Media would retain access to employee birth dates under new version of bill

Journalists would continue to have access to the birth dates of state and local government employees under the state Public Records Act, but other people would not, under a bill that a House of Representatives committee is expected to vote on Friday.

The first version of HB 1888 would have exempted the birth dates of public sector employees from the state’s transparency law. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Zack Hudgins, helped craft a compromise between media members who opposed HB 1888 and the public employees’ unions that pushed for it.

Rowland Thompson, a lobbyist for the Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, said he signed off on the amended bill on Thursday. Media members also would continue to get access to photographs of government employees.

“It just seemed important to me that the media continue to do the kind of oversight they have done,” said Thompson. “This is not the proudest day of my life, but sometimes you have to just anticipate where things are headed and try to cut your losses. Because I would feel awful in three or four years, I’m standing there staring at losing date of birth completely because of a union fight.”

Non-journalists would get only the numeric day of the birth, not the month or year, and photographs would be exempt from release. Thompson said the numeric day of the birth would give non-journalists a data point which they could use in doing background checks. “I wanted to leave an opening for a parent who thinks their teacher is acting kind of strange,” he said.

The new version of the bill mirrors the language that only gives the media access to birth dates and photographs of employees of criminal justice agencies, including law enforcement officers and prison guards. Hudgins showed a reporter a copy of the amendment signed by Thompson and Lucinda Young, a lobbyist for the Washington Education Association.

The agreement was reached on the same day that public-sector union members rallied on the steps of the Legislative Building to urge state legislators to approve the bill, expressing concern about identity theft, stalkers, and others who may want to target them at home.

“We know in 2020 that if someone has your name and your birth date, they can easily get your home address and other private information. That’s why we are demanding passage of HB 1888,” April Sims, Secretary Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, told about 300 union members who gathered in the rain.

Committees face a Friday deadline to approve non-fiscal policy bills in the chamber of origin. HB 1888 is scheduled for a vote Friday in the House State Government and Tribal Relations Committee.

Journalists opposed the first version of HB 1888, saying the biggest threats to identity theft are hackers and scammers. Also, reporters use dates of birth to distinguish one person from another as they prepare articles that hold government employees accountable for wrongdoing.

In a 5-4 opinion last October, the state Supreme Court ruled that the birth dates of government employees are subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Freedom Foundation. The Olympia-based free-market think tank has used public records requests to contact government employees and tell them that they’re not required to pay union fees under a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Cherika Carter, political and strategic campaigns director for the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said at the rally that the Freedom Foundation is the chief opponent of HB 1888.

“This is one of their tactics and this is out of their playbooks in their attempts to try to diminish worker power, protections and safety,” she said.

Supporters of the bill include the Washington Education Association, the Washington Federation of State Employees, and Service Employees International Union Local 925.

In an interview, Hudgins said he was hopeful that a compromise can move the bill through the House and Senate this year.

“What we’re trying to do is protect the ability to get information and find malfeasance that the press and media wants as well as to try to protect the privacy of state workers, teachers, and firefighters,” he said.

At a committee hearing in January on the first version of the bill, Hudgins said of his bill: “This came from a number of public employees that I’m certainly hearing about in my email. I suspect others are as well.”

Young, the lobbyist for the Washington Education Association, told the committee that the bill would provide notice to employees when a person files a public records request seeking information about them.

“When you have a date of birth, you can find where an individual lives. There is a direct link. My members strongly believe that employers should not be mandated to release their private information,” she said.

Mike Yestramski, president of the Washington Federation of State Employees and a psychiatric social worker at Western State Hospital, said a parent of a patient — angered by a decision he and his fellow employees made — posted their names, pictures, home addresses, and birth dates on an anti-psychiatric website. The parent urged people to visit them at work, home, and also their children at school, Yestramski said.

“News sources with proper protocols having a need-to-know basis — we’re not against them having access to that information that they need to report on public work. But it is a massive leap to say that potentially endangering public service employees is a critical component to government accountability,” he said.

Jonathan Martin, Investigations Editor at the Seattle Times, said journalists use birth dates as a primary identifier to distinguish one person from another.

“That is especially important if someone has a common name. I fully understand the threat of identity theft, but this legislation does not alleviate that threat. As the Supreme Court said last year, dates of birth are widely available in public view already. The primary threat of identity theft is illegal hacking and scamming, not public disclosure, which can be a cumbersome process involving a public records request — which is a public record itself — as well as fees,” Martin said.

Dale Phelps, Editor and Vice President of News at The News Tribune in Tacoma, told the committee that the bill would weaken the state public records law.

“Birth dates are essential to identifying individuals with certainty. They help to positively ID people and to potentially eliminate people who might have similar names and profiles,” he said.

This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 1:36 PM.