Lawmakers fear scrutiny of e-mail

Utah's part-time legislators want to be accessible to the public but some worry that using e-mail and instant messaging more fully could open their "private" communications to public scrutiny and misinterpretation.

Meetings are being held this summer on how best to communicate with constituents from the cramped confines of a new office building for the next three years while the Capitol is being remodeled.

The general session of the 2005 Legislature from January to March — the first in the tight, temporary quarters — generated complaints of limited or poor access. But efforts to solve that problem could create others ones, legislators said.

"The art of legislation is relationships and time," said Rep. Ben Ferry, R-Corinne. "You work out (a problem) before it becomes a big issue. E-mails or instant messages between legislators should be the same "as a whisper in a senator's ear."

In context, an e-mail from a lobbyist or another legislator may make sense, he said. But standing alone, an e-mail reported in the media "can get it wrong."

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, co-chairman of the Legislative Process Committee, suggested that a room might be set aside for senators and representatives to meet at certain times with the public. Disabled or aging Utahns have an especially hard time getting to the Capitol and have sometimes waited in vain. "For two years running, my senator and representative never came out (into hallways) to speak with me," said Leslie Gertsch of the Utah Council for the Blind. However, other legislators did, and she especially thanks Democratic legislators and House and Senate doormen for helping her out.

Lobbyist Roger Tew said he doesn't find it difficult talking to legislators, but he noted that the office building's layout provides legislators, if they choose, the ability to avoid the public.

Committee co-chairman Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, said much has been made of legislators now being able to walk from secure underground parking into private hallways and into chambers without having to mix with the public. They will be able to do so in the remodeled Capitol.

But, Bigelow said, a legislator walking in private is often a choice between making a previously scheduled constituent meeting or not. "It's a choice. Sometimes when you go out into a (public) hallway it's a 45-minute or hour commitment."

Alison Barlow Hess, a Weber State University communications professor and past president of the Society of Professional Journalists, asked legislators not to use new technology to keep more records from the public. "An e-mail conservation with a lobbyist could be very important" someday in seeing how a bill passed, she said. The legislative history of Utah should be preserved.

Her comment touched a legislative nerve. Bigelow said rarely do his e-mails show any legislative intent. "They just ask what this or that bill does and why."

Ferry said it's critical in a healthy legislative process that legislators be able to talk frankly with each other, whether on the floor or in an instant message.

"You send a (instant) message across the floor and it's a public record," said Bigelow. "But you speak it, and it's not. It's not what you do, but how you do it."

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