Some supporters of controversial Texas Senate Bill 2556 are asking for the public’s trust, while acting in ways that inspire the opposite.
For example, James Kelso, charged with keeping the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston National Laboratory in compliance with freedom-of-information laws, told me and a Daily News reporter, and apparently also told a Dallas Morning News reporter, that someone had requested “door access codes” for the laboratory.
That phrase conjures images of a keypad on a secure door and at least implies someone sought information about how to enter the laboratory.
That’s scary. It’s also not true.
What Edward Hammond, formerly of the watchdog group the Sunshine Project, requested was “door access logs.”
Not the same thing, of course.
While Kelso implied someone sought to breach the laboratory, what Hammond pretty clearly wanted to do was document who was coming and going from it.
Medical branch officials have used that request as justification for the sweeping change proposed in SB 2556.
It’s interesting, then, that the Texas attorney general denied Hammond’s request for logs, a mere list of names, using the existing law.
Likewise, state Sen. Joan Huffman, in defending the bill she authored, said someone had requested the routes and schedules of trucks carrying deadly organisms to and from the laboratory.
That’s scary, too. It’s also not true.
Hammond asked for copies of material-transfer agreements, which are contracts between the national laboratory and other facilities with which it shares research material — the viruses and bacteria — and research data.
Even if those agreements contain such security-sensitive information as truck routes and itineraries, that information also certainly could be withheld under the existing state law, which exempts from disclosure:
“Any record, including security plans or code, the release of which would jeopardize the security of an individual against physical injury or jeopardize information or property against theft, tampering, improper use, illegal disclosure, trespass, unauthorized access or physical injury.”
Medical branch officials said the attorney general’s refusal to exempt Hammond’s request for material-transfer agreements cost them an important collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh officials were worried that honoring Hammond’s request would disclose the names of their researchers and breach security, medical branch officials said.
But, in a letter to the attorney general objecting to Hammond’s request, University of Pittsburgh officials never mentioned security, nor ever sought to redact the names of researchers.
Instead, they were very interested in protecting a proprietary interest in data they wanted to patent.
It could be that the state law needs tweaking to better protect proprietary information belonging to third parties, but that’s not what Senate Bill 2556 would do, and not what the medical branch has claimed is its intent.
From the beginning, medical branch officials have argued they need this change to bring state law in line with federal law.
They say doing so would afford their employees better privacy protection and enhance security.
But state law already exempts:
“Information confidential under other law. Any record that is confidential or exempted from disclosure under a state or federal constitutional provision, statute or common law ... .”
That’s about as aligned as laws get.
Could it be that Senate Bill 2556 is so vastly broad because the medical branch wants exemptions beyond even what the federal law affords?
Michael A. Smith is associate editor of the Daily News. To read the full text of documents supporting his arguments, visit the blog “Is it just me?” at galvnews.com.
