The good, the bad and the ugly

Thank goodness - time finally ran out on the 81st legislative session. But, it was a long 140-days to the finish line. Reflecting back on the journey there were many successes to brag about, including passage of the Free Flow of Information Act and being able to watch hundreds of potentially bad pieces of legislation that threatened to weaken open government in Texas die, as time ran out. In the beginning more than 400 separate bills were filed related to the Texas Public Information Act and about 100 of those are on the governor’s desk waiting to become law: some good – some bad – and some simply ugly. These are some of the bills the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas worked hard to pass or defeat:

Good Public Policy:

HB 670: A new law for Texas that provides a qualified privilege for reporters who depend on “whistleblowers” or “confidential sources.” No longer can reporters or newsrooms be the first stop for someone wishing to subpoena information that could be obtained from alternative sources, which had a “chilling effect” on the willingness of some sources to come forward and speak out. This bill was unanimously approved in both chambers by lawmakers after failing passage in the last two previous legislative sessions.

SB 375: In its original form, this legislation would have only provided "aggregate and statistical" information, upon request, and shut off access to more than 3 million "accident" records previously available under the Texas Public Information Act. However, a compromise bill worked out between FOIFT, bill sponsor Sen. John Carona's (R-Dallas) staff and TxDOT representatives keeps the bulk of the raw-data available for pubic inspection while keeping an individual's personal information, recorded by the Texas Department of Transportation, private. The amended bill passed both the House and Senate and was sent to Governor Perry on May 28.

SB 1912 / HB 4207 (DIED IN COMMITTEE): This legislation, if approved, would have been a significant loss to taxpayers and could have impacted a legal case that’s pending before the Texas Supreme Court involving the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The DMN had requested the release of government employees "date of birth" information under the Texas Public Information act, four years ago, and they CPA refused claiming it might encourage identity theft. If this legislation had become law, sponsored by Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), it would basically prevent any taxpayer, watchdog group or news media organization from conducting independent database analysis that has previously resulted in discoveries of physical and sexual abuses within the Texas Youth Commission by convicted criminals who were employed, uncovered educators with criminal backgrounds teaching school kids across Texas and revealed that some elected officials fail to follow some of the very laws they approved. The intent might have been "to protect government employees' right to privacy," however, no evidence was ever presented that demonstrated any employee has ever fallen victim to "identity-theft" solely because of the release of their date of birth.

Bad Public Policy:

SB 331: In addition to prohibiting the release of a current or former public employee's home address, home telephone number or Social Security number, this bill would have allowed public employees to prevent the release of their ID pictures, work schedules and location of where they work or park their vehicles. In other words, it would be extremely difficult to verify whether the address elected public officials claim as their homestead is even within their voting district; would prevent oversight of whether employees driving official vehicles home are doing so within the mileage limits of the law; and, would severely restrict the ability to tell if employees are working in areas that should be off-limits due to criminal convictions, etc. By prohibiting parking information and work schedules, etc., there would be no way to determine whether employees are goofing off at work or whether they are even putting in a full work week. Existing law already prohibits the release of Social Security numbers for all employees and personally identifying information, including home addresses for law enforcement officers. Government employees work for taxpayers and taxpayers have a right to know what their money is paying for. Fortunately, only a portion of this bill is expected to become law. Part of the legislation, which prevents release of information pertaining to employees of a hospital district, was added to SB 1182 as an amendment. Originally, SB 331 would have applied to all government employees.

HB 4140 (Died in the House Calendars Committee): This legislation would have increased the cost to taxpayers for receiving public information and potentially prevented them from receiving public information altogether. According to the bill language, it would have increased the cost of bulk record copies, defined to be 100 "pages" or more, from cost-of-reproduction to 20 cents per page. Also, even if you were willing to pay the higher fee, you might have still been unable to receive the information because a provision of the bills stated, ". . . a governmental body is not required to produce information in response to a bulk data request in any medium other than that in which the information is maintained . . ." It was unclear, for example, whether this meant, if the agency kept track of information on a large computer-database they would not have to download requested data to a more user-friendly format such as a CD or DVD.

The Ugly:

HB 4302: This was one of three separate bills that essentially did the same thing – prohibits school districts from confirming or denying that any current or prospective employee has a criminal history. All three bills were defeated during the legislative process but Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) was determined to get the bill passed. Language was added, and later removed at the request of FOI forces, to a substitute DPS Sunset bill approved by the Senate Government Organization Committee – only to have Sen. West successfully get it inserted back into the bill, as a floor amendment. Pleas by FOI forces to have the conference committee strip the language in the session’s final hours went unanswered.