It was dismaying to see Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City’s mayor, heed the advice of his police chief (Chris Burbank) on supporting a state senate bill, authored by Chris Buttars (whose racist rhetoric and homophobic bigotry with regard to other legislation should suggest the soundness of this piece of legislation), that would restrict the public’s access to information and records with regard to disciplinary charges brought against police officers and other public employees. In fact, the Utah House is considering two bills (dealing with different matters) that also would limit public access to information that has normally been classified as legitimate under open records statutes.

Certainly, the editor of The Selective Echo joins his former colleagues in the department of journalism and communication at Utah State University on the following as outlined by Ted Pease, professor of journalism, and echoed by Michael Sweeney, professor and head of the department.

I reproduce this in full as an open communication to members of the state senate commitee holding hearings on this legislation.

Dear Sens. Knudson (chair), Buttars, Hickman, Jenkins, McCoy and Romero:

My name is Edward C. Pease, a journalism professor at Utah State University and a Utah resident and voter since 1994.

I would like to add my name to those who have contacted you in opposition to Senate Bill 260, which is before your committee and which would reduce the free flow of information in Utah.

On behalf of my students, colleagues and neighbors here in Cache Valley I urge you and your fellow lawmakers in the Utah Legislature to resist all efforts to limit public access to information. As the Utah Media Coalition correctly states (below), limiting public access to information, especially regarding Utah peace officers, runs counter both to the best interests of the people of Utah and to constitutional principles that are essential to an informed and free citizenry.

As for the headline quote, Professor Sweeney added: “Let me merely add my concern about keeping these records open by quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: ‘Sunshine is the best disinfectant.’”

And for the statement by the Utah Media Coalition:

THE UTAH MEDIA COALITION OPPOSES S.B. 260

The Utah Media Coalition is a coalition of the Utah news media, including Utah radio and TV broadcasters, daily newspapers and local weekly newspapers. The Media Coalition opposes S.B. 260 for six main reasons, summarized below.

By and large, Utah’s peace officers comply with the law and do their jobs with distinction and honor. Thus, GRAMA’s existing provisions allowing public access to public employee disciplinary records should not worry these many men and women. However, as is true with any profession, some peace officers engage in misconduct that must be addressed by their employers. There have been several reported cases of such misconduct in Utah during the past few years. Such misbehavior should not be kept secret nor should access to information about it be dependent on the consent of those who have misbehaved.

Perhaps more so than virtually any other kind of public servants, police officers hold the public trust and derive their vast powers from it. We pay their salaries. We give them great authority. We trust them to protect us. We also trust them to do so with good judgment and restraint and within the bounds of the law.

When peace officers as public servants violate that trust with their own misconduct, the public has a right to know about it. This knowledge allows us to verify that our public institutions, such as police departments, have corrected the problem. This is called accountability.

Openness in government and accountability are what ensure the continued public trust in police officers even when police departments have had to deal with a few bad apple employees.

S.B. 260 will begin to erode that public trust in police officers by replacing openness with secrecy and suspicion. Secrecy leads to less accountability and means less trust in public institutions. Indeed, we fight wars in faraway places like Iraq based partly on our concerns that secret police are bad for society.

There are better, less drastic ways to resolve the concerns that seems to have prompted the introduction of S.B. 260. The courts are governed by strict rules of evidence that will not allow testifying to be police officers be subjected to unfair scrutiny. If these rules need to be strengthened, let’s have that discussion. This will allow us to address the perceived problem with a scalpel, rather than cut apart government openness/accountability with a blunt axe such as S.B. 260.