A reflection on our past Open Records Seminar

Last week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Bannon & Associated sponsored a Public Information Act seminar at the Airport Hilton in Austin. We have been presenting these seminar in the spring and fall for several years. The next one is in October, the week of the 17th; contact Bannon & Associates for details. We had a great turn out with a whole lot of new faces. There were many great questions and good discussions. It is always a lot of fun to interact with people who are new to the law. I never cease to be surprised about the misunderstandings that some folks have about the PIA.

It is also interesting to see how people react when they learn that the ability to decide what can be released from their files has been turned over to the Attorney General. I think that a lot of people view that as a sort of an insult. Unfortunately, we are all bound by the law.

Two 2 major changes we discussed were the Texas Supreme Court case that made State employee dates confidential and a relatively new ORD on the release of vehicle information by city and county agencies. Of course, we had a great morning-long discussion of Section 552.108, the law enforcement exception.

Since it is the year for the Legislative Session, we discussed pending bills. There is not really a mammoth change in the works, except the regular attempt to dilute the protection for law enforcement files, which seems to be going nowhere, but before all is said and done there will be a number of bills passed that will change the way that the exceptions under the Act are applied. We will talk about all of them at the Seminar in October. Hope to see you there!

Check out our Winter 2011 Newsletter

Check out our Winter 2011 Newsletter for all the latest on the 82nd Legislative Session.

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Happy Holidays from Texas Civil Service and More

Important New Rule

On Friday, December 3, 2010, the Texas Supreme Court held that the birth dates of state employees is confidential. The Court found that the employees' privacy interest was significant enough to outweigh the negligible public interest in disclosure,

The Court said:

"Consistent with the federal courts and those in other states, we conclude that disclosing employee birth dates constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, making them exempt from disclosure under Section 552.102." Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts v. Attorney General of Texas, No. 08-0172. Tx. Sup. Ct., 12/03/2010

The effect of this opinion is that in all future Public Information requests, the birth date of employees can be redacted and a request for an opinion on that matter made to the AG. For information releases that are not the result of a Public Information request, the birth date can be
redacted before release.

While this case is directed at State employees, the reasoning and rationale for its result is applicable to other governmental employees at the county, city or district level.

It is difficult to predict what the Legislature's response will be to this case, but until that occurs, this case is controlling and it makes employee birth dates confidential.

There will be more on this development to come, please watch for developments.

Happy Thanksgiving

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