Shakespeare’s Hamlet:  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Apparently a City Council woman is very unhappy about the fact that Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government (CHCRG) would make a new request the City to provide Public Records for free.  We’re told that she has typed many words and accusations about the matter at www.aboutcedarhills.org

Last year, CHCRG made a GRAMA request asking for an electronic copy of ALL emails between Mayor, City Council members and the City Manager – from whatever email account City or Personal.

Ooops! City Officials weren’t doing all their City business on their City email accounts.  Some subjects were dealt with on their personal accounts.   Now, this isn’t against the law, — but only IF they provide copies back to the City Record as part of the Public Record.  They did not – and it took an ORDER by the Utah State Records Committee to get them to do it.

Apparently, the Mayor, Council and City Manager thought no one would ever see these emails. Unfortunately for them, the City Manager himself made a silly mistake.  He wrote an email complaining one of our CHCRG member’s GRAMA request for records about his princely pay, and generous personal perks which totaled over $155,000 /year.  His mistake was that he sent the email to the Mayor and Council’s personal email addresses, and in an apparent effort to ridicule and intimidate her – “CC-ed” it to her.  That was a big mistake.  That’s when we wondered, well, if there was one “off record” email exchange using their personal email accounts, could there be more?

Oh, there was more alright!. A lot more!  Thousands of pages more.

The City likes to attempt to intimidate and ridicule CHCRG by trumpeting that our GRAMA request cost taxpayers “$30,000”.  We don’t believe it.  We think they spent a whole lot more.   (Possibly as much as the $120,000 in attorneys fees over 18 months.  We don’t know the exact amounts because the City wouldn’t provide the details.)  The City claims that the reason they fought to make sure we paid $766 in GRAMA request compilation fees was because they considered the request for my – Ken Cromar – personal benefit rather than for the benefit of the public.

The law in Utah State Code 63G-2-203, states that…

(4) A governmental entity may fulfill a record request without charge and is encouraged to do so when it determines that:
(a) releasing the record primarily benefits the public rather than a person;

So, here’s the obvious question that should be asked:  “What intelligent, frugal, true guardian of taxpayer dollars thinks it wise to spend $30,000 (or more) to collect $766?”

In the end, the City Officials lost.  The Utah Records Committee ORDERED the City to collect the email records, – and to provide them to CHCRG.  (State Law required the City to keep City business emails sent on personal email accounts with the City Recorder, but they chose not to until they were ORDERED to do so.)

So, now that we have made a second request for similar email records and texts now, the appointed-Mayor and Council are acting surprised and upset, and trying to propagandize the issue into making us look bad for asking for the public record.

Doesn’t this remind you of Washington DC funding shut-down of the WW2 Memorial so 90-year old veterans in wheelchairs can’t see their own memorial, — but then hypocritically spending much more money to fence it off, and put guards around it to stop folks from getting in?

We, at Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government, have a few questions for the Council and City Staff:

1.  What are the appointed Mayor & Council trying to hide this time?

2.  Did the Council not learn anything from the last GRAMA request for public records?

3.  Did they not anticipate that there might be future request to similarly see the Public Record – and hence pre-sort their emails as they go?

4.  Did any of them read the 6,000+ pages of email records that Utah State Records Committee ORDERED the Council to provide to us at CHCRG?

5.  Does the current Council support the things that were written in those emails and think it appropriate that City official were trying to illegally withhold or hide public record in this literal/actual proven conspiracy?

6.  Do they not realize that we at CHCRG are trying to help them be “open, honest and transparent”, whether they want to be or not – for the sake of protecting CH taxpayers dollars?

7.  Do they not think that there will be additional future GRAMA requests to obtain the Public Record?

The appointed-Mayor and Council, and their handsomely paid attorney, made another miscalculation.  Despite their charging us $766 for our copy of the records we obtained via our GRAMA request, you can your own copy, FREE of charge, for the asking via email request to…  Info@CedarHillsCitizens.org

Yes, it appears, “The lady [and Council] doth protest too much…!”