Bill to restrict access to government records passes House

SALT LAKE CITY — A bill that would restrict public access to many government records sailed through the House Thursday, less than 24 hours after it was first discussed in committee.

The House voted 61-12 to pass HB477, which proposes sweeping changes to the Government Records Access Management Act. Lawmakers said it would clamp down on records requests that they claim are bogging down state government.

GRAMA allows the public to request copies of government records. Rep. John Dougall's bill would largely remove the state's legislative branch from the law and exempt several forms of communication, including voice mail, instant messaging, text messages and video chats.

It would raise fees for especially large and complex requests and give state agencies more time to respond.

Dougall, R-American Fork, said he also proposed the changes to protect constituents' privacy, allowing them to communicate candidly with their representatives.

"Nobody has advocated more for open government than I have," Dougall told the Deseret News. "I'm very concerned when taxpayers are asked to fund fishing expeditions."

Later on the House floor, he said his constituents "do not want government to be ground to a halt. They want it to function."

The Legislature's general counsel John Fellows said he had received eight GRAMA requests during this year's session, many of them extremely complex, creating an "unprecedented" amount of work for his office. Legislative leaders said staff have spent more than 400 hours responding to GRAMA requests in the past 12 months.

In an interview Thursday, Betsy Ross, chairwoman of the State Records Committee, said she was concerned that the bill would repeal the statement of intent attached to GRAMA, which states that the Legislature recognizes the public's right to access information about public business. That statement promotes "easy and reasonable access" to public records and favors openness over competing interests.

Ross said the records committee uses the statement to fill in gaps when ruling on a request that isn't covered explicitly by state law.

In addition, she said the bill would upend the way GRAMA has viewed records since its adoption 20 years ago by exempting certain forms of communication.

"We always look at the record with regards to content, not format," Ross said.

As for the bill's other provisions, she said the current law already protects citizens from having private matters made public, and establishes fees for overly broad requests.

Ross said she was not speaking on behalf of the records committee, since it had not had a chance to discuss the changes. Other interested parties, too, should have had more time to vet the bill, she said.

"I think three days is not sufficient for that," she said.

The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to discuss the bill Friday.

“I’m sure there will be some people very unhappy with what we’re trying to do here, but we can’t shut the state down and that's almost the essence of what we’re hearing from our staff,” said the bill's Senate sponsor Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan.

At a House committee hearing Wednesday, several media outlets and open-government advocates spoke against the changes and the timing of the bill.

Legislative leaders said Thursday they wanted to act because changes to GRAMA had been discussed for years but never enacted. They denied that the bill had been rushed, saying the process used to consider it was no different than for any other legislation.

"There's nothing odd about this process," said House Speaker Becky Lockhart, R-Provo.