Utah AG's office explains who can get public records and when requests are limited

Richard Pyatt opened the Utah Attorney General's "Legally Speaking" program and interviewed Lonnie Pearson, the office's GRAMA coordinator, about public access to records under the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA).

Pearson said GRAMA starts with a presumption of openness: "GRAMA has a fundamental presumption that all records are public," and then creates specific exceptions. He described three primary nonpublic classifications used by the office: private records accessible only to the record subject, controlled records where release to the subject could cause harm, and protected records where release could undermine other public interests. "Currently there are about 88 categories of protected records under our GRAMA statute," Pearson said, and cited common examples such as records related to ongoing enforcement or…