Legislature pushing to curtail open records

by Mike Orren

AUSTIN — The DMN's Christy Hoppe has a deep report on more than a dozen bills that are in spitting distance of passage that could severely curtail open records access in Texas. (This is a great example of analysis mixed with reporting and a nice, informative sidebar. Why it wasn't page one is beyond me.)

Among the effects of these bills:

• Sealing judge's addresses from public documents
• Sealing identity of concealed handgun license holders
• Give lawyers the ability to conceal personal information available through the state bar
• Seal the names of victims compensated by the Attorney General's office
• Allow governmental bodies to charge for the time of salaried employees who pull up open records requests for anyone requesting more than 100 pages in a month
• Remove property owners' names from Central Appraisal District sites like DCAD.

The central issue of conflict is the public's right to know important information versus the downside for basic privacy due to easy accessibility in the internet age.

This is something we ran up against in creating our political database including campaign contributors. Some municipalities fought to redact information from some of our requests because they have a policy against releasing addresses of city officials. However, when those addresses come not from their role as city official, but from their role as a donor to someone else's campaign, we thought they were public information. The Attorney General agreed with us.

When I think about charging fees for labor to fulfill records requests, I'm of two minds: On the one hand, someone needs to pay for that time, and if someone is making excessive requests, that burden should not fall equally on all taxpayers. On the flip side, most government bodies don't make that information easily accessible online, and a project such as the one we undertook makes that information readily available to all and should, over time, reduce requests. That said, given our position as a small startup, we could not have afforded to pay for the time of the employees who provided the information -- Heck, even the photocopy bill for the larger ISDs nearly killed us.

Hopefully, our pal Scott Henson from Grits For Breakfast will have more on this.