Legislators in the California Assembly have approved on a 68-0 vote a bill that would exempt multiple categories of state and local government employees from having their names disclosed in public property records, according to Steven Greenhut.
Writing on Reason magazine’s web site, Greenhut said the measure, which still must be approved by the California Senate and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, “is based on the unproven notion that criminals use such records to find the homes of law enforcement officers, then track them down to commit harm. This could theoretically happen, but even the most overheated advocates of the bill can’t point to specific instances. Lots of things can happen, theoretically.”
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It is not unusual for public employees to seek ways of keeping their names out of public records – especially when Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesters ask for compensation data – but I don’t recall any previous measures at the state or local level in California or anywhere else in which public workers involved in law enforcement and the judiciary ask that their names not be included on specific public records.
Greenhut, who is vice president of the Franklin Center for Government Public Integrity points out that such a measure has implications far beyond public safety concerns: “Public officials and their family members will be able to hide their identities, which will undermine the reliability of property transactions. Dirty officials will pull off real estate scams without scrutiny,” he said.
For more from Greenhut on a proposal that is likely to be duplicated in other states where public employee unions are powerful – think Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Maryland and the like – go here.
