A school board member-turned-legislator has dramatically rewritten legislation about data requests to school districts that had worried open government advocates.
Rep. Julie Greene, DFL-Edina, first presented HF 1999 before a committee in the Minnesota House of Representatives on March 18.
Greene, who won a state House seat last year after serving one term as a member of the Edina School Board, told her legislative colleagues that school districts have received a measurable increase of data requests from the public in recent years. Greene said those data requests, and the time spent on them, are “putting a strain on school resources.”
As such, the first-term legislator drafted HF 1999 to address what she calls “non-serious requests.” Describing these requests, Greene told two stories about school districts that received anonymous data requests, and spent thousands of dollars in school resources preparing the requests, only to have no one show up and inspect the data.
“So non-serious requests waste taxpayer dollars and resources, and they really also frustrate legitimate requests — hindering districts’ ability to fulfill timely requests for media and others that are more serious,” said Greene.
Originally, Greene’s bill would have prevented the public from requesting public data from a school district anonymously, a practice that is currently allowed in state law. However, the DFL lawmaker amended her bill, striking that provision, at the beginning of a committee discussion about HF 1999.
The amended legislation would have forced requesters to pay the costs associated with gathering data if they fail to show up and inspect the data. After the bill was amended, open government advocates stressed the importance of anonymous data requests.
“Anonymous request are one of the things that levels the playing field between the government and citizens because citizens are sometimes reluctant to make identifiable requests because frankly they fear retaliation,” Don Gemberling told a House committee discussing the bill.
A longtime spokesperson for the watchdog group Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MCOGI), Gemberling is an expert on data access in Minnesota and is well known in the halls of the legislature.
Another well-known government transparency advocate at the legislature, Rich Neumeister, still opposed the bill despite the amendment. In written testimony, Neumeister said, “Life is unpredictable, work emergencies, childcare issues, or miscommunication can prevent attendance. Charging for no shows assumes intent to waste district resources, unfairly penalizing people for circumstances beyond their control.”
During a later committee hearing in March, Greene acknowledged the importance of individuals being able to make anonymous data requests and noted that she believes there are situations where families, employees, and parents need that protection.
“Originally, when we first started talking, I went in and was like, ‘you know what, let’s get rid of anonymous requests,'” Greene said. “And in digging into that, I had that wrong. I think that’s wrong.”
At an April 1 meeting of the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee, Greene told the committee that she has revised the bill in collaboration with MCOGI, the Minnesota Newspaper Association, school boards, district administrators, and her fellow legislative colleagues.
“I really think that this bill now strikes this important balance between open government and accountability,” said Greene. “It has also been expanded to include all government entities subject to FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, really holding them harmless from non-serious data requests and saving a lot of precious and valuable resources.”
In short, Greene’s new bill allows government entities to notify data requesters that a portion of their data is ready for inspection. If the requester fails to show up and inspect the data in the five days following notification, the government entity can suspend any further work on the data request until the requester shows up or pays for copies of the data.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers were complimentary of Greene’s work developing the bill.
The bill was then placed on the General Register, which is the last step before the House takes up legislation for a final vote.
School district administrators say data request costs are adding up
During the process of developing the bill’s language, school district officials had testified in support of Greene’s effort to get rid of “non-serious” data requests.
John Carlson, the Chief Administrative Officer (CEO) of Rochester Public Schools, told a committee that his school district had to create a $100,000 staff position dedicated solely to fulfilling public data requests.
While Carlson said that the district spends tens of thousands of dollars a year on “many good, narrow” data requests, he described others as overly broad, hard-to-interpret “fishing expeditions.”
Superintendent Jeff Elstad of Owatonna Public Schools told a House committee that his district received 12 anonymous data requests in the last two years. Of those, nine were abandoned. Elstad said the abandoned requests cost his district approximately $30,000 to prepare and redact the necessary documents.
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
