Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act empowers citizens to uncover government actions.
- Dan Schroeder's Supreme Court victory confirmed misuse of nonprofit funds by politicians.
- Proposed HB69 could deter public record requests by limiting attorney fee reimbursements.
SALT LAKE CITY – At first, Dan Schroeder was skeptical about rumors swirling around Ogden City Hall in 2008.
"Other people I knew were very suspicious, and I thought they were conspiracy theorists," recalled Schroeder, an Ogden resident of more than 30 years and a physics professor at Weber State University.
But the rumors were troubling and persistent, alleging donations to a civic nonprofit went instead to candidates' campaigns in the 2007 municipal election. The Utah Attorney General's Office investigated where the money went, and when it closed the case without bringing criminal charges, Schroeder filed a public record request to see the evidence.
The result: a yearslong fight for transparency that ended at the Utah Supreme Court, with Schroeder winning his case. The justices granted him access to bank records confirming those early rumors: Money from Envision Ogden ended up in the hands of local politicians.
His experience shows how citizens – not just journalists and lawyers – can shine a light on government by using Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). But fights like his could get much harder for ordinary Utahns under a bill that passed the Legislature that is now on the governor's desk.
HB69 would make it all but impossible for Utahns to recoup attorney fees from the government when they win their cases. Knowing they can't get that money back would dissuade many Utahns from fighting for records, even if they're fairly certain they'll win, said First Amendment attorney Jeff Hunt.
"They price the average person out of the ability to go to court and challenge the government when they withhold public records," said Hunt, who's representing the Utah Media Coalition in negotiations with lawmakers and wants the governor to veto the bill.
"I'm not following every development of what the Legislature is doing," Schroeder told KSL. "But what I hear doesn't sound good, and I think it could be very serious and weaken the law a great deal."
In fighting for the records on political spending, Schroeder represented himself before the Utah State Records Committee and again when he appealed to Utah's 2nd District Court. After that, a team of attorneys volunteered to take on his case at no cost to him – a rare occurrence.
"To take it to the Supreme Court would have been way beyond my means," Schroeder said. "Fortunately, I had the assistance of some of the best lawyers I've ever known."
By the time he won his case in 2015, the Ogden politicians he investigated were no longer in office, but Schroeder said his victory had a lasting effect.
"I think there's less of these kinds of shenanigans going on now than there were back then," Schroeder said. "And I think it's partly because of this and other similar efforts that citizens carried out, using GRAMA as one of our tools."
Correction: A prior version of the story misidentified the nonprofit at the center of Schroeder's investigation as Envision Utah instead of Envision Ogden.
