In today’s Salt Lake Tribune Paul Rolly claims Utah Democrats are “barking up the wrong tree” when it comes to trying to determine whether or not House Speaker Greg Curtis paid back the money he owed taxpayers for filing mileage reimbursement requests in 2004 with both Salt Lake County and the State of Utah while driving a county car.

While we appreciate Paul Rolly’s attempt to save us the embarrassment of going public with the wrong information, we weren’t planning to go public with anything until we were reasonably sure we had all the facts. Thus the GRAMA (Utah’s Freedom of Information Act) requests submitted to the House Speaker’s office. Had the House Speaker just come forward and told us that in addition to submitting two mileage reimbursement requests to two different government agencies for the same county vehicle two years ago, he ultimately paid back the wrong government agency once he finally got around to making things right, we probably would have simply left it at that. Instead, we are still waiting for a response to our second GRAMA to the House Clerk’s office, which is apparently more willing to share information with Paul Rolly than with us.

Be that as it may, when it comes to holding Utah Republicans accountable we intend to keep barking up trees, as we should in a two party system.