Salt Lake officials, Mormon church refuse to release data on sale of city block

The Associated Press

05.20.99

Printer-friendly page

SALT LAKE CITY — City and Mormon church attorneys have refused to release certain papers regarding the church's purchase of one block of Main Street.

Citing Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act or GRAMA, The Salt Lake Tribune asked city attorneys to release all documents, including drafts, relating to easement restrictions on the planned plaza.

The request covered all correspondence — memos, letters, faxes and e-mails — between city and church representatives.

City attorneys produced nearly a ream of paper and 13 cassette recordings of planning commission and City Council hearings on the matter, but none of it disclosed how city officials worked with church attorneys to limit public access and free speech on the plaza, the newspaper said.

Church attorney Marc Mascaro acknowledged that his firm, Kirton and McConkie, "initiated the drafts of the agreements.

"But I'm not going to give them to you," Mascaro told the newspaper on May 18. "My work product's my work product, not yours."

On April 13, City Council members voted to close the street and sell it to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for $8.1 million.

Planning commission and City Council members urged city and church attorneys to keep the pedestrian plaza open with a 24-hour public easement.

Instead, the attorneys apparently drafted easement restrictions that reduce the block to a church park, similar to Temple Square.

At that April 13 meeting, council members saw for the first time a draft of easement restrictions that would allow church security guards to evict pedestrians who assemble, picket, distribute literature, sunbathe, smoke, carry guns, play music, make speeches or engage "in illegal, offensive, indecent, obscene, vulgar, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct." Council members let those pass.

The easements were changed later to specify that church actions allowed included "without limitation, the distribution of literature, the erection of signs and displays by (the church), and the projection of music and spoken messages."

City and church attorneys refuse to release the documents they traded back and forth in the weeks after the council vote.

Council members never signed off on this part of the easement, the newspaper said, but it was recorded as part of the deed April 27, when the city transferred the property title to the church.

Deputy City Attorney Lynn Pace refused to turn over to the newspaper the notes city attorneys made on Mascaro's drafts, saying those documents are exempt under three provisions of GRAMA: Because they are the attorneys' "work product," are protected by attorney-client privilege or are drafts.

"The issue here really is the ability for parties to negotiate a transaction without the risk of every term of that negotiation process later becoming public," Pace said. "We think that's why GRAMA exempts drafts."