Should public employees' home addresses be public record?

Texas Watchdog says yes. But a state lawmaker has pre-filed a bill for the upcoming legislative session that looks like it would make state workers' home addresses, and other information, confidential.

Public employees don't like us journalists snooping in their businesses, knowing where they live or their phone numbers. It's a sensitive subject, we know -- when we published an online database of pay records for state workers making $100K and up earlier this week, we specifically noted that we didn't ask the state for the state workers' home addresses.

We didn't need workers' home addresses to post those pay records. But I can foresee many legitimate stories about state government where reporters would need workers' home addresses. Home addresses are often the only way to verify that the John Smith who gave money to Mayor Doe's re-election campaign is also the John Smith who then got promoted into a big cushy city job.

I know this from personal experience, because I was an editor on a story at my old paper (not in Texas) in which state workers' home addresses were crucial to showing how promotions were being given to those who gave big bucks to the governor's campaign. Not only were state workers giving money -- the maximum amount allowed by state law -- but contributions were also being made in the names of their wives, parents and siblings, connections that we could not have made without address records.

I've just been quickly reading over Senate Bill 331, and it looks to me like it would generally close off public access to government employees and government officials' home addresses and home telephone numbers.

Looks to me like the rejiggered subsection B of Section 552.024 would allow the records to be open only if the employee/official "request(s) in writing that the main personnel office of the government body open access" -- changing the law from an opt-out setup to an opt-in setup.

As a journalist, I think we can safely predict that very few government workers are going to want to write a letter demanding their records be made public to anyone who wants to see them.

But there has to be a check on government, and that check is us.


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