The board of the new Utah Inland Port Authority has decided to close its meetings to the public, which is a decision that does not sit well with the United Utah Party. 

“This board has faced controversy since its inception,” said Richard Davis, the UUP Party Chair. “Closed meetings will only add to the problem. The simplest and surest way to restore public confidence in the Inland Port Authority is to open all meetings to the public.”

Derek Miller, the chairman of the port authority board, has stated that while he “can understand the logic” behind calls for open meetings, but since the law does not require them, he doesn’t want to “enter the realm of it being arbitrary.” 

“That’s inconsistent,” Davis said. “The state legislature opens its committee meetings, so why shouldn’t this board? After all, this is a publicly funded entity using public tax dollars to do the public's business, yet it’s excluding the public from its deliberations.”

Davis also took issue with Miller’s concerns about open meetings being “arbitrary.”

“The board wouldn’t waste any time on this if they were to simply make openness the default position when it comes to meetings,” Davis said. “Anything less than that is not acceptable.”