Tea party activists in Utah are outraged over a new state law to restrict access to government records, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Friday.
The recently enacted law has angered many across the political spectrum, including tea party organizer David Kirkham and former
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a liberal. The two were among the leaders of a rally to begin the process of gathering the needed signatures to repeal the law.
“[This law] diminishes our liberty,” Kirkham said. “We the people have a right to know what our government is doing. We the people have a right to see it in the sunshine and see it in the daylight.”
The unlikely pair said that the lawmakers who passed the legislation are the ones who should be held accountable.
“These people will pay the ultimate political price in our democracy,”
Anderson said. “We need to defeat them the next time around and elect people who will not betray the public.”
The law was made public and passed in three day. It exempts lawmakers’ text messages, instant messages and video chats from open records laws. In addition, it requires the requester to pay attorney fees, and negates the presumption that government records should be public.
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