This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

New Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes has added a communications director to his staff. The post has been filled by veteran newspaper reporter and editor Chuck Gates.

I predict Gates will earn his salary. I also expect a handful of high-maintenance House members to take up 90 percent of Gates' time dealing with the news media.

One of those is Rep. Brian Greene. After barely two years in the Legislature, Greene already has attracted more than the usual scrutiny, thanks to his legislative and political activities and his public comments.

Now, poor Gates has been thrust into the middle of a spat between the Pleasant Grove Republican and yours truly.

I wrote a column recently about Greene's HB96, which in its original form would have eliminated most of the disclosure requirements for brokers peddling investment instruments called "tenants in common."

TICs allow investors to buy an ownership interest in developments. Greene, whose House conflict-of-interest form describes his occupation as "real estate investment services," wanted to remove disclosure requirements such as credit reports, information about bankruptcies or civil judgments and potential environmental liabilities affecting the property.

State regulators balked at the bill, arguing that such disclosures protect investors. My column was mostly about legislation passed 10 years ago that moved the regulatory authority over TICs from the Utah Commerce Department's Securities Division to the Real Estate Division, whose oversight is not as stringent. Back then, some regulators feared the change would make it easier for investors to be scammed.

Greene met with the regulators and agreed to substitute his measure to reinstate most of the disclosure requirements. His new bill instead would merely shift the burden of disclosure from the real estate agent to the property seller.

That satisfied regulators. His bill sailed through committee.

Then, on the House floor, Greene amended the measure to qualify the disclosure requirements, adding that they should apply to information "that is reasonably available to the person selling or offering" the investment.

That change did not have the backing of regulators, who worried it would open too wide of a door for nondisclosure.

Here's where Greene is upset with me and dragged Gates into the middle.

I wrote that Greene, when making that amendment on the floor, said he ran the change past industry and regulatory officials and they all agreed to it. Greene, through Gates, said that is "patently false" and demanded a retraction.

Alas, he won't get one.

This is what Greene said while making the amendment 27 minutes into the House floor session Feb. 12: "In working with the Division of Real Estate, Division of Securities, and the industry, we took some of the more basic disclosures out of the rule, incorporated them into this new bill and then also have left a general rule-making authority … a delegation of that authority to the division and the commission to determine what other items of disclosure would be appropriate and necessary. And that is the language that we just dealt with in the amendment that we adopted."

I've been down the parsing path with this politician before. When Greene first ran in 2012, I wrote that he technically broke election law by raising money before completing the requirements to set up a campaign finance committee with the lieutenant governor's office. He demanded a correction, insisting what he did was not a violation and that the lieutenant governor's office supported his position.

That was strange because before I wrote the column, the lieutenant governor's office told me it was a violation.

To clear up the misunderstanding, Greene called state Elections Director Mark Thomas for a three-way conversation. Thomas backed me, saying it was a violation and that is what he told Greene earlier. Greene then went apoplectic on Thomas, as though it was all his fault.

Gates has offered to try to get Greene and me together to talk about the TIC issue. But I'm still waiting for Greene to return my call from April to explain what he knew about a fake letter, purportedly sent by the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, that went to delegates just before the Utah County Republican Convention and praised Greene while criticizing his two convention rivals.