New bill seeks to replace decades-old GRAMA process

SALT LAKE CITY — A bill that would alter the process used to request access to government records gets its first hearing on Utah’s Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, focuses on people wishing to file a Government Records Access and Management Act, or GRAMA, to request information that a government entity has deemed private or protected.

Under the bill, the public would have to appeal to a new Government Records Office. The director of the Records Office would then determine whether to grant the GRAMA request and override a government decision that a record is private and protected.

Attorney Jeff Hunt represents the Utah Media Coalition, which includes KSL. He said the current system is working well.

“You go to the records committee, the records committee says, ‘Government, what exceptions are you relying on?’ And then the requester says, ‘I don’t think that exception applies and here’s why.’ Or, if it does, ‘Here’s why the public interest overrides whatever their interest is.'”

He said the current system was put into place more than 30 years ago and relies on three key components.

“You needed to have an ability for citizens to get records if the public interest and disclosure outweigh whatever the interest were in non-disclosure. And we called that the public interest balancing test,” Hunt said.

“The second was, we were really concerned about citizens having to go to court to get public records because you have to get an attorney and it effectively would deny access because the legal expenses would be prohibitive. And so we created the State Records Committee and we wanted it to be user-friendly, inexpensive, and quick.”

“And then the third thing was, we felt like if a citizen had to take the government to court to get access to public records, then the citizen shouldn’t have to bear the cost of that. It should be the government.”

McKell’s bill would do away with the State Records Committee and the so-called balancing test. Hunt said that the balancing test is the heart of the process.

“What the balancing test is designed to do is to give the government entity or the records committee or the court the discretion to say, yeah, it could fit under one of these exceptions, but there’s no good reason to apply that exception here.”

McKell previously told KSL in a statement that the intent of his bill is to make sure the public still has access, and that the law is applied consistently. 

Hunt said that the law already has been applied consistently.

“In fact, the records committee did a little look back to see if they were correctly following the GRAMA law, and look to see, well, how many of the cases that were appealed from the State Records Committee, how many times were we overturned? And they were overturned less than 2% of the time. Ninety-eight percent of the time, law-trained judges are saying the records committee gets it right.”

Hunt said there is no reason to get rid of the records committee and the balancing test.

“What we need is more education and training of the government agencies about their obligations under GRAMA. We don’t need to take away the rights of citizens to go before the State Records Committee to force them to turn over records or to get rid of this balancing test.”

Don Brinkerhoff is a reporter and producer for KSL NewsRadio.  

Follow @KSLdbrinkerhoff