Shurtleff says legislative caucus meetings should be open

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Wednesday state lawmakers should stop meeting behind closed doors to discuss the public's business.

Legislators are exempt from open meetings laws in Utah if they're meeting as a political party to discuss strategy.

Some lawmakers say that meeting behind closed doors allows them to be more candid with each other when discussing public policy.

But in Utah, Republicans control enough seats in the House and Senate that they can effectively decide what laws they'll pass behind closed doors.

"That shouldn't be happening," said Shurtleff, a Republican.

Shurtleff said these closed caucus meetings should stop so the public isn't kept in the dark about they way government operates.

On Wednesday, he said he would encourage lawmakers to consider changing state law.

"The people's business should be done in public," he said.

Utah's 45-day legislative session ended March 5. Democrats and House Republicans kept their caucuses open.

But as in the past, Senate Republicans closed all their caucus meetings to the public and reporters. Sometimes, Senate leaders would come out of meetings and make announcements about what their caucuses decided. That made votes taken on the Senate floor mere formalities with little or no debate.

A message left with Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Shurtleff made the comments about closed caucus meetings during a news conference about National Sunshine Week, an effort to bring greater transparency to government. Shurtleff's office has produced a 27-page booklet for government workers and the public explaining Utah's open records and meetings laws.

House Minority Leader Brad King, a Democrat from Price who is running for the Senate, said he would be in favor of state lawmakers following the same rules they require of local governments, which can only close meetings for a few specific reasons.

"The more open and more transparent government is, the less likely people are to be suspicious of it," King said. "It's not necessarily what happens behind closed doors, but the perception of those decisions being made behind closed doors. I think the public, in general, is skeptical of government, and when we close things it plays into that skepticism."