By Robert Gehrke | The Salt Lake Tribune

The Utah Legislature became the first two-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ national Black Hole Award, awarded annually to the government entity that gulps up sunshine and blots out transparency.

Utah locked up the “dishonor,” according to SPJ, for bills that dismantle the state’s records committee, make it virtually impossible for the public to recoup legal fees when records are improperly withheld, obscure college president searches and axe language recognizing the public’s constitutional right to access information about how their government operates.

“I think it’s best for the state. I think it’s best for state government. I think it’s best for the people,” Gov. Spencer Cox said during his monthly news conference earlier this month. He later signed each of the bills into law.

The Legislature was given the dubious distinction in 2011, the first year the award was handed out, for dismantling much of the state’s open records law in the last days of that year’s legislative session.

Amid massive public outcry, then-Gov. Gary Herbert called the Legislature into special session to repeal the law, and a working group of various stakeholders was set up to discuss reforms to the law, most of which were left intact.

Jeff Hunt, an attorney who helped craft Utah’s open records law — the Government Records Access and Management Act, or GRAMA — in 1991, said the Legislature continued to erode government transparency and the public’s access to information this year.

Read more at sltrib.com

This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.