the hard way that they won't be able to bring your blogmeister to toe.

Wake up Utah Republicans! Our party has been captured by a claque of lying anti-liberty corporo-fascists, to whom we cordially invite to engage "old time Republicans" like us, so as to box their traitorous neoCON Cauliflower EARS!

Salt Lake Tribune: False Pretenses - Reasons for HB477 Fall Apart

Fantastic story that's playing out here, as the shabby behavior of Utah legislative leadership is ever so publicly laid bare

Eye-opening Salt Lake Tribune editorial this morning, following up on the theme of Tuesday's WCF article. Here's the lede:

It isn’t the things we don’t know that give us trouble, Will Rogers said, it’s the things we do know that just aren’t so.
As more digging is done into the reasons why leaders of the Utah Legislature found it necessary to make their nearly successful attempt to gut the state’s open records law, it becomes more apparent that many of the offered justifications for the action were just not so.
A public outcry resulted in the bill of goods known as HB477 being repealed last week. But as the postmortems continue, it appears more and more clear that many of the lawmakers who supported the bill did so based on faulty information provided to them by those they should most be able to trust — their leadership.

Read the full Trib editorial here:

• False pretenses - Reasons for HB477 fall apart

Fantastic story that's playing out here, as the shabby behavior of Utah GOP legislative leadership is ever so publicly (and painfully) laid bare.

Standard-Examiner Editorial: Open Government Battle Not Over

Nope. The sky wasn't falling. Yep. They lied to us. And yes, they're gearing up to do it all over again

Excellent Standard-Examiner editorial this morning, echoing the words of gentle WCF reader "Paul Revere":

• OUR VIEW: Open government battle not over

The Standard is right. The legislature's attempt to "hastily install a law that limited the right of citizens and media to have access to government business" was "a deliberate, insidious, anti-democratic move;" and Utah citizens would be wise to anticipate more of the same, as a handful of legislative tyrants mendaciously begin the process of conducting "planning workgroups and special sessions to make changes to the state's Government Records Access Management Act."

It's pretty clear that legislative "leadership" such as Sen. Michael Waddoups and Rep. Becky Lockhart will continue to resort to whatever extreme devices they can exploit to create a "sky is falling" atmosphere surrounding the current GRAMA law, just as they did in the runup to the initial passage of HB477. And in that connection, we invite our readers to check out this morning's astonishing Salt Lake Tribune story, which demonstrates the outright dishonesty employed by HB477 adherents as these authoritarian legislators whipped up fear-driven HB477 support during the final few hours of the 2011 legislative session:

• Documents don’t back legislators’ HB477 claims

From the Tribune story:

As Utah lawmakers argued why they needed the now-repealed HB477 to shield more records from public release, leaders repeatedly said their staffers had been swamped by records requests in 2010 and spent more than 400 hours filling them.

But an open-records request from The Salt Lake Tribune shows the Legislature can produce no records to substantiate that claim, and attorneys now say it was an estimate. Related records that do exist suggest that the estimate may have been high.

Also during debates, lawmakers worried aloud that the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) could force disclosure of their personal emails or texts.

However, the documents obtained by The Tribune show that whenever such records were requested recently, the Legislature denied them, saying they were not public under GRAMA (without changes sought by HB477).

Nope. The sky wasn't falling. Yep. They lied to us. And yes, we'd be wise to heed the warning of this morning's Standard editorial, as the forces of government despotism crank up the "fear machine" for another craven assault on Utah's Open Government Laws.

Standard-Examiner: Utah Legislature Repeals HB477

The forces of government tyranny haven't given up yet

By Paul Revere

Despite the finality implied by this morning's Standard-Examiner headline and story, this is not over.

• Utah Legislature repeals HB477

We need to continue to be vigilant and bring pressure on all of our legislative representatives. If we are not, they will slip in the most onerous parts of HB 477's provisions and get a new bill passed in a special session.

Update 3/26/11 9:13 a.m.: From an examination of yesterday's House and Senate vote tallies in connection with the HB477 repeal bill (HB1001), here's a list of our Weber County legislative delegation, broken down by their postures regarding HB1001:

1) Voted "Yes" (to repeal HB477):

• Brad J. Galvez (R) - House District 6
• Ryan D. Wilcox (R) - House District 7
• Gage Froerer (R) - House District 8
• Jeremy A. Peterson (R) - House District 9
• Dixon M. Pitcher (R) - House District 10
• Brad L. Dee (R) - House District 11
• Richard A. Greenwood (R) - House District 12
• Scott K. Jenkins (R) - Senate District 20
  

2) Voted "No" (NOT to repeal HB477):

• Stuart C. Reid (R) - Senate District 18

3) Missing in Action (Absent/No Show/Voted with Feet):

• Allen M. Christensen (R) Senate District 19

Hopefully all Weber County political wonks will be carefully keeping notes.

Friday Morning HB477 News Roundup -UPDATED

Update: As some are prone to say in Utah- HB477 was "repilled"

Okay people. Governor Herbert's HB477 repeal bill has been drafted; it's been placed on today's calender; and Herbert is confident that it will be passed in today's special session:

• Herbert predicts HB477 repeal on Friday

In a curious twist, original HB477 sponsor John Dougall is sponsoring the repeal bill in the house, bringing down the ax on his original legislation, all the while still insisting that HB477 was nevertheless a danged good idea:

• Move to dilute GRAMA stirred up hornets’ nest

And adding to the circus atmosphere, GOP tea-party darling Jason Chaffetz, the guy who sets the gold standard for Utah GOP "conservatism," came to town yesterday and stuck his thumb in the eyes of Governor Herbert and neoCON Utah GOP legislative "leadership," by signing the petition to put the repeal of HB 477 on the ballot:

• Rolly: Chaffetz signs referendum petition to repeal HB477

“Why fix something that isn’t broken?” Chaffetz said. “Had I been governor, I would have vetoed it.”

Gotta love dat Chaffetz guy, no?

Update 3/25/11 4:50 p.m.: (Per Al) ... As some are prone to say in Utah- it was "repilled":

• Utah lawmakers repeal HB477

Thursday Morning HB477 News Roundup

Let's not take any chances, people. As the Standard-Examiner urges, it's time to contact our Northern Utah Senatorial delegation

Let’s see how far the monsters go. Hillyard, Waddoups, Lockhart—it’s my hope that someday those names are as scary to children as Adolf, Muammar or Saddam.

Salt Lake City Weekly - John Saltas
GRAMA Bama
March 23, 2011

Basically, HB477 allows them to keep secret text messages and e-mails they send to and receive from lobbyists, contract bidders and their legislative cohorts so you don't know what's behind their governance. They can spin it all they want, but that's the crux of the matter.

Standard Examiner Editorial Board
Editorial: HB477 Is Your Fight
March 24, 2011

Two hard-hitting editorials from our Northern Utah print media this morning, City Weekly and the Standard-Examiner (front page placement, no less):

• GRAMA Bama
• Editorial: HB477 Is Your Fight

Charlie Trentelman adds few choice words too, skewering our spineless Governor and Machiavellian Senate "leadership" from his ever-excellent Wasatch Rambler perch:

• Gov. Herbert blew his chance to curb legislative power

And as we stand one day shy of tomorrow's "special" legislative session, we now learn that...

1) Rep. John Dougall, the sponsor of HB 477, and the nitwit who started this whole mess, now says the measure should be repealed:

• Even HB 477 sponsor now supports bill being repealed

2) There may actually now be enough votes in the Utah Senate to repeal HB 477 during Friday's Special Session...

• HB 477 repeal may have enough votes in Senate

Let's not take any chances however people. As the Standard-Examiner urges, it's time to contact our Northern Utah senatorial delegation, if you haven't already done so:

• Peter Knudson
• Allen Christensen
• Scott Jenkins
• Stuart Reid
• Jerry Stevenson
• Stuart Adams
• Dan Liljenquist
• Lyle W. Hillyard

(Once again we'd like to thank our palz @ Utah Policy Daily, for helping us come up with a few of the above links.)

Standard-Examiner Editorial: Repeal HB477; Maintain Openness

Don't forget to tell your Senator that his vote intertwines with his job security

Fine editorial in this morning's Standard-Examiner, ripping two out of three of Spinmeister Gary Herbert's HB477 "goals," identifying repeal as "the sole necessary step" and urging SE readers to "let their Top of Utah state senators know" that repeal is exactly what we want:

• OUR VIEW: Repeal HB477; maintain openness

The SE cuts straight to the chase and helpfully supplies the names of those northern Utah Senators who'll be called upon to unravel this HB477 mess on Friday, so we'll reel them off here in live link form, for the convenience of those readers who'd like to do some lobbying this morning:

• Peter Knudson
• Allen Christensen
• Scott Jenkins
• Stuart Reid
• Jerry Stevenson
• Stuart Adams
• Dan Liljenquist
• Lyle W. Hillyard.

The word from the DNews is that votes for Senate repeal are still a few shy, so don't forget to tell your Senator that his vote intertwines with job security, just as the Standard suggests.

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:

• House Republicans say they will repeal HB477

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:

• Senate Republicans may block quick HB477 repeal

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

• Utah Senate Roster

HB477 Daily News Roundup - Updated

HB477 support... unraveling faster than a bad wig at a retirement home

In the wake of Saturday's HB477 news, wherein we learned that former House Speaker David Clark and three other Southern Utah [GOP] legislators are "calling on Gov. Gary Herbert and the Legislature to repeal a bill restricting public access to government records," the Standard-Examiner now reports this morning that two Northern Utah GOP legislators are likewise following suit and calling for HB477's repeal:

• Two area lawmakers say HB477 should be repealed

And it looks like Rep. John Dougall, the chief sponsor of HB477, is now doing some serious flip-flopping, claiming he wanted more time to study his own ill-conceived bill:

• Chief sponsor of GRAMA bill says he wanted more time

Our readers should be reminded that Rep. Dougall only lies when his lips are moving.

And here's some interesting data from the latest KSL Poll:

... [T]he respondents seemed preoccupied with GRAMA, with 84 percent saying it was somewhat or very important to them personally. Eighty-three percent said they should have access to elected officials' text messages, which would be protected under the controversial HB477, now set to take effect July 1. In addition, almost 90 percent said the process used to craft the changes to GRAMA was probably or definitely inappropriate.

Read the full KSL story here:

• Public gives Legislature mediocre grade

That's it for now; but we're sure we'll have much more later.

It's obvious that HB477 support is unraveling faster than a bad wig at a retirement home.

Update 3/21/11 11:26 p.m.: This just in from the Associated Press, via the SE Live! Site:

• Repeal and replace HB477

Ambiguous as hell... hard to say what Governor Gary actually intends...

HB477 News & Opinion Redux

A few more news and editorial items, just to keep our marathon HB477 discussion on track

1) Surprise of surprises, this morning's annual Standard-Examiner legislative report card assigns a well deserved "F" grade to the Utah legislature for "Open Government":

• OUR VIEW: A legislative report card

Hmmm... an "F" grade? Isn't there anything lower than that?

2) Former Ogden City Councilwoman Dorrene Jeske makes a strong public statement regarding the Utah GOP's sudden lurch toward fascist-style government secrecy, with this morning's scathing Letter to the Editor:

• We'll likely be stuck with HB477 as it is now

We'll be keeping a close eye on the attrition of other warhorse Utah Republicans, as they recoil in embarrassment from the shameful actions of the current batch of goose-stepping anti-government transparency drones. Additional sodden question: What happens to the Utah Grand Old Party when they run out of olde-tyme warhorse Republicans like Dorrene?

And here's a pair of stirring SE morning print edition letters, from "stirred up" SE readers and Karl Powell and John Wojciechowski, respectively:

• Back-room political deals guaranteed in Utah
• Every Republican voted for HB477

Now that HB477-topical reader letters are finally starting to trickle in to the SE print edition, we have a strong psychic sense that the SE editorial page will be a very hot venue in the days and weeks to come.

4) Former Utah House Republican member Sheryl Allen has an op-ed piece in today's SL Trib, supporting Rep. Powell's claim that he feared his bills would be killed by the House leadership if he didn't quietly knuckle under and vote for HB 477. Happens all the time, says Allen, and her op-ed piece gives examples:

• Powell’s experience in Legislature not unique

That's it for now, Gentle WCF readers.

Just a few more news and editorial items... to help keep our marathon HB477 discussion on track.

Utah Legislative GOP Begin "Eating Their Own"

They're not half bad eatin' either, provided you add the right "special" sauce

For those who missed the late night reporting in last night's comments section, yesirree, THEY (the Utah legislative GOP) are indeed "eating their own" (they're not half bad eatin' either, provided you add the right "special" sauce). KSL news provided the first rumblings of this scrumptious "non-gourmet menu item" last night...

• Former House Speaker alleges pressure from current leadership on HB477

And the Salt Lake Tribune carries a generously fleshed out full serving this morning (with all the trimmins, YUM)...

• Southern Utah lawmakers call for HB477 repeal

We'll definitely be keeping our eye on what seems to be a fast developing intra-Utah GOP (classic family buffet-style) mini-civil war.

And yes: We definitely crack ourself up.

Shooting Fish in a Barrel: More Developments in the HB477 Brouhaha

We'll leave it to our ever savvy readers to separate the "bull" from the "ticky."

More developments in the HB477 brouhaha. In truth, rounding up news updates for this simmering story is like shooting fish in a barrel:

1) The frenzy to repeal HB477 makes for some strange political bedfellows, as the Salt Lake Tribune reports:

• Opposites attract to repeal government records law

2) Another masterful Standard-Examiner guest commentary from government transparency watchdog, Dr. David Cuillier:

• The darkest abyss in the U.S.

3) And last but not least, our friends at Ogden Valley Forum shine the spotlight on House Legislative District 8 Representative Gage Froerer's "rationale" for supporting HB477 (and "gutting" GRAMA):

• HB477 Update with an "explanation" from Representative Gage Froerer

That's it for now, O Gentle Ones. We'll leave it to our ever savvy readers to separate the "bull" from the "ticky."

More HB 477 news...

Keep those cards and letters coming folks and don't forget when it comes time to consider this and other stunts as these folks as they come up for re-election...

By: Ray

KSL story :

• Rep. Wimmer has ‘change of heart' over HB477, calls for repeal

Here's the lede:

March 16th, 2011 @ 10:42pm
By Paul Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY -- A prominent state lawmaker is asking the state legislature to repeal HB477, a recently-passed law that will restrict the public's access to certain types of government information, like voice mails and text messages.

Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, said Wednesday he believes GRAMA laws need to be changed, but he doesn't believe HB477 is the right law for that. He said he looked into what the bill would do to open records laws after he voted for it.

Also, Salt Lake Tribune editorial today headlined:

• Repeal HB 477

Keep those cards and letters coming folks and don't forget when it comes time to consider this and other stunts as these folks as they come up for re-election...