Texas Legislature considering bill to make it harder to get public information about government employees

Anna Canizales – Texas Tribune – April 20 2021

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would restrict state agencies from sharing salary data and other typically public information about government employees with the public in a bill that experts say is overly broad.

Senate Bill 16, filed by state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, would require an individual’s written consent for a state agency to share their personal information. The bill has been declared a priority by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. His office did not respond to a request for comment. It’s coauthored by 29 out of 31 members of the Senate, suggesting it has widespread bipartisan support.

Public records — such as elected officials’ salaries or the demographics of appointees to state agencies — are widely used to understand how tax dollars are spent and who is representing Texans in state government. Data such as Social Security numbers and medical records are already protected by the state and not subject to the Public Information Act.

The bill defines the protected information to include “one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of the individual,” in addition to location or identification numbers, but does not define what information meets that criteria.

Nelson declined to answer questions for this story but said in a statement that the legislation comes in response to an increase in cases of personal data being compromised. In November 2020, about 27.7 million Texans had their drivers license numbers, names, addresses and more exposed in a Vertafore data breach. Vertafore is an insurance software provider who admitted that some data files were accidentally stored in an unsecured external storage service and a third-party was able to access the information.

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