passopenrecords.org

One issue that keeps coming up – and rightly so – in any discussion of open-records reform is the protection of privacy and personal information. Too often, politicians imply that the real intent of the press to expose the private lives of people in a sensationalized effort to sell newspapers or gain viewers. Better, the story goes, to entrust our personal information to the government officials who represent us all.

Well, this just in from Columbus, Ohio:

Stolen Computer Tape
A thief broke into a state intern’s car June 10 and took a computer backup tape that contains the Social Security numbers and other private information for more than 500,000 Ohioans.

The list of those affected includes all state workers, their dependents enrolled in the state’s pharmacy-benefits management program, residents who have not cashed tax rebate checks and even some lottery winners.

Strickland revealed Wednesday that the tape contained the names, Social Security numbers and amounts of uncashed state personal income-tax refund and school-district income-tax refund checks issued in 2005, 2006 and through May 29 this year.

The Ohio Department of Taxation provided a list yesterday showing that the list of affected taxpayers contains 210,930 individuals and 224,058 checks because some people received both refund checks.

Not counting staff time, the cost of the theft in tax dollars is approaching $900,000, including $631,000 set aside to pay for the Debix services and $100,000 to hire an expert to confirm that the state has found all of the sensitive data on the tape and to review the security of the state’s new payroll and accounting system.

The state also has spent nearly $163,000 so far in printing and mailing costs to send letters to those affected, said Ron Sylvester, a spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services.

Now THAT is an invasion of privacy on a grand scale. Compare that with the following story from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Another life lost on DHS’s watch
The [Department of Human Services] sent Omega Leach, a troubled 17-year-old, to a Tennessee youth facility in May. A month later, he was dead.

The City of Philadelphia decided a trip south was best for Omega Leach, an angry teenager who got in trouble for stealing a car.

In May, the 17-year-old arrived at the Chad Youth Enhancement Center outside Nashville, a mental-health facility for troubled teenagers approved by the city’s Department of Human Services.

His stay was brief.

Leach died after a physical confrontation with staff on June 3. He tried to choke one counselor, and another staffer pushed Leach facedown to the floor and pulled his arms behind his back, police said.

“There’s no doubt that the kid had an attitude and probably needed to be locked up somewhere,” said Sgt. Brian Prentice, of the Montgomery County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Office. “It doesn’t mean he has to be dead.”

Leach’s death was one more lost life on DHS’s watch. As with other Philadelphia youths committed to such centers, his care was DHS’s responsibility. The agency was paying Chad $285 a day for his treatment.

In a tough report released four days before Leach’s death, an expert panel appointed by Mayor Street said “significant system failures” at DHS had let children die needlessly.

This is the same agency that Carl Lavin, The Inquirer’s deputy managing editor, had described – decried is a better word – in his testimony before the Senate on June 4, the same agency, said Lavin, in whose care “babies . . . died . . . while the department and the city of Philadelphia refused to make public their own reviews that pointed out the egregious flaws in department policies and procedures. Only after The Inquirer did a series of investigatory articles did the city start to make more of this information public.”

We need to be very clear about this: privacy is precious and must be protected; secrecy is corrosive and can be deadly.

• Let’s hope they DO make them like they used to.

Byron Baer, 30-year New Jersey state legislator died two days ago at the age of 77. He was, according to his obituary, “an ardent and persistent advocate of making the workings of government more open. In the early 1970s, he led the drafting of New Jersey’s open-meetings law, and in 2002 he was a co-sponsor of the law’s revision. He helped defeat attempts to weaken it as it moved through the Legislature.”

“Byron Baer,” said State Senator Bernard F. Kenny Jr. “was way ahead of his time when it came to opening up government.” We could have used him in Pennsylvania.

He also obviously had the courage of his convictions: he a South Jersey farmer broke Baer’s arm for protesting the working conditions of migrant workers, and he spent 45 days in a Mississippi jail in the 1960s for participating in civil rights demonstrations.