Secrecy or disclosure? State job-creation board trying to balance needs

State officials and a board handling job-creation financial incentives are vowing to disclose as much information as possible about companies getting money from the state.

But that does not necessarily mean they will always tell the names of the companies.

Representatives of the Governor's Office of Economic Development and the GOED board said Friday that sometimes companies' reasons for confidentiality are legitimate.

"We always see if they will allow us publicly to disclose who they are and to be more open, whenever that's possible," said board member Dell Loy Hansen, who chaired Friday's board meeting. "That's just good business for us and for them."

Occasionally in years past, the board would keep secret the name of a company receiving an incentive, saying they were honoring company requests for anonymity. But not revealing the names has become more commonplace in recent months, prompting The Salt Lake Tribune to file a request for information through the Government Records Access and Management Act to get details about the board's recent incentive activities. That request was denied.

Last year, the governor's office even considered — but never implemented — a policy of keeping secret the dollar amounts of state incentives offered to companies wanting to expand in or relocate to Utah.

But even with promises to be more forthcoming with information, Friday's meeting featured a pair of incentive approvals, one of which did not include disclosure of the name of the company or the Utah location it was considering for expansion. Calling the incentive "Project Elvis," the board did say it was a food services distributor and provided other information about the company.

"I think the minute that we say that we're going to be the open, saintly competitors — we're going to tell everybody what we did in an open bid process — we will lose jobs," Hansen said. "That's black and white."

He equated full disclosure of incentives to a poker game, where rival states would know Utah's hand.

"We're trying to be the most saintly people we can on disclosing, but saints get killed and sometimes devils win. So we just have to be a little wise here periodically, that we want to be as saintly as we possibly can and still win the poker match," Hansen said.

Glass manufacturer Viracon was named during Friday's meeting. It had told state officials that was OK. But the company also has an offer from Tucson, Ariz., totaling nearly $4 million — far higher than Utah's $750,000.