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• GRAMA—wield it like an ax: Utah has one of the most liberal public records laws in all the land, the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). The voluminous act has one simple premise: “all records are public unless otherwise expressly provided by statute.” This means citizens can request records from all levels of city, county and state government.
City Weekly banks on GRAMA for access to police reports, disciplinary files of public employees and regulated professionals, campaign finance records, voter registrations, lobbyist disclosures, payouts from government risk funds, mug shots, booking information, civil and criminal court dockets and case files, mayors’ e-mails, property records, voter information, marriage licenses, audits of government agencies, business registrations, articles of incorporation, debts incurred by businesses, bids for government contracts, water quality reports, parking meter revenue, justice court revenue from fines and forfeitures, and an ass-load of other stuff.
63G-2-401: Appeal to head of governmental entity.
63G-2-402: Option for appealing a denial.
63G-2-403: Appeals to the records committee.
The Student Press Law Center offers a handy fill-in-the-blanks GRAMA request letter. Tragically, this tool hasn’t been updated along with Utah law, so where the automatically generated letter reads “Pursuant to … Utah Code Ann. secs. 63-2-101 to 63-2-1001,” you’ll need to cut and paste it into a text editor to revise the code sections to read, “63G-2-101 to 63G-2-1001.” Some government agencies will accept this letter, while others require that you fill out their own “special” request form.
FOIA—Probing the Fed’s Bowels: Retrieving records from the federal government can often seem like a time-intensive exercise in futility. But if you’re patient and clever, you can get results through the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA . Many agency Websites detail what type of information is routinely available without a FOIA, but if it’s not listed, then call your elected officials’ offices in D.C. to get clues as to where you might begin searching. One Website geared toward reporters that provides all the ins and outs of FOIA, including FOIA request letters, is The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Federal Open Government Guide.
City and County Library Systems: Public library systems subscribe to proprietary data sources that most cannot afford. Many are available via remote access from your home computer using your library card number as the login. Others are only available at the library. Check out the Salt Lake City library’s Online Research Center, and Salt Lake County library’s Online Databases, both of which require a library card for full functionality. Perhaps the most valuable resource to this end is the proxy access to the newspaper archive Newsbank that retrieves stories that you might otherwise have to pay for by going directly to the paper’s archives.
Never forget that a politician is also a public servant—which means they serve you. You are the boss. Your tax dollars fund them, and your vote keeps them in office. The least they can do is keep up their books. With the high cost of campaigns, candidates need money, and that means they need donors. Lucky for the muckraker, there’s a record of all this give and take. In addition to donations, don’t forget expenditure reports, where you can see if the candidate is paying his brother for “campaign work.”
Campaign Finance Reports
• Elections.utah.gov: The state’s new database for election financial reports from 2008 and beyond (for older records, click here) allows you to break out campaign donations and expenditures by candidate, corporation, political action committee, political issues committee or by party.
Follow the “advanced search” link onto the “Extract” option. This search allows you to download an excel file on any candidate. Leave the search field blank to download an excel file for all political candidates for that year and all their contributions and contributors. Now you have a master document of where all the money went to in every race in a single year.
FollowTheMoney.org: Another site dedicated to state politics that is helpful for tracking campaign cash. The site takes a more macro look at everything but does have a district finder. Just enter your address and the site provides candidate campaign finance data for almost all your elected officials.
OpenSecrets.org: Similar to follow the money, except this site is dedicated to federal races.
E-mails
As long as any elected official (except state legislators) writes a work or public-policy e-mail, you can GRAMA the hell out it … and learn some pretty interesting things. Why not try to GRAMA private tweets on Twitter while you’re at it? Through his own ineptness, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff recently proved that Twitter is being used for private conversations between public officials.
Delving into the Legislature
The Utah Legislature’s site, while a bit cumbersome, does offer a bounty for the determined muckraker. Legislative voting histories, audio files of debates and committee discussions and much more await.
Floor debates: Listen to audio files of House and Senate floor debates. You can search by the date or by the bill.
Committee discussions: By following the “Committees” link, you can find a list of all legislative committees and access committee documents, minutes and archived audio recording.
Conflict of interest forms: Every legislator is required to document possible conflicts that might dovetail with his or her 9-to-5 and/or family connections. By rolling over the “House” link on the left side of the home page, a menu will lead you to the COI forms. For the senate forms, you have to can find it here
Audits: Follow the “Publications” link to a listing of all legislative audits for a certain year. They usually come with a short summary as well as a link to the full report. Audits generally are like state investigations into whether or not a state program is working. Don’t forget, you can also GRAMA the notes to any audit, and find out what made it into the final report and what did not.
Government Agencies
The onion layers of state bureaucracy are many in Utah—with dozens of agencies from liquor control to real estate. With some guidance, though, navigating these layers of red tape hopefully shouldn’t make you cry.
Utah.gov: Invaluable Web portal to state government, ranked consistently among the best in the nation.
Agency list: The master list for all government agencies in the state. Click on the telephone and e-mail directory for a search option to find the contact info for any state employee.
Transparent.utah.gov: This site purports to list millions of state government expenditures, from giant public works contracts down to the state’s paper-clip vendor. Time will tell if it lives up to the billing.
State Construction Registry: Here you can find a searchable database for Utah construction projects, and who is building them (click on the “Public Search Functionality” link). Details on projects will set you back a $1. Cross-reference the names of those who won the bids on government building projects with those who donate to lawmakers’ campaign coffers.
Public employee salaries: UtahsRight.com is the single most valuable and altruistic contribution by one press outlet in this state to its competition and the public. The Salt Lake Tribune’s admirable effort to capture salary data for every government employee in the state remains a tad slow and clunky, but the data is there in spades. You can search by individual or by departments, schools and universities to see who’s making the most bling.
Risk fund and government employee discipline records: Now that you know how to find the agencies, try shining your GRAMA light on them. Requesting risk fund documents will provide you with record of payments that government agencies made as legal settlements. Basically, risk funds exist to cover expenses for government boo-boos. The other “Aha!” records always worth requesting are disciplinary. Did a cop use a little too much force? Did some employee “mismanage” some state funds, and get reprimanded for it? Request these documents to find out.
State Auditor: The state auditor’s office is a good place to look up state investigations into the behavior of local agencies. If you search for audits from all years, you’ll find more juicy documents than if you search by a specific year.
General Resources
• Reporter’s Desktop: A launching pad for budding journalists; though a bit dated, it combines some basics in one place.
Altweeklies.com: Because CW can’t save the world alone. Also check out Alternet, ProPublica and Voice of San Diego for examples of kick-‘em-in-the-teeth-when-they-deserve-it journalism.
Well, there you have it, folks, some great tools for raking the muck, getting the goods and finding out who’s in bed with whom. Check back for updates and new tips. And send us your tips and resources, too, and we’ll post them here. And maybe even your success stories. Happy hunting.
Shane Johnson is a former City Weekly reporter who has worked as a private investigator for the past two years. Eric S. Peterson is a City Weekly staff writer.
