High court decides in favor of SUWA

A Utah Supreme Court ruling Tuesday handed a victory to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance after a four-year legal battle over access to state-collected maps and geographic information on roads in Emery County.

SUWA had requested the information from the Automated Geographic Reference Center, a state-run mapping division, in a letter in 2004, citing the state's open-government law, the Government Records Access and Management Act.

SUWA attorney Stephen Bloch said Tuesday that his group had wanted to see the information to discover where tax dollars are being spent on justifying access to roads and trails through federal lands.

"The state has, for years, been hiding their financial workings under divisions like AGRC with millions of tax dollars," Bloch said. "They have kept it all from the public eye. So this (ruling) changes all that."

Before the case landed in the high court, SUWA had been denied access to the information four times. But the Supreme Court reversed all that with an order that the material be made public.

"The statutes requiring the records' creation do not categorize them as nonpublic; therefore, the records are public and governed by GRAMA," Chief Justice Christine Durham wrote in the court's ruling. "Second, the records do not satisfy any of the criteria for exemption under GRAMA."

The center originally denied SUWA's request for the data, contending that the information was not available, not public and being used for pending litigation — conditions for which GRAMA allows an agency to exempt material.

The State Records Committee held a hearing and also interpreted the data as exempt from public access.

Bloch said that one of SUWA's most compelling arguments through each level of its appeal was the very reason the center was created by the state: "They were formed precisely to give this kind of information."

The Supreme Court agreed and in its opinion said the Legislature created the center "to provide geographic information system services to state agencies, the federal government, local political subdivisions and private persons."

Roger Fairbanks, one of the center's attorneys, said the center's leaders accept the high court's decision and will fully comply. "They reversed it, and we acknowledge that," he said. "I wouldn't anticipate that it will take long before (the center) hands over what they need to — before a month."