The state Records Committee this week upheld, in a split 4-3 vote, one of the stupidest decisions ever made by the four-member Utah State Tax Commission.

If citizens ever need to wonder how government can be so convoluted, inept and cowardly, look no further.

But before I get into that, a little history.

The Tax Commission is made up of four people appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. Commissioners serve four-year terms. There can only be two members of any one political party, currently two Democrats and two Republicans.

The idea behind the commission is a good one: balance out political appointees and try to keep politics out of the administration of our tax code and collection of the taxes that run state government.

I've watched and reported on the commission for 20 years, longer than any of the current commissioners' service. I've seen it operate under three governors, reported on its restructuring under the late Gov. Scott M. Matheson from a part-time body to full-time members.

And I've seen internal and external politics imposed on its mission and duties.

While those involved may today deny it, I know that in the 1980s the format of an important public Tax Commission report was changed to make it more difficult to figure out state revenue surpluses after a former governor became angry that the commission kept showing growing revenue surpluses. It was political trouble for him to be so embarrassed by news stories about the surpluses.

Now, he may not have ordered the report changed. But he wasn't complaining about the result, either.

The commission's latest political decision — and that is exactly what it is — makes me smile. For in it you see a public agency, run by people who profess they don't make political decisions, refusing to make public documents that they themselves have filed in public court.

Boiled down, it is this: Tax commissioners don't want to take the political heat from legislators, the governor and their powerful constituents for releasing to the media (and the public in general) tax liens placed on those politicians/constituents in court.

It is very important to understand this point. These are public court filings. But the commission doesn't want to give them out. They want the media and public to search all the courts in the state to find the liens themselves — through eight district courts and tens of thousands of filings yearly.

Tax Commission PR people used to provide that information if you called up and asked for it. Sometimes they didn't like doing that. Sometimes maybe they dragged their feet a little and suggested that you go to all the courts in the state, maybe even hinted at which courts to look at. But in years past they did provide it.

For the record, Tax Commission attorneys say state law prohibits such disclosures; that commissioners are just upholding the law. But they were making such disclosures for years. And what sense does it make to have a law saying you can't talk about court liens that you've already filed in public court?

It makes no sense, of course.

But when tax commissioners are trying to placate powerful lawmakers and friends of lawmakers and the governor, sense doesn't have to be made. Remember, the governor appoints these commissioners, and the Senate confirms them.

Now, the Deseret News, at my request, took on the matter of the Tax Commission's political decision, appealed it to the commission, which refused to change its policy, and then to the state Records Committee, which this week upheld the decision in a 4-3 vote.

The next step would be to go to court or to the Legislature, asking, in essence, to have lawmakers pass a law saying the commission must give the media tax liens about themselves and their constituents. I won't be holding my breath on that one.

I'm not naive. I understand the sensibility. Every time I would call up and check on which powerful politicians may not have been paying their taxes on time and had property liened on overdue taxes, I could hear the pain and suffering that was going on at the end of the line. Commissioners certainly don't want to be blamed for making public information that could harm the re-election of a powerful legislator.

But just because they have soft backbones doesn't mean they deny information to the public that is already in the public domain.

Now, commissioners will quickly say "just go find the information in the courts." And that can be done. But it takes time and manpower. And the chances are that many media outlets, pressed for deadlines, stretched thin covering city councils, the Olympics, school boards and so on will put their resources in other areas.

And what about the regular citizen who doesn't want to travel across the state to look up records by hand, or can't figure out the Byzantine Internet search engines of the state court system?

So the southern Utah city councilman who doesn't pay his income taxes or maybe the 2nd Congressional District candidate whose business didn't pay its employee withholding taxes could enter office without the public ever knowing about his tax lapses.

Does that matter? Yes.

Several years ago the Deseret News searched court records for hundreds of candidates. And in Davis County we found a candidate for the school board who had not paid his property taxes (which are not handled by the Tax Commission) in years. The public schools, of course, are funded by property taxes. And so it is important for voters to know that a man who wanted to oversee the schools had been refusing to financially support them.

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The candidate, asked by a reporter about his tax problems, withdrew from the race.

Now the watchdog role of the press, or of the candidates' opponents, or of regular citizens, will be more difficult because the tax commissioners don't want to be criticized, or quoted in the press, as the source for giving out public tax liens against powerful politicians.

It is a stupid decision. And while tax commissioners may believe it keeps them free of political pressure, it just shows how they bend to it.


Deseret News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com

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