Newspaper reporters aren't the only ones that get the snub when snooping around for public records.

Salt Lake County Councilman David Wilde, a Republican, was stonewalled by Democratic Mayor Peter Corroon's office this month when seeking the resumes of all eight applicants for the Criminal Justice Advisory Council's top job.

The councilman stated flatly that he feared the recent hire of Rep. David Litvack -- a Democrat in the Utah House and husband of the county's community-services boss, Erin Litvack -- smacked of nepotism and cronyism.

As a county official, Wilde argued that he was entitled to review applicants' qualifications.

But the mayor's chief administrative officer, Doug Willmore, rebuffed the request based on the advice of the District Attorney's Office that employment applications "are designated as private records and should be treated as confidential documents."

Willmore assured the councilman that the mayor "has always gone above and beyond to attempt to get the best qualified candidates while using a fair and even-handed process. We believe that also happened in this case."

Responded Wilde, "I find it hard to believe a council member would be denied the simple and reasonable request I have made."

Wilde never got the documents. Perhaps he'll just have to trust the county's Democratic administration.

--JS

Last week, we took the next step in our effort to squeeze out more information about who knew what before the Crandall Canyon mine collapse.

Attorneys for mine co-owner Bob Murray and his subsidiaries filed a lawsuit in Utah's 3rd District Court challenging the release of meeting minutes and other documents about the mine that were held by the Intermountain Power Agency.

Intermountain Power is a public entity that runs coal plants that provide electricity to a handful of Western states and owns stakes in several Utah mines that provide their coal, including Crandall. As a result, they are covered by GRAMA.

We filed our request for documents last September and Murray's lawyers immediately objected, asking IPA -- which is Murray's business partner and customer -- to reconsider releasing the records. IPA ruled the records should be made public. Murray appealed to the Utah Records Committee, which ruled unanimously that they should be made public. Now Murray is suing IPA to keep the records private. The Tribune will, in all likelihood, be asking to intervene and argue its case.

An interesting sidenote, Murray lawyer Kevin Anderson told the State Records Committee that the records dispute has soured the relationship between Murray's companies and IPA to the point that the coal operator won't give any records about the ongoing mining operations to IPA. Instead, officials that want documents have to go somewhere and review them.

Another interesting sidenote, Anderson is the son of Jack Anderson, who is one of the Heroes of Journalism, and the younger Anderson beat the FBI when it came after his dad's papers after his death. In fact, I interviewed Anderson a while back and he told me about how he and his brothers and sisters would toy with the federal agents who were assigned to tail his dad and who were staking out the family's home.

You can read Murray Energy's arguments here: MurraysRecordsAppeal.pdf


They are, essentially, the same arguments that they raised before the records committee -- that the information in the records is proprietary and private. You can read The Tribune and IPA's response to those arguments here RecordsCommitteeTribStatement.pdf

and here

IPAResponsetoRecordsCommittee.pdf

The company raised the same objections when we filed an identical request with the Los Angeles Division of Water and Power. LADWP is the biggest consumer of IPA's electricity and had a designee on the board of Genwal Resources, which was set up to oversee operations at the mines. Murray went all the way to the California Supreme Court fighting the release of those documents. You can read the lower court ruling here:

LADWPRuling.pdf

And here

LADWPCrandallDox.pdf

are the redacted documents that they were trying to keep out of our hands.

I'm confident that we'll end up getting these records, but I'm also fairly certain that we're looking at months and months of legal sparring before we get any resolution here.

--RG

The Tribune's Rosemary Winters reports that Sandy City Councilors will "take a closer look" at the city's bonus program, focusing in particular on why so much or the money goes to so few people at the top of the pay scale on such a regular basis.

But it doesn't appear the council is rushing to the human resources office to start sorting through the pay stubs. At Tuesday night's council meeting, Winters reports, it took four hours "to bring up the elephant in the chamber."

This week, The Tribune published details of the bonus program after winning a four-year legal fight with Sandy to have the public records disclosed. The council plans to discuss the budget -- including the issue of compensation -- during meetings the next few weeks and at a public hearing May 20.

-mdl

Labels: GRAMA, Sandy

With the legal battles related to the raid on the FLDS compound in Texas looking as though they will continue for years, here, via a public record request, is an example of past police investigations into the sect.

We all know how Warren Jeffs was on the run for the better part of two years until the Nevada Highway Patrol pulled him over in August 2006. At the same time, police were investigating some of his various so-called safe houses, including one in Fremont County, Colo.

These are among more than 50 photographs the sheriffs office there took of that house and the people coming and going from there. The photographs include the house, people and license plates of the vehicles there. The investigative file, which The Tribune obtained through a records request, also includes a handwritten list of people suspected to have resided at the house.

The dates on the photographs indicate the sheriff's office continued monitoring the house into October 2006, even after Jeffs' capture.

— NC

Labels: Polygamy

Several members of the Sandy City Council are demanding a review of the city's bonus system following The Tribune's Sunday report that senior executives were reaping rich and repetitive rewards under the program.

Under the direction of Sandy's top brass, the city's attorneys spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting a legal battle to keep the program secret, much to the dismay of community activist Robyn Bagley.

"It disturbs me that Sandy fought for so long," she said. "These are government salaries that are funded by taxpayers. Transparency is critical."

Meanwhile, Tricia Beck, a longtime Mayor Dolan critic and political opponent, told KSL-TV the recently-exposed bonus program "is an example of greed, arrogance and entitlement."

KSL also hosted a conversation on the issue as part of its "Talking Point" segment on Monday evening.

-mdl

Labels: GRAMA, Sandy

This blog probably will write a lot about the problems with Utah's records and meeting laws. So my first post is about something Utah does well: You don't have to settle for a no.

Or at least not right away. Utah provides an appeals process far superior to any state I've found. If you request a record from a Utah agency -- such as a city, a county or a state agency -- and that agency denies you, the agency then must provide you an appeal option. Some agencies, such as Salt Lake City government, have entire boards to hear your appeal while other agencies allow you to appeal to an administrator.

If that board or administrator rules against your appeal, you're still not done. You have the option of appealing to the State Records Committee. If you lose at that committee, you have one more option: you can sue in state court. (A similar appeals process exists for the agency which received the request if the agency thinks your documents should not be disclosed.)

I worked in Missouri for three years and if an agency there denies your request, your only option is to sue. Lawsuits are expensive even if you win. Government agencies know that and it gives them an incentive to deny your request.

In November, The Tribune published an investigation on college drug testing that used record requests in 39 states. Among the schools who denied my request, only the University of Nebraska told me I had an administrative appeal option. (I did not pursue it.)

What makes an administrative appeal option so good for us citizens? Well, it's one thing for an agency to deny a record request. It's another thing for the agency to stand in public and justify the denial. Utah's appeals process keeps a lot of records cases out of court and gives a fighting chance to the little guys.

— NC

Labels: GRAMA, SLC, State Records Committee

Under a new Freedom of Information Act reform law signed by President Bush on New Year's Eve, federal agencies that don’t respond to FOIA requests within a 20-day period will face stiffer penalties.

As a reporter who routinely uses FOIA, and one who has grown accustomed to receiving responses to requests for public documents years after I ask, I am watching closely for signs of improvement in the system.

When I hadn't hear anything back from one defense agency after sending it a request for records on April 3, I figured that it might just be business as usual. Then, on April 24, I received a phone call. An official from the agency told me that there had been some confusion regarding who in her office was going to handle my request. She apologized and said that they would be "getting to it" as soon as possible.

"So, do you still want everything you asked for in the request?" the official asked me.

I told her I did.

The next day I received an e-mail from the official, which "documents the phone conversation we had on April 24, 2008, regarding the scope of your request."

The scope of my request?

"... the beginning of the 20-day statutory time frame is April 24, 2008, the date we perfected your request."

And just like that, a 20-day response window turned into a 40-day response window.

As overworked federal FOIA offices seek to stay within the confines of the new law, I'm expecting more "do you still want everything you asked for" calls and more follow-up e-mails with language such as "the day we perfected your request."

- mdl

Labels: DOD, FOIA

On Feb. 6, 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune published "Payday Blues" -- an extensive look into the disparities in pay between public safety officers throughout Salt Lake County. The article was the result of a months-long effort, using Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) to obtain personnel records from each city and the county government.

Recognizing that GRAMA denotes certain information as "records that must be disclosed," most of the queried agencies promptly complied with the newspaper's requests for the names, genders and compensation of their public safety officers.

But there was one city that gave us a tougher fight. Officials from Sandy refused to turn over the names of police officers and firefighters, arguing in part that disclosure of the identities of these officers might impair investigations or place the officers' safety in jeopardy. Among other arguments, they cited the kidnappings and murders of Iraqi police officers as evidence that it was bad policy to reveal the identities of public safety officials.

The Utah State Records Committee, which seeks to resolve public records disputes, disagreed with Sandy and ordered the city to turn over the information.

The city initially declined to provide segregated base pay, arguing that the committee's order and state law only required it to provide the sum total of all forms of renumeration given to each employee. Eventually, the city relented on the issue of salary, but continued to decline to provide segregated figures for benefits, overtime, bonuses, incentives and other forms of pay.

The city's response did give us enough information to work with in order to produce the Payday Blues article -- which revealed, among other things, that "with morale plummeting, many Sandy police officers and firefighters, who are among the lowest paid in Salt Lake County, are quietly seeking jobs elsewhere." Meanwhile, the article continued, "Sandy's top administrators are among the best paid in the county."

The article caused quite a stir -- and letters and phone calls we received from Sandy employees following the publication of that story steeled us to continue the fight for the other forms of compensation, particularly as several of the e-mails hinted of chronyism in the city's extensive bonus program.

"I'm sure the administrators are getting nearly all of the bonus money," wrote one employee. "I've heard rumors that the chief receives up to $10,000," added another.

Back before the State Records Committee, the newspaper won another order for Sandy to turn over the its bonus and overtime information.

But this time, the city sued to keep the information from the public eye, sparking a three-year legal battle which resulted in a judge's order for Sandy to disclose the information — and to pay the newspaper's legal fees of more than $30,000. That order, and other documents from the 3rd District Court case, can be found here and here.

Last month, The Tribune began analyzing those records. The resulting article, online now and to be published in print in Sunday's Tribune, reveals a bonus program that disproportionately rewards top administrators from all city departments -- and even provides Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan with a $1,000+ "thank you" bonus, each year.

Dolan's check pales in comparison to those received by city administrator Byron Jorgenson and 11 other city leaders who help administer the program, each of whom picks up the equivalent of about a month's salary in bonuses, year after year.

Meanwhile, most city employees who do get bonuses get the equivalent of a few day's pay. And hundreds get nothing at all.

In the wake of the Payday Blues article, Sandy's police officers and firefighters were given substantial raises. Recent interviews with officers indicates that morale appears to have improved and the rapid emigration of officers to other, better-paying municipalities has slowed.

What will be the result of our article about Sandy's secret bonus program? We'll be watching closely.

- mdl/mc

Labels: GRAMA, Sandy