Ex-official also on MATRIX team

Turns out that former Gov. Mike Leavitt and his public safety confidants weren't the only Utahns involved in the controversial supercomputer database known as MATRIX.

Utah's former top cop, Doug Bodrero, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety during much of the Leavitt administration, is currently president of the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, where he went to work only three days after he retired as Utah's public safety chief in 1997.

The institute, which is a conduit for federal grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, is the financial arm of MATRIX that made it possible.

"There has been a lot of bad information and inflammatory information . . . that have caused a lot of concern," Bodrero said Friday from his home in Tallahassee, Fla. "Gov. Walker did the right thing (in appointing an oversight committee). Rather than pull out, she wants to get some accurate information. If the state then chooses not to utilize (MATRIX), then that decision is made on facts rather than emotion and half-truth."

Bodrero insists he and Leavitt didn't conspire to get Utah signed onto the program. Leavitt's initial involvement came through his participation in the National Governors Association, he said, whereas IIR was approached by Florida law enforcement, which hosted a national conference on how to better share information. IIR was asked to assist in developing a secure Web site for regional information sharing.

Leavitt, now head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, has refused to comment on MATRIX or his part in getting the pilot program to Utah.

"This whole thing (MATRIX) grew out of the hue and cry following 9/11 for better information sharing," Bodrero said. "And then I read in the paper the governor is being blasted for not sharing information."

Amid mounting criticism from participating states around the country, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) will host a MATRIX conference and tour of the MATRIX facility on Feb. 19 and 20 in Boca Raton, Fla. Bodrero is the keynote speaker the first day of the conference. At least one Utah legislator, Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake, and a member of Utah's MATRIX oversight committee, has been invited to the conference.

Utah House Speaker Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, is the current national president of NCSL, as well as a member of President Bush's Homeland Security task force, which endorsed and funded MATRIX.