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The Utah Legislative session recently ended. The Legislature did a number of things: set apart a state gun, made sure the schools teach that the United States is a compound constitutional republic, and even debated whether or not to allow stray feral cats to be shot on site with no penalty. Ya, quite a lot to be proud of. To cap off that great session, they passed a law that changed the state's open records law. Instead of assuming all government records and communications are subject to public review, they changed the law to exempt all electronic communications from the open records law. A great, great idea. What could go wrong with that. They did such an awesome job with that change that they passed the law in the last week of the session and it passed in two days. The public barely knew what hit them. To make matters even better, the governor signed the changes into law after stating he had reservations about the changes.
To be fair, the legislators felt they were being harassed by all these pesky people who wanted to know everything they were involved with and everything they were talking about. They felt it was too burdensome on the government's part to allow everyone to request whatever public information they wanted. It was so hard for them to comply with that law that they wanted to make it easier for them. They're lawmakers. There's no way they would ever do or say anything that the public wouldn't agree with or think was shady. Why would they ever do that? Let's bring the state's open records law into the 21st century by excluding all electronic communications from the public.
The media had a field day. Once the public found out about the law, they were furious. They demanded that the governor veto the law. He refused to veto the law out of fear that it would be overturned by the legislature. He did have the law changed such that there would be meetings in June to discuss the changes and find ways to make the open records law better. Upon hearing from the public that the law was a horrible idea and needed to repeal the law, the legislature said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not do anything hasty here. Let's discuss repealing the law thoroughly before doing anything hasty. No need to rush into anything here". Is this sounded ironic yet? Good, because it's actually supposed to sound backwards.
A special session was called a week after the law was signed. The special session, at the tune of $30,000 from a supposedly cash-strapped state, had the sole purpose of repealing the bad law. The House was unanimous in wanting to repeal it, the Senate wanted to say, again, "Whoa, slow down". After wrestling back and forth, and with the Senate trying to amend to repeal legislation, the law was finally repealed and the governor quickly signed the repeal law. So, surprisingly enough, the Legislature actually listed to it's people and did what the people wanted, not the other way around.
There will still be meetings two a month or so to discuss how to modify the opens records law to handle electronic communications. All groups will be involved: citizens, lawmakers, the media, and citizens rights groups. All input is welcome at the meetings so that everyone can be happy with the proposed changes. No need to do anything hasty, right? Strange, huh? The discussions are happening now, after the law was passed and repealed, when they should have been happening all along. Before laws are passed, they need to be discussed and thought out thoroughly. Not after.
Yay, Utah. Way to go and show the rest of the Union another reason why you are so backwards.
To be fair, the legislators felt they were being harassed by all these pesky people who wanted to know everything they were involved with and everything they were talking about. They felt it was too burdensome on the government's part to allow everyone to request whatever public information they wanted. It was so hard for them to comply with that law that they wanted to make it easier for them. They're lawmakers. There's no way they would ever do or say anything that the public wouldn't agree with or think was shady. Why would they ever do that? Let's bring the state's open records law into the 21st century by excluding all electronic communications from the public.
The media had a field day. Once the public found out about the law, they were furious. They demanded that the governor veto the law. He refused to veto the law out of fear that it would be overturned by the legislature. He did have the law changed such that there would be meetings in June to discuss the changes and find ways to make the open records law better. Upon hearing from the public that the law was a horrible idea and needed to repeal the law, the legislature said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not do anything hasty here. Let's discuss repealing the law thoroughly before doing anything hasty. No need to rush into anything here". Is this sounded ironic yet? Good, because it's actually supposed to sound backwards.
A special session was called a week after the law was signed. The special session, at the tune of $30,000 from a supposedly cash-strapped state, had the sole purpose of repealing the bad law. The House was unanimous in wanting to repeal it, the Senate wanted to say, again, "Whoa, slow down". After wrestling back and forth, and with the Senate trying to amend to repeal legislation, the law was finally repealed and the governor quickly signed the repeal law. So, surprisingly enough, the Legislature actually listed to it's people and did what the people wanted, not the other way around.
There will still be meetings two a month or so to discuss how to modify the opens records law to handle electronic communications. All groups will be involved: citizens, lawmakers, the media, and citizens rights groups. All input is welcome at the meetings so that everyone can be happy with the proposed changes. No need to do anything hasty, right? Strange, huh? The discussions are happening now, after the law was passed and repealed, when they should have been happening all along. Before laws are passed, they need to be discussed and thought out thoroughly. Not after.
Yay, Utah. Way to go and show the rest of the Union another reason why you are so backwards.
