The Daily News got into a fight about Senate Bill 2556. As originally drafted, the bill would have opened a blanket exemption in the Texas Public Information Act that would have eliminated your right to know about a group of deadly pathogens called “select agents.” Those bugs are studied at the Galveston National Laboratory, operated by the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Sometimes, newspapers don’t do a good job of explaining why they do things. We thought you’d be interested in what we were trying to accomplish.
The open-records act presumes that information generated by governments belongs to the people. That’s true of all information, unless it is specifically exempted. The law is made up mostly of exemptions. Some allow police to withhold information about ongoing criminal investigations. Others allow governments to withhold personal information on workers.
Occasionally, you hear some demagogue claim that, if the public has a right to know everything, someone will get the combination to a safe and steal public money.
Of course, that doesn’t happen. Open-records laws seek to weigh the public’s right to know against the need of governments to keep secrets. In Texas, the scales always tilt in the government’s favor.
When officials said they were concerned terrorists could get information on the routes of trucks delivering specimens to the lab, we found that unbelievable. Officials can — and do — withhold such information under existing law. That’s why we objected when the university asked for a blanket exemption on “safety and security.” We asked university officials to cite an example of a problem with the law. When they could not, we tried to get those broad exceptions out of the bill.
We also were concerned about the proposed exception to disclosing the “location” of select agents. Because the university’s attorneys, in wrangling with the attorney general, had argued for a broad definition of “location,” we were concerned the public might not have a right to any information on pathogens anywhere in Galveston. We asked that the bill specify that, while the National Lab does not have to disclose which room a pathogen is in, the act does require the release of information about pathogens at the lab.
The university originally sought a blanket exemption to withhold the identity of an individual authorized to possess a select agent.
We asked that the bill exempt the names of lower-level employees from disclosure. But we also asked that the bill specify that the names of principal investigators and all faculty members and employees whose names will appear on published research be public.
The biggest argument was over the university’s desire to withhold “site-specific or transfer-specific documentation.”
Those documents obviously include information about the university’s partners. We asked for a clear statement that nothing in this bill would prevent the public from getting information on contracts involving public money. We also asked that nothing would restrict the disclosure of information about contracts with companies that use the lab’s research for commercial or military purposes.
After all that wrangling, why do we still oppose the bill?
We’d be the first to admit that we don’t know its consequences. Any institution that seeks broad changes in the rights of other people should consult them to see whether they can find a compromise between their competing interests. All parties should get a chance to study the proposed changes and to think about the consequences.
We found out about this bill just before the Senate approved it. We lobbied for changes in what we thought were the worst provisions of the bill.
But it’s still a bad bill. It will be a sad day when it becomes law.
