Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff calls it "sad and ridiculous" that the Jordan School District won't let him listen to the tapes or read the minutes of a closed session the school board held last September.

He's understating things. Outrageous and irresponsible would be better descriptions. One wonders exactly whose interests the school district thinks it serves.

Shurtleff is trying to determine whether the school board violated the state's Open Meetings Act, something this newspaper suspected when it protested to him after the meeting in September. But by refusing to cooperate even with the state's top prosecutor, the district has, in effect, circled the wagons and decided to stand against the world.

As a result, the attorney general's office plans to file a lawsuit to obtain the information. The district, whose main responsibility ought to be educating children, now will use precious resources to battle in court over something that easily could have been handled differently.

And what is it the school board is protecting?

The meeting was closed in order to discuss whether to continue using school security officers or to hire private ones at a cheaper cost. The district notes that the law allows closed sessions in order to discuss "the deployment of security personnel, devices and systems." But that clearly refers to discussions involving actual security issues, not budgetary matters.

Even if the discussion in open session somehow veered toward sensitive subjects involving where to place officers and how to protect students, the board should have voted to close the session to discuss that narrow topic only, opening it again as soon as the discussion ended.

The sad truth is that many Utah governments, especially school boards, seem to have little idea what the Open Meetings Act is about. A report last summer by the state's legislative auditor general found that some school boards frequently and inappropriately close meetings. It's no coincidence that parents in the Davis School District recently won a temporary restraining order against closed meetings at which boundary realignment was discussed.

The law exists to protect the public and to help guard against the public's business being circumvented by political deals or other mischief.

If the Jordan School Board operated within the law, that ought to be easy to demonstrate to the attorney general's office. In that case, the controversy would disappear quickly. Apparently, however, the board does not trust the attorney general's office. Again, that goes beyond sad and ridiculous.