Bills could restrict information access

Steve Erickson is a private citizen who has spent more than a decade working as a public watchdog.

Erickson runs the Citizens Education Project, which studies and monitors the state, local and federal governments, trying to make sure the best interests of Utah residents are being protected. To do that, he frequently makes use of the state's Government Records Access and Management Act — or GRAMA — to mine public documents for information.

Three times in the past two years, Erickson has made significant finds that triggered a flurry of news stories:

• Utah was part of the so-called MATRIX program, a multistate effort to combine commercially available databases on citizens to fight crime and terrorism. Then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Republican, signed up the state for the program after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without consulting other state officials.

• A lack of oversight by state officials on programs for chemical and biological testing, and the subsequent environmental impact of those tests at the military's Dugway Proving Ground, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.

• The failure of the state's radiation control division to conduct due diligence about the exact contents of a shipment of Japanese uranium-bearing rock bound for a disposal at a mill in southern Utah.

Without the access given to citizens under GRAMA, "in all three instances none of that information would have come out," Erickson said.

Now as state lawmakers consider more than a half a dozen bills that would change GRAMA, Erickson fears the public's access to government information could be limited.

"In general, these bills are going to restrict citizens' access to information from their government, and that's not a healthy trend," he said.

The proposed legislation comes after a yearlong task force that studied GRAMA, which has been in place for nearly 14 years and altered in bits and pieces about 70 times.

Rep. Douglas Aagard, R-Kaysville, co-chaired the task force with Sen. David Thomas, R-South Weber. Both say it was time for a comprehensive review of the law, in part because technology advancements have changed public record-keeping and communication, and because identity theft has raised new concerns about privacy.

They say they were guided in the study by GRAMA's two stated rights: that of the public to have access to what government is doing and the right to personal privacy.