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14 years ago, Utah lawmakers wisely passed a landmark open records law known as the Government Records Access and Management Act, or GRAMA. Now, legislators of a new generation under the guise of updating the law for the electronic age are trying to change, indeed weaken GRAMA.
They should leave it be, primarily because it isn't broken.
KSL encourages lawmakers who are thinking about tinkering with GRAMA to heed the words of one of their own, former House Speaker Marty Stephens. In an op-ed piece that appeared in Utah's major newspapers Sunday, Stephens reminded readers that GRAMA came to be in 1991 after an exhaustive two-year task force study. And it had the strong support of all parties involved.
Of this year's efforts to alter GRAMA, Stephens wrote,
". . . most of these bills are headed in exactly the wrong direction. We should be finding ways to make access to records easier, not enacting further hurdles for those wanting to know what our government is doing and why."
KSL agrees! More openness in government, not less, is what is needed to preserve American democracy and protect the public from politicians and bureaucrats who sometimes forget they are engaged in the public's business.
