If there exists even a small crack in the law allowing public officials to withhold information for purposes of deception, some official will always, eventually, wiggle through the crack.
Always, 100 percent of the time.
That’s why Texas lawmakers emphatically stated the mission of the Texas Open Records Act in its preamble:
“... It is the policy of this state that each person is entitled ... at all times to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
In Galveston, this issue is frighteningly relevant at the moment.
The University of Texas Medical Branch has a law pending in the Texas Legislature that would allow UTMB to withhold all information about a class of deadly pathogens being studied at the Galveston National Laboratory on the UTMB campus.
The bill, authored by first-term state Sen. Joan Huffman, is SB 2556. It must be substantially amended, or it must be killed.
The basic argument for the bill is that it is needed to ensure the security of the lab. That is a bogus claim. Texas law and U.S. law already provide protection of security-related information.
But let’s assume there are some actual bits of information that must be protected for security reasons. In that case, those who oppose the bill have invited UT to enumerate them in the law and exempt those specific things from provisions of the law.
If, on the other hand, the real issue is commercial, as many suspect, protection already exists for that, as well. The Texas Open Records Act currently exempts patentable, proprietary commercial information.
When a colleague suggested amending the bill to narrow its focus, Huffman declined. If someone abuses the act in the future, she said, it could be amended then. It’s a little like legalizing theft and hoping no one will steal.
Early this week, UT officials had heard enough complaints to offer a weak-as-water, nearly meaningless amendment. That amendment does not change the impact of the legislation, which would still allow UT officials to decide every detail of what you know or don’t know about what goes on at the lab.
Dr. Stan Lemon of UTMB recently told supporters of the institution that the controversial secrecy bill would permit officials to be open in the future. At the time he made that statement it was just wrong.
Further, what he did not say was that the bill also would allow UTMB to stonewall virtually all requests for information. As the bill is worded today, that is still the case.
There is no way Huffman or Lemon or anyone else can predict what officials not under their control will do in the future.
Under the proposed law, if the newspaper heard a rumor about a suspected leak of deadly germs, as it did just months ago, the university could refuse to release any documents about the accident or alleged security breach. That’s dangerous to you and your children.
What UT wants (remember that preamble to the open records act) is to secure the “right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”
When you think of it, given recent history, how much do you trust UT’s leaders to make decisions transparently? Ask the 2,800 people fired in December after a closed meeting of the school’s regents.
UT’s leaders have made many bad decisions behind closed doors. In fact, UT’s top leadership has a history of avoiding public scrutiny whenever possible. What they say to you now with a smile and a gentle pat on the back is, “You can trust us.”
Right.
Dolph Tillotson is president and publisher of The Daily News.
