Déjà vu: State committee orders Utah AG to release his calendar again

SALT LAKE CITY – A state panel has decided again that Attorney General Sean Reyes’s calendar is part of the public record and ordered Reyes’ office to turn it over to the KSL Investigators.

The State Records Committee voted 5-1 in KSL TV’s favor Wednesday, finding a new state law shielding government officials’ calendars from public view doesn’t apply to a KSL record request submitted shortly before the law took effect.

“Our lawmakers made a choice not to apply the new law to pending open records requests,” Tammy Frisby, an attorney representing KSL in the records case, said after the hearing. “Rather than respecting that choice, Attorney General Reyes continues to spend public resources to try to conceal information about how he spends his time.”

The decision fits in line with the committee’s prior two orders on Reyes’ calendar: the first in favor of the television station and a later order siding with the Salt Lake Tribune. Reyes’ office has sued both news organizations to appeal the committee’s decisions.

An attorney general’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reyes came under scrutiny in recent years for his time away from the office, including travel overseas with the embattled nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a World Cup junket, and a visit to Nevada following the 2020 election.

The attorney general has said he took those trips on his own time, without using taxpayer money. Hoping to learn more about how Reyes spends his hours on the clock, KSL filed a public records request in 2022.

The State Records Committee first sided with KSL in the calendar battle the following year. Reyes sued KSL and the records committee to appeal, but a judge ruled the public and press get to see the record. Reyes’ office is now appealing that court ruling.

The public records showdown also spilled over to the state Capitol in February. Hours after the judge ruled in favor of KSL, lawmakers approved a proposal concealing calendars. The governor signed it into law the next day.

Just after the February court ruling in KSL’s favor but before the new law passed, the news organization filed a new request for Reyes’ calendar over a longer period of time – about four years – dating back to January 2020. Previously, KSL had asked to see two and a half months’ worth of the schedule, from August to mid-November of 2022.

The records committee considered the newer, bigger request Wednesday. Committee members decided the new law does not apply retroactively, saying the new law made a substantive change, rather than a procedural one.

The panel voted in a meeting videoconference after deliberating in a closed session Wednesday. It heard arguments in the case on Sept. 19.

Attorneys for KSL argued the public has a right to see officials’ calendars in order to figure out how they’re spending their time and how they’re doing their jobs. The news organization agreed to redactions for Reyes’ personal appointments and for locations of his work meetings.

The attorney general’s office argued lawmakers made clear in passing the measure that they believed calendars had always been intended stay under wraps.

Records committee member Ed Biehler, who cast the only no vote Wednesday, noted the lawmaker behind the move described it to colleagues at the Legislature as a clarification, rather than a true change.

With those comments in mind, Biehler said, “I believe that it is procedural, and not substantive.”

In December, as public scrutiny of his ties to OUR mounted, Reyes announced he would not seek reelection. His term ends in January.

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