Salt Lake County will consider an ordinance this week allowing its directors to tell you when someone requests a record that concerns you.
The law worries leaders of the Society of Professional Journalists, who say investigative reporters may be hampered in their probes of elected officials and others if county bureaucrats notify those people that records are being searched. The proposed ordinance concerns only records considered public and open to scrutiny.The law also worries others who say people may be less inclined to report health or safety problems regarding neighbors because of fears those neighbors will learn who made the complaint.
County officials and an attorney representing journalists had worked out a compromise that merely would have made such requests public. People who are the subject of those records could learn who had requested them, but the county would have no obligation to contact those people.
But members of the county's Executive Council rejected that request Monday, partly because county attorneys argued journalists were divided as to the importance of the ordinance.
Alan Moll, deputy county attorney, referred to reports that the Salt Lake Tribune and the Associated Press dropped out of a journalists' legal consortium last week. The Tribune accused the consortium of being "knee-jerk" in its pursuit of legal matters.
Moll said the comment may have referred to the ordinance, since the Society of Professional Journalists was paying for its legal counsel through the consortium. "I question whether you come with a common approach," he told Jeff Hunt, attorney for the journalists.
Members of the Executive Council then voted to reject the compromise and to send the ordinance to the County Commission, which will consider it Wednesday.
The proposed ordinance comes after a lengthy debate over how to apply a new state law concerning government records. County attorneys originally wanted to restrict public access to any record that would embarrass or humiliate the subject.
County officials rejected that proposal.