The Utah State Records Committee is an important part of the state’s mostly admirable process of keeping its government open.
Or it was, until a Senate committee started sitting on nominations to the committee, leaving it without enough members to act and unreasonably limiting the public’s right to know what its government is up to.
The mess at Utah Tech University, where charges of a toxic work environment have been bottled up and kept from public view, is only one example of what happens when the process is stymied.
The records committee hears appeals from citizens and the media when someone has filed a request for information using Utah’s Government Records and Management Act and the relevant government agency has refused to release it.
At least it used to, when the seven-member body had at least five people serving, enough to constitute a quorum to do business.
But the terms of three of those members expired. Gov. Spencer Cox properly nominated those same three people to serve another term, but the relevant Senate committee refused to approve the nominations, leaving the committee inert.
Cox has since forwarded two new nominations to the Senate Business and Labor Confirmation Committee. Approving just one of those appointments could get the open records process up and running again.
But the committee’s chairman, Sen. Curt Bramble, has refused to schedule any hearings or votes on any of the candidates. That’s unusual for the Utah Senate, which usually responds to such nominations quickly.
Bramble offered no reason why the outgoing members weren’t reapproved and said he wanted to wait on the two pending candidates until the committee could consider nominees for all three vacant posts.
That’s not showing much respect either for the governor’s choices or the whole process of open government in Utah.
While Bramble dawdles, undoubtedly with a back slap from legislative leadership, open records appeals are piling up and languishing, in some cases, for more than six months.
It is reasonable to suspect that the Senate’s inaction is less sloth than it is a deliberate attack on the records committee and the whole open records process, revenge for its ruling holding that the calendar kept by Attorney General Sean Reyes is a public record.
The Senate should approve Cox’s nominees right away and make the records committee functional again.
Better, the law should be changed so that any records committee member whose term has expired is allowed to continue serving until a replacement has been confirmed.
The committee’s work is too important to be allowed to grind to a halt just because some elected officials won’t do their jobs.
