This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

What is it going to take for the Utah Transit Authority to realize the benefits of doing the public's work in public?

In early May, UTA's board elected to close its committee meetings, which had been open for years, on the apparent argument that The Tribune was attending these meetings and informing the public before UTA was ready to inform the public. Two weeks later, after predictable uproar, the board voted to re-open the meetings.

Then, sometime between May and Monday, UTA either disbanded the committees, as one board member said, or put them "in abeyance," as UTA's board chairman characterized it. And the only reason that is known to the public is because the board member let slip in Monday's meeting that members of his committee had held a conference call.

That puts UTA in a tough spot. If the decision was made to disband the committees, that apparently happened in secret, which is itself a likely violation of Utah's open meetings law. If the committees were put "in abeyance," but at least one of them continued to meet, that also would be a violation of open meetings law.

So which is it, UTA?

Not that it really matters. Either way, the intent was to keep the public's work out of public view. That UTA is still trying this stuff is beyond ridiculous.

Everybody — everybody — knows that UTA has lost the public's trust. How bad is it? Last year the Legislature tried to help UTA increase its funding by allowing for a ballot initiative to raise its sales-tax levy. But legislators knew voters wouldn't give money to UTA by itself, so they tried to bundle the tax increase with a requirement that most of the money go to fix roads. It still failed in the two biggest counties UTA operates (Salt Lake and Utah), and a lack of faith in UTA was universally seen as the reason.

When the board reversed its decision and re-opened the committee meetings in May, it was after Gov. Gary Herbert and State Auditor John Dougall publicly questioned the closings and Salt Lake County Council members threatened to withhold UTA funding. But now it appears UTA's board didn't really do what Herbert, Dougall and the County Council wanted and instead came up with a legally questionable workaround.

And the UTA board chairman, David Burton, the former presiding bishop of the LDS Church who many counted on to rebuild public trust, is giving up the chairman's post, but not before working to install a 32-year UTA insider as the supposed agent of change who will restore credibility.

Somehow UTA's leadership has convinced itself that secrecy, and all the fallout that comes with it, is still the best way. Next time legislators want to help UTA, they should arrive with a bulldozer. The governing structure needs a complete rebuild.