Counties hide emergency plans
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Loretta Park
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
lpark@standard.net
L
AYTON -- The Morgan County emergency management director's stance is firm: He was within the law when he refused to let a woman see the county's Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan.
In Davis County, Clerk/Auditor Steve Rawlings said the plan is protected under Utah law. He said that is why even though a man submitted a Government Records Access Management Act request for the plan, it was denied.
The individuals who requested the county plans were among 20 Brigham Young University students who participated in a nationwide audit conducted in January. The American Society of Newspaper Editors-Sunshine Week, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Society of Environmental Journalists sponsored the audit.
The students visited 22 of the state's 29 counties, requesting to see the emergency plan.
If an official denied access to the document, the student was to leave a formal, written GRAMA request.
Davis and Morgan counties were not alone in their denials.
Weber County Sheriff Brad Slater agreed that the plan is protected under Utah law. He said it deals with safety and security procedures, not only for a hazardous waste emergency and an earthquake, but also for a terrorist act.
In Box Elder, Sheriff Lynn Yeates said after a young woman submitted a GRAMA request for his county's plan, he gave her a bullet description of the emergency functions in the county, but not the entire plan due to security reasons.
Yeates said because she traveled from Provo, "I assumed it was either a media or college-related exercise."
Yeates also sent out a group e-mail to other county emergency directors telling them about the request. Responses indicated others had been approached for the same plan.
Davis and Emery counties were the only ones to send letters to the students denying their GRAMA requests. Morgan County officials said they did not get a formal GRAMA request.
"The woman made a phone call and didn't identify herself," said Terry Turner, Morgan's emergency management director, about the student who contacted him.
Turner said the woman then came to his office and again said she wanted to see the county's operations' plan. Turner asked her why she wanted to see it. She responded she just wanted to look at it.
Turner said his concern was there is "some public-safety sensitive stuff in it," and he didn't understand why a woman from Provo would want to review documents about his county. He told her to file an official GRAMA request.
"She didn't make the official GRAMA request," Turner said.
The woman was Sheila Sarmiento, a BYU senior. She said she didn't leave the formal written request because Turner said she would not see the document anyway.
Turner said if she had left one, there was a chance she could have seen part of the document.
Sarmiento, said she followed the instructions she received from her instructor. She identified herself as a citizen, gave her address, and said she just wanted to see the document.
"Maybe if we identified ourselves better, giving a more valid reason why we wanted to see the document, our chances would have been better," Sarmiento said.
But that would have defeated the purpose of the audit, which was to see if the general public could gain access to the document, she said.
Joel Campbell, an assistant professor at BYU's Department of Communications, concedes that because federal and state laws are in conflict, there is some confusion on what can be released.
In 1986 Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which not only allows any member of the public to see the federal document, but directs each planning committee to annually notify the public by placing a newspaper ad when the plan is updated and is available, Campbell said.
"My assumption was those agencies across the Wasatch Front would have their act together and know the law," Campbell said. "But those were some of the counties -- Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber -- that gave students the run-around, denied access even when they submitted or tried to submit a GRAMA request."
The counties of Millard, Garfield, Tooele and Sevier provided students the requested document and did not require a GRAMA request.
Due to the number of requests for the document, Assistant Attorney General Mark Burns did a GRAMA training seminar for county officials.
"There has been some misunderstanding on what they can and cannot release," Burns said.
Counties that denied access to the document were within their rights under a Utah law that was passed just before the 2002 Winter Olympics, Burns said. Local government officials do not have to make public any document that has to do with security.
Also, Burns cited from the federal code that nothing in the section students were instructed to refer to preempts any state law protecting the document.
Burns said he is concerned about how the requests for the documents and the denial will be perceived by the general public. There could be sections of the emergency plan that could be disclosed, but there are also sections, which may have phone numbers, chain of command and infrastructure information that could prove harmful if placed in the wrong hands.
Concerning how local government agencies handled it, he said, "We got it exactly right."
Campbell disagrees. He said he still believes the local agencies should have given the students the document under the federal law.
"This is basically where we would take it to a court to decide," Campbell said. "We agree to disagree."
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