Salt Lake Tribune: Tribune Wins National Watchdog Journalism Award

Don't ever let anyone tell you that old-fashioned watchdog journalism is dead

A Weber County Forum Tip O" the Hat to The Salt Lake Tribune, this week's recipient of a highly prestigious peer-to-peer national journalism award. Here are the lead paragraphs from this morning's Trib story:

Boston • The Salt Lake Tribune on Saturday received a national award for service to the First Amendment for its coverage of HB477, the bill the 2011 Legislature passed and later repealed that would have dramatically weakened Utah’s open-records law.

Investigative Reporters & Editors, a national watchdog journalism organization, presented the newspaper with a prestigious IRE Special Recognition Award for Service to The First Amendment at a luncheon at its annual conference.

Nearly 1,200 investigative reporters from around the country gave the paper a standing ovation during the presentation, and IRE board members praised the importance of The Tribune’s work.

The award from IRE recognized The Tribune staff for their "reporting, editorial stance and lobbying efforts to keep Utah’s open-records laws intact."

Check out the full story here:

• Tribune wins national watchdog journalism award

The Trib fought like a badger to raise public awareness of the Utah Legislature's ham-handedness with respect to the ill-conceived HB 477.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that old-fashioned watchdog journalism is dead.

Salt Lake Tribune: Coalition of Utah News Media Serves Public Interest

Democracy works, folks... Use it or Lose It

And we know you pay attention, and so does the Legislature. We heard and saw your response to HB477. Your voice was loud and very clear, and so were your actions. You made us all pay attention. You said, "Don’t turn out the lights. Don’t hide what you do in our name."
When citizens make their voices heard like you did, they live up to the finest traditions and responsibilities of democracy. I hope you feel proud of what you accomplished. It was remarkable. Truly remarkable.

Nancy Conway - Editor, Salt Lake Tribune
Editor’s column: Coalition of Utah news media serves public interest
March 17, 2012

The response was both a concerted campaign by the professionals in the Utah Media Coalition (including The Salt Lake Tribune) and a popular outcry by a great many others, all urging that the law be repealed. In less than a month, it was.

Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
A bright light
March 18, 2012

As the 2012 legislative slips into the realm of history, we'll put the spotlight on two notable Salt Lake Tribune editorials published over the past three days, praising the efforts of everyone from the Utah Media Coalition to individual Utah lumpencitizens for successfully monitoring proposed 2012 legislative bills for accessibility and openness over the full course of the now-adjourned session:

• Editor’s column: Coalition of Utah news media serves public interest
• A "Bright Light" Award for Bramble

No doubt about it. When withering public scrutiny propels a wacky Utah County GOP legislator like Senator Curt Bramble to behave in such a manner as to actually earn a "Bright Light" award from the media for commitment to open government, that's progress for Utah Democracy, wethinks.

Neck-snapping WCF segue: And while we're on the general topic of what happens politically when steely-eyed Utah lumpencizens speak their minds en masse, to demand sensible and citizen-responsive government solutions to lame and "citizens-be-damned" legislative screw-ups, let's not forget what happened barely three days ago with House Rep. Bill Wright's knuckleheaded HB363:

• Breaking: Herbert Vetoes Sex-ed bill, Says It Constricts Parental Choice

Democracy works, folks, even here (Utah) the "reddest of all red (neck) states.

Democracy: Use it or lose it.

Salt Lake Tribune Editor's Column: GRAMA Watch Will Keep an Eye on Government’s Openness

Hoping that so long as we're able to keep a good close watch on our Utah legislature, we won't have another suffer another Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) "battle royal" again this year

As a followup to the Salt Lake Tribune's 1/21/12 story, wherein Trib reporter Heather May reported that a print media legislative watchdog group known as the Utah Media Coalition will launch a new public information project called "GRAMA Watch," which "will rank relevant action that encourages or protects Utah’s open government" with a color-coded rating system, the Trib carries a new editorial piece this morning which fattens out the details of this encouraging project:

• Editor’s column: GRAMA WATCH will keep an eye on government’s openness

Among other things, this morning's Nancy Conway "editor's column" provides a link to the Salt Lake Tribune’s public data website, www.utahsright.com/grama, which is already shaping up to become a highly robust information source to "inform legislators and the public at the front end of the process of creating legislation — how a proposed bill will affect the people’s right to access government information."

We'll add that we're delighted to see the Utah Media Coalition vigorously following up on this great idea.

And for the convenience of the political wonks of Weber County Forum, please take note that we've also added a link to the above website in our right sidebar, under the module title, "2012 Utah GRAMA Watch," for our readers' quick reference, as we dive into the 2012 Utah Legislative Session, in the hope that so long as we're able to keep a good close watch on our Utah legislature, we won't have another suffer another GRAMA "battle royal" again this year.

Monday Morning Back-burner Cleanup

Don't hesitate to chime in on any of the above topics, or start up a brand new topic all your own

Just a few back-burner items to kick-start the Monday morning post-Christmas day discussion. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday, just as your Weber County Forum blogmeister did:

1) On Thursday, the Deseret Morning News reported that Saratoga Springs Mayor, Mia Love, will be entering the Utah District 4 Congressional race, under the GOP banner:

• Mia Love making a run in Utah's new 4th Congressional District

Refreshing news, we're sure, for those who might have previously believed that all Utah Republicans were home-grown, pasty-faced "priesthood holders." Gotta say we love Ms. Love's campaign slogan too, which immediately sets her apart from the rest of the Utah District 4 congressional candidate pack:

You can send a whole bunch of Wimmers to Congress. You can send a whole bunch of Sandstroms to Congress. You can only send one me.

And as far as we're concerned, here's the Mia Love "money quote":

This is about leadership. It's not about throwing bombs or throwing messages out there and hope they stick. It's about tackling problems.

Refreshing, we reiterate... to say the least... and we do wish Ms. Love our best.

2) Savvy and Informative op-ed in Friday's Salt Lake Tribune, wherein BYU professor and regular Trib contributor Joel Campbell provides a year-end legislative wrap-up of "the best and worst of Utah Freedom of Information in 2011." The 2011 legislature's ham-handed effort to "gut" the Utah Government Records and Management Act GRAMA (HB477) of course comes out the worst of the worst. No surprise there:

• Campbell: Open government in 2011 — the good, the bad and HB477

The watchword for the 2012 legislative session? The vigilant lumpencitizens of Utah will need to continue keeping a sharp eye on the sneaky pols on Capitol Hill, as we have our own sneaking suspicion, (after also gazing into our own crystal ball), that these secretive bastids haven't yet given up their plot to take their Utah constituents out of the public information loop.

3) The final results are in from our WCF "cursive writing" reader poll, which we ran in response to the Standard-Examiner's 12/21/11 editorial, with 83% of 18 respondents going along with the Standard's position that "schools [should] continue teaching our children cursive":

Click image to enlarge

We'll leave it up to our gentle readers to explain the "true" meaning of these polling results.

Don't hesitate to chime in on any of the above topics, or start up a brand new topic all your own. Helping to blow out post-holiday mental cobwebs is just one of the many services we provide here at your Emerald City home-town blog, of course.

Tuesday Morning Back-burner News Cleanup

A couple of items from the WCF back burner, just to give our readers a little something to chew on...

In the midst of the continuing Emerald City Lame Duck Mayor News Drought, we'll spring a couple of items from the WCF back burner, just to give our readers a little something to chew on, (and to let you all know we're still alive):

As a followup to these fantastic 3/25/11 and 5/20/11 Salt Lake Tribune Op-ed pieces, here's the latest GRAMA-topical writeup from former reporter and current associate BYU professor of communications, the inimitable Man of the People, Joel Campbell. Despite months of weekly GRAMA Task Force meetings, wherein the sheer elegance of Utah's existing GRAMA law has been painstakingly revealed, it seems that some Utah legislators still cling to the notion that their legislative business ought to be conducted in secret, and that communications with "constituents" who seek favors and handouts should not be publicly revealed:

• Campbell: Move to close constituent emails is power grab by Utah Legislature

And here, from the pages of the Deseret News, is the latest corporatist "Republic v. Democracy" rant, courtesy of recently-ousted corporatist whore, U.S. Senator Bob Bennett:

• Defining 'democracy' and 'republic'

In the interest of keeping the topic in context (and perhaps to puncture some of the mind-numbing ideological silliness), we've rounded up a couple of counter-points.

First, here's a little something from somebody named William P. Meyers, who properly points out that the terms "constitutional republic" and "representative democracy" (our preferred terminology to describe our American (Utah) polital systems) are not mutually exclusive, and that these definitions actually have substantial definitional "overlap":

• America: Republic or Democracy?

And next, here's a great counter-rant from Trib contributor Bangs Tapscott, who argues that this whole "America (Utah) is a republic" meme is merely a Republican scheme to replace "democratic ideals" with the concept "that democratic participation is a hazardous thing that needs to be limited, and that power belongs, not with the people, but with those at the top and that when they get grown up they should elect prominent citizens to power, then sit down and shut up and let those they elected run things, and not try to exercise power they’re not entitled to":

• Power rests at the top in a republic, with people in democracy

That's it for now, O Gentle Ones. Who'll be the first to throw in their own 2¢?

Salt Lake Tribune: Group: GRAMA Just Needs Minor Tweaks

No sweeping overhaul, but instead just a few tweaks

By Ray

According to an article in the SLC Trib, GRAMA committee recommends only minor tweaks. Here's the gist, via Brooke Adams:

There will be no sweeping overhaul, but instead a few tweaks, some clarifica­tions and a recognition that Utah's open­ records law is pretty great after all.That's the outcome of the GRAMA Working Group, which on Wednesday finished a three- month effort to review the state's Government Records Access and Management Act and suggest ways to make it better. The group left unresolved some issues at the heart of the records de­­bate: how to deal with text messages and other new technologies, and what pro­­tections, if any, to give constituent email. But it did come up with other recom­­mendations to make the law more effi­­cient, better understood and to poten­­tially avoid some contentious disputes that are the bane of both those seeking records and government employees fill­­ing requests.

Read on...

• Group: GRAMA just needs minor tweaks - Open records » Still unresolved are texts, constituent email.

Comments, anyone?

Standard-Examiner: Counties Play Musical Statehouse Chairs; Davis May Gain the Seat Weber Loses

Does the targeting of Dixon Pitcher's House District 10 seat for elimination amount to mere coincidence... or something more sinister?

The Standard-Examiner fattens out the facts this morning on the SLTrib story which we highlighted last week, which reported that Ogden's Utah House Legislative District 10 seat is about to be eliminated by the GOP-dominated legislative panel which is in the process of whipping up a new Utah legislative district redistricting plan. This morning's SE story again reports that GOP Rep. Dixon Pitcher's House Legislative District 10 seat is likely to be on the chopping block:

• Counties play musical statehouse chairs; Davis may gain the seat Weber loses

Regular WCF readers will of course recall that House 10's Rep. Pitcher was one of the first contientious maverick GOP legislators to break party ranks and to speak out against GRAMA-gutting H.B. 277 .

So what about it, gentle readers? Does the targeting of Pitcher's district seat for elimination amount to mere coincidence... or are we witnessing mean-spirited GOP legislative retaliation against an independent-minded GOP legislator who refused to let his party "leadership" (so-called) do his thinking for him?

Tuesday Morning Northern Utah News Roundup

Hopefully scofflaw Neal Humphrey's bold taunt won't land him in the slam

Nutritious Emerald City red meat news has been in exceedingly short supply over the past few days, so we'll offer our readers this Northern Utah News Roundup, just so's our readers will at least have something to chat about on WCF this morning:

1) There's good news on the Emerald City jobs front this morning, as The Standard-Examiner reports that Ogden entrepreneur and all-around good guy Alan Hall's "MarketStar Corp. will add 250 Internet advertising sales jobs in Ogden over the next few months to serve a major search engine client":

• 250 jobs coming to Ogden; fair this week for Internet advertising sales employees

And in a shocking "man-bites-dog" twist to this Ogden jobs story, hold onto your hats for this:

"The city did not offer MarketStar any incentives for the hiring initiatives."

Hard to imagine, no?

2) Amidst the scores of HB 477 stories which have appeared on northern Utah print media pages over the past few months, here's a SLTrib story which particularly caught our eye this morning, wherein Trib reporter Brooke Adams cites "[t]he case of Kevin Tolton versus the Town of Alta" [as a case which] "is widely known as the mother of all records requests — the incident that access advocates, government officials and lawmakers alike hold out as the example of why Utah’s open records law needs revision":

• Battle over Alta records ignited HB477  war

We'll go along with this savvy reader comment, which appears beneath the story:

Just as the Westboro Baptists test our commitment to free speech, Mr. Tolton tests our commitment to open government. Yes, the Town of Alta needs to do a better job managing its records to reduce the cost of complying with requests. At the same time, it's perfectly fair to charge requesters a reasonable fee for locating and retrieving large numbers of records. And GRAMA currently allows such charges, especially when the request benefits a person rather than the public.

3) And last but not least, we'll shine the spotlight on this sardonic Neil Humphrey SE guest commentary piece, which illustrates the sheer idiocy of the socialist liquor marketing monopoly, here in The People's Republic of Utah:

• A bootlegger's plea

In closing, scofflaw Rev. Humphrey offers this bold taunt:

"You can catch me at it every Sunday morning, so come and get me. Just be ready to repent."

Hopefully this won't land him in the slam.

That's it for now, O Gentle Ones.

Who will be the first to chime in with your own 2¢?

Tuesday Morning Emerald City News Roundup

Plenty of Ogden-centric news in the Standard-Examiner and Tribune this morning

Quipping that "[m]y transmission doesn't have a neutral," Boss Godfrey announces his ambitious plan for the final nine months in office, adding that he will step up his workload over the next nine months, leaving us all to wonder if you're going in the wrong direction and you step up your workload, where, exactly, do you wind up?

• Ogden mayor sets goals before leaving office

Eight long years since the commencement of the Ogden River Project, the Ogden Planning Commission will finally get around to considering on Wednesday whether to recommend that the city's Redevelopment Agency Board adopt a proposed project master plan:

• Commission to consider $50,000 proposal for Ogden River Project

Odd editorial in this morning's Standard, heralding the beginning of the 2011 Ogden Mayoral race, and touting outgoing mayor Godfrey's chief weakness, self-centered hubris, as if it were a positive trait:

• OUR VIEW: The race for mayor begins

And speaking of the mayoral race, we learn from the Standard this morning that former Weber County Commissioner Ken Bischoff has thrown his hat into the ring:

• Bischoff ready to run for mayor of Ogden

And last but not least, Ogden based Senator Stuart Reid tells the Salt Lake Tribune "he voted against repealing a controversial open records law for one reason: To protect private communication that staff attorneys warned was subject to public disclosure," leaving us to wonder whether he missed Paul Rolly's Saturday column:

• Lawmaker says privacy rights ‘core issue’ in HB477

That's it for now, O Gentle Ones...

Time to throw in your own 2¢.

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.

Tuesday Morning HB477 News Roundup

Gov Herbert speeds HB477 toward repeal... then again, maybe not

According to this morning's Standard-Examiner, Gov. Gary Herbert plans to call the legislature into a special session on Friday to repeal HB 477:

• Gov. Herbert calls special session on open records law
  

Whatever happens on Friday depends, of course, on whether the very Machiavellian Senate President Mr. Waddoups manages to organize Senate opposition to block that move, due to (get this) the "cost of holding a special session":

• Senate Republicans may block quick HB477 repeal

And in another interesting twist, the legislative majority announces the members of a working group to consider changes to HB477, which group includes (and no, we are not making this up) Ogden City's own Mark Johnson:

• HB477 Working Group List

(Remember, folks, neoCON Senator Scott Jenkins is Boss Godfrey's cousin - wink, wink.)

Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the Governor's the call for a special session, HB477 opponents continue with their ongoing petition drive, "just in case":

• With repeal imminent, petition drive to stop HB477 carries on

And in an interesting background sidebar, former Former Governor Olene Walker says she was "amazed" by the speed that HB 477 was passed by lawmakers:

• McEntee: Former governor weighs in on Herbert, GRAMA

(Special thanks to our friends at Utah Policy Daily, who helped round up some of the above story links.)

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...