Open Meeting Location and Members' Materials
In Advisory Opinion 18-003, a member of the public asked whether a City Council had
violated the Open Meeting Law by holding a meeting outside the geographic
boundaries of the body, not providing a copy of members’ materials, and eating
dinner together.
The Commissioner concluded, based on the Minnesota Supreme
Court’s decision in Quast v. Knutson, 150 N.W.2d 199 (Minn. 1967) and
his prior opinions, that public bodies must hold their meetings within their
territorial boundaries. He also opined that the Council violated the OML by not
having a public copy of members’ materials available to the public. The Council
did not violate the law when the members ate dinner in a public restaurant and
none of the members sat together or discussed official business.
Inter-Entity Personnel Data
In Advisory Opinion 18-004, a school district asked about
the classification of data it maintained about a School Resource Officer (SRO)
employed by a city and assigned to the District. Based on Advisory Opinion
97-030, the Commissioner opined that the definition of personnel data in
Minnesota Statutes, section 13.43, includes government data maintained by one
government entity about employees employed by another government entity, when
employees are working in their official capacities. Therefore, data about the SRO
maintained at the District are classified as personnel data and while the
existence and status of a complaint against the SRO are public, any other data
about a complaint or charge against the SRO is private at the District.
Case Law Update
In 2015, Plaintiff/Appellant Webster submitted a data request to Hennepin County for a large amount of data regarding the Hennepin County Sherriff's Office use of biometric data. Webster submitted a variety of keywords that he asked the County to include as part of their search of their data, including email accounts. Following the County's response that the request was "too burdensome", and would monopolize County servers for 15 months, Webster initially narrowed his request, and then filed a complaint with the Office of Administrative Hearings. OAH's order was appealed to the Court of Appeals, and then again to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court made three substantive rulings:
- Hennepin County's established procedures did not "insure" prompt responses to Webster's data request(s), placing the County in violation of Minn. Stat. § 13.03, subd. 2(a).
- The County's system of data management, which heavily relied on the electronic e-mail program Microsoft Outlook, sufficiently maintained the data in "an arrangement and condition" that made data "easily accessible for convenient use", as required by § 13.03, subd. 1.
- The court did not have appellate jurisdiction to address the question of whether Webster's data request was so overly burdensome as to merit exclusion from the requirements of the Data Practices Act.
District Court Issues Orders in Wetterling Case
Stearns County District Court Judge Ann Carrott issued two
orders involving the release of inactive investigative data in the Jacob
Wetterling case. The bulk of the investigative data became public in 2016 after
the investigation ended. The
Wetterlings filed in action in district court requesting that certain files
remain protected based on a constitutional right to privacy. In addition, the
FBI intervened in the case, requesting the return of their investigative files
and arguing that the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) governs any
release of the data.
Judge Carrott agreed with the FBI in her first order on
March 29, 2018. Stearns County must return the FBI files to the United States
Government because federal law, in 28 U.S.C. § 534(b), prohibits the disclosure
of the records by Stearns County.
In her second order, from April 19, 2018, Judge Carrott
granted the media-intervenor’s request for summary judgment, finding that the
data in the investigative documents are public government data under Minn.
Stat. § 13.82. “The applicable Minnesota statutes and case law on the issue…are
dispositive and lead the Court to conclude that the Plaintiffs do not have a
legally cognizable claim of informational privacy…. The Minnesota legislature
took that into consideration when weighing the privacy rights of individuals
and the public’s right to access.”
Stay tuned for upcoming DPO Workshops!
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