The Utah Department of Corrections and some county jails did not come off well in a legislative audit released today. Among other things, the department did a poor job overseeing county jails where it keeps inmates, the audit says.

Meanwhile, journalists and the public aren't allowed to oversee much of what Corrections or the jails are doing. Earlier this year, Corrections denied a records request I made for inspection reports of county jails.

The State Records Committee sided with Corrections. The committee agreed a state statute preventing the release of "security measures" applied to the inspection reports. The theory is an inmate could use the information in the inspection to plot an escape. That the public should be informed of dangers at a jail is not to be considered, Corrections and the committee decided.

And while today's audit recommended improving the jail inspection process and documentation, Correction's non-disclosure policy and the records committee's ruling stands. So Utah could have the best and safest penitentiaries and jails in the world — or the worst — and we aren't allowed to know.

— NC

Labels: GRAMA, jail/prisons, secrecy, State Records Committee

The best all-around free site for information on politicians' money raising, campaign contributors and special-interest ties is opensecrets.org.

The site operated by the Center for Responsive Politics is a great way to do some simple searches on candidates, contributors or lobbyists of interest. You can search by state, by industry and the site provides a money profile of candidates to show the breakdown of where they get their biggest bucks.

CRP is a non-profit, non-partisan group and over the years I've been using their resources I've found them to be reliable and devoid of ulterior motives. A call to the center staff also is a good idea when you get stuff. They're pretty helpful and will do some custom research for you. If it gets too complicated they might charge, but they'll let you know ahead of time.

Try it I think you'll like it.

--dh

Labels: campaign, donations, spotlight site

Leftover work for the next president:

— Iraq

— Economy

— Find lost e-mails

OK, so the last item won't receive as much attention as the first two, but according to a White House memo, the next commander in chief will play a role in a mini-drama over the Bush Administration and e-mails.

Here's a briefing on the dispute that will water the mouths of political junkies and techno geeks. Here's my condensed version:

The federal government is suppose to archive its e-mail. The Bush Administration has had trouble doing this, it says, because of technical problems related to converting to new technology. A couple groups sued to force the archiving.

In the middle of all this, a federal judge ruled the White House Office of Administration did not have to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, even though the White House itself does.

Now, we are hearing there is a plan to recovery up to 225 days of e-mails from 2002 and 2003 but the recover will run into 2009, leaving the issue for the next president.

-- nc

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Goodness gracious. No wonder we have such a hard time getting information from the government. Not only do government officials not know the law, apparently neither do some of my colleagues.

Take an article in Friday's Standard-Examiner about the Davis County Library Board clarifying its privacy policies on lending. The first sentence reads:

Library reading and information records are as private as medical records.

Uh, no. There is no federal regulation of public library records. In Utah, library records can be classified as private and in some circumstances the release of private information can be considered a misdemeanor offense. I have not seen such a prosecution in my three-plus years reporting on Utah crime.

Medical records are safeguarded by state and federal law. Any health provider who violates the rules face the real possibility of fines from the federal government. Plus the provider is vulnerable to lawsuits from the victim. On the whole, there are a lot more teeth in protections for medical records.

So the deputy county attorney who gave the briefing was wrong when he said:

...the law is no different than the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPPA.

No G-Man will knock on your door if you tell people I once checked out a Danielle Steel novel, guys.

Here's one that really blew me away and I wish the reporter had challenged. The deputy county attorney said the move to keep private the library records are "important because it protects a person's First Amendment rights...."

What? I make my living off the First Amendment and I have never heard it applied to secretly checking out Kama Sutra from the library. Some courts have cited the First Amendment to prevent banning books from libraries, but if you want a constitutional right to check out in privacy, I suggest looking farther down the Bill of Rights.

-- nc

Labels: GRAMA, secrecy

Across Utah, jails have become major pieces of the urban landscape and sources of tax dollars. Ever wonder who gets locked up there?

A handful of Beehive State counties have jail inmate information online. Some just tell you who is there now and why, while some have historical data and even mugshots.

Here's a list of counties posting inmate data online, with links to the sites.

--nc


Davis County

Iron County

Salt Lake County

Sanpete County

Summit County

Utah County

Washington County

Weber County

Labels: Spotlight

In my first post for this blog, I wrote about how Utah has a good system for appealing record denials. But the system is not perfect, and you can blame it on the lawyers.

Well, kind of. Here's why.

Reporter Steve Gehrke requested some documents from the Salt Lake County Attorney's Office. Last week, he received a denial and instructions on how to appeal that denial to the Salt Lake County Council. The council will schedule an appeal hearing before it. Here's the catch.

Salt Lake County Attorney Lohra Miller is the council's lawyer. For Gehrke to win his appeal, he must persuade the council its attorney is wrong; that the council should ignore its lawyer's advice and give him the documents.

Of course, we think the county attorney is wrong, but why should the council listen to us non-lawyers when it finances people with juris doctorates? And there's no requirement for the council to seek an outside legal opinion. (If the council rejects our appeal, we could take it to the State Records Committee but that means more time and effort.)

This structural flaw in the appeal process is not unique to Salt Lake County. I had an almost identical scenario last year when I tried to obtain records from the Utah County Attorney. A similar problem exists when the state of Utah denies a records request. The Utah attorney general will represent the state in an appeal. The attorney general also is the lawyer for the State Records Committee.

But maybe the Salt Lake County Council will surprise us and decide it's getting bad legal advice. Stay tuned.

--nc

The photograph is the great Phil Hartman as the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

Labels: GRAMA, State Records Committee

Journalists and open government supporters today are mourning the death of Jack Landau. Even if you haven't heard of him, you've benefitted from his work.

In 1970, Landau joined Ben Bradlee and Mike Wallace, among others, in forming the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The committee has fought to prevent journalists from being subpoenaed and for freedom of information issues.

Read more from The Washington Post.

Or from the Associated Press.

-- nc

Labels: FOIA

In 2006, we were trying to get to the bottom of what the heck the Defense Department was up to with its proposed Divine Strake test at the Nevada Test Site. This was to be an enormous detonation of conventional explosives to help the military figure out how to blast apart hardened targets and bunkers, but the concern was it could spread irradiated dust over Utah and that it could be used to develop tactical nuclear bunker busters or other weapons.

So I shot off a FOIA request to get records relating to the test.

Here we are, two years later, and I got an email the other day from the agency, informing me that they were processing my case and asking if I could narrow the search.

This strikes me as a question that could have been asked two years ago or so. But it's nice to know that they're obviously making some real good headway.

--rg

In late 2005, while I was still working in Washington, I helped out with a story about Mormons and their influence in D.C. As part of that, I had some conversations about the church's office in D.C. and what the heck it is they do.

The upshot is, that as an international religion, the LDS church has a keen interest in keeping up diplomatic relations with the U.S. State Department and foreign governments.

I went ahead and filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department, asking for correspondence between the department and representatives of the LDS Church. Then I waited. And waited. That was January 2006.

In November 2006, I went ahead and wrote a profile on Ken Bowler, the former lobbyist who had been selected as the new director of international and government affairs. Bowler headed up a team of six staffers, including Ann Santini, the wife of a former Democratic congressman from Nevada.

Each year, for example, the church hosts a major Western picnic at the Marriott family ranch. They invite dozens of international diplomats to the annual Christmas light ceremony at the Mormon temple. It coordinates a lecture series where it invites foreign ambassadors to speak at Brigham Young University.

All of this helps the church open doors overseas and expand its missionary programs.

And all of it, including any issues involving missionaries that get in trouble or are hurt or killed while serving abroad, or anything like that, is done without any communication whatsoever with the U.S. State Department.

Because I finally got a response earlier this month, informing me that, after two years and eight months of looking, the State Department could not find a single record that was in any way responsive to my request.

Bang up job, guys.

--rg

There have been tens of thousands of pages of documents sifted through and chewed over in the various investigations of the Crandall Canyon coal mine collapse a year ago.

With the recent release of the Mine Safety and Health Administration's accident investigations, and the Labor Department's internal review, and the anniversary of the collapse, it might be interesting looking once again to some of the primary documents at the heart of the disaster.

MSHA has provided a fairly complete set of records, including a handful of the documents The Tribune relied on when it was breaking stories in the days immediately following the collapse. Check out the link here:

Crandall Canyon docs.

-- rg

Here's the agenda for upcoming GRAMA appeals meeting:


STATE RECORDS COMMITTEE MEETING
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

The State Records Committee will hold a meeting on Thursday, August 14, 2008.

The meeting will be held in the Courtyard Meeting Room, the Archives Building, 346 South Rio Grande Street (450 West), Salt Lake City, Utah, beginning at 9:30 a.m. This is a public meeting, and anyone can attend. Committee business and three hearings have been scheduled:

• Approval of the July 10, 2008, meeting minutes of the State Records Committee
• Appeals received: A summary of cases reviewed for a hearing during the month will be presented to the Committee.
• Cases in District Court
• Introduction of new Committee member
• Scheduling training for Committee members
• First Hearing – Stacy Ray Peterson vs. Utah Board of Pardons & Parole. Mr. Peterson is appealing the denial of e-mails between members of the Utah Board of Pardons & Parole concerning his hearing before the board. He is also requesting a waiver of fees.
• THIS HEARING CANCELLED (Second Hearing – Beat the Bookstore (BTB) vs. Utah Valley State College. BTB is appealing the denial of the school textbook list with ISBN information maintained by the University Bookstore in an electronic format.)
• Third Hearing – Marian Olson vs. Office of the Attorney General. Ms. Olson is appealing the denial of records concerning the investigation of a Cache County Attorney’s Office protective order determination and the names of persons who investigated the case.
• Other Business
• Adjournment – Next meeting scheduled – Thursday, September 11, 2008

Individuals wishing to comment during the meeting should notify Susan Mumford, Executive Secretary of the State Records Committee, and should be in attendance at the public meeting. The executive secretary will also accept written comments before the meeting but no later than August 12th at 5:00 p.m. Please mail or deliver those comments to:
Executive Secretary
State Records Committee
Utah State Archives
346 S. Rio Grande
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101

NOTICE OF POSSIBLE ELECTRONIC OR TELEPHONIC PARTICIPATION
One or more members of the State Records Committee may participate electronically or telephonically pursuant to UCA 52-4-7.8.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL ACCOMMODATION DURING PUBLIC MEETINGS
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals needing special accommodations (including auxiliary communicative aids and services) during this meeting should notify Susan Mumford at the Utah State Archives: 801-531-3861.

-- dh

Here's something you don't hear everyday: Government officials helping reporters dig through their computer records.

If you read Sunday's article about overcrowding at the Salt Lake County jail, you might have noticed the line about how the sheriff's office gave The Tribune data. The newspaper originally asked for a large swath of data but Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder did not think that was possible.

The database, which keeps records on inmates booked and released from the jail and why, is an antiquated system built for record-keeping, but not for analysis of the data. It allows only a few basic queries, none especially helpful to the overcrowding debate.



But, after working at length with the sheriff's office to understand the convoluted system, Tribune Computer-assisted Reporting Editor Tony Semerad requested and received a massive data dump from the jail. Semerad began processing it in chunks using several desktop database programs at the newspaper and eventually converted the whole pool of information into something useful.

The jail database is the kind of information reporters often must fight and gouge to obtain. Yes, Winder had an agenda in giving us the data. He's arguing to open another jail facility. (His predecessor, former Sheriff Aaron Kennard had the same agenda, but never offered the database.) But Winder is making that argument through openness, and it's allowing us reporters to better report on all sides of a debate and keep everyone better informed.

— NC

Prying into public record is tough work, especially if you don't know where to look.

Each week, the writers here at the Vault will offer up a few of their favorite Web sites to help you snoop into the operations of government.

Here's the first installment:

Ever wondered how much you are paying in taxes to Salt Lake Valley's arts and entertainment industry? We sure did when considering whether Pioneer Theatre Company, Discovery Gateway and several other tax-supported cultural-arts venues should be required to pick their board members from across the county.

A recent Salt Lake Tribune investigation found that east-siders dominate those boards -- just 13 out of 238 board members live west of Interstate 15.

So here's where to go:

Salt Lake County maintains an electronic database of all Zoo, Arts and Parks tax recipients that lists contributions since 1997. Simply go to www.zap.slco.org and click on the "Arts and Cultural Projects" link at the top of the page. The next screen will include a button labeled "Information for the Public" that will lead you to a funding history for ZAP-funded organizations.

You might discover that Utah's Hogle Zoo -- which wants to ask voters for $65 million to renovate its east-side animal park this November -- is the largest ZAP recipient with $21 million in donations over the last 10 years.

It's a handy Web site. Enjoy.

-- js