How many state employees are sex offenders?
That might be an overly dramatic headline to this post, but it could be a question that never gets answered if a bill to close off the birth dates of public employees becomes law.
Senate Bill 1753, by Sen. Debbe Leftwich, D-Oklahoma City, passed out of the Senate yesterday with no debate by a vote of 44-0. It now moves to the House.
Our Capitol reporter Julie Bisbee has today’s coverage here.
In the face of misinformation over identity theft, SB 1753 has picked up support from several state employee associations, including the Oklahoma Public Employees Association and some law enforcement unions.
OPEA sent out an “action alert” to its members yesterday playing on the fears over identity theft:
OPEA Action Alert – Keep Your Private Information
Private Protect State Employee Private Information More Info
Contact your Senator today!
Contact your state Senator today to ask them to support SB 1753 by Leftwich , which requires state agencies to keep your birth date confidential. This bill is on the Senate agenda and could come up any time.
Currently, public jurisdictions must disclose private information about employees including, name, compensation, and date of birth. SB 1753 excludes employees’ birth date from the information that agencies are mandated to provide to the public.
State employees’ duties often bring them in contact with the public in safety, protection of the most vulnerable and regulatory functions. Child welfare workers, corrections and probation officers, or benefit workers can be stalked by criminals or disgruntled members of the public with whom they have come in contact through the performance of their job duties. Employees’ birthdates can also be used by identity thieves to access bank accounts and credit of public workers.
Help OPEA protect state employee identities! Contact your Senator today!
I’m sure the leaders at OPEA mean well, but I don’t see how knowing a date of birth would make it any easier for stalkers to find the employees they mention. Unfortunately, that argument was picked up by the House author of the bill, Rep. Randy Terrill:
Terrill, R-Moore, said he’s concerned people could use birth date information to retaliate against correctional officers, state troopers, drug agents and others involved in public safety.
“I believe very strongly in the public’s right to know, but I also believe very strongly that just because you become a public employee doesn’t mean that your entire life history is a matter of open record,” Terrill said.
Current law does not allow disclosure of public employees’ social security numbers, home telephone numbers or addresses:
Public bodies shall keep confidential the home address, telephone numbers and social security numbers of any person employed or formerly employed by the public body.
Property records, and by extension, most home addresses, are already publicly available. You can inspect them at every courthouse in the state, and many counties now allow searching online. (Oklahoma County is here.) I still have heavy phone books delivered to my house with thousands of addresses, so I don’t consider that particularly sensitive information. But I do understand the concern expressed by some law enforcement employees.
Of course, the media doesn’t always make the best case for why public records should remain open and accessible. But with this issue, we’re not just crying wolf.
My colleague John Estus and I ran a simple computer database analysis of the state payroll and the registered sex offender list. We found at least 778 state employees who shared a first and last name with those on the sex offender list. From the box that ran with Bisbee’s story:
Using Birth Dates
An example: Are employees sex offenders?
A comparison of January’s state payroll data to the state sex offender registry reveals 778 state employees share first and last names with registered sex offenders. Without dates of birth, it is impossible to determine whether those workers may be sex offenders. State employees who share the names of sex offenders include:
- Child care workers
- A state Supreme Court justice
- Doctors, nurses and other health care workers
- State troopers
- Prison workers
- Juvenile affairs workers
- Law enforcement investigators
- Drug enforcement agents
- University workers
Of course, we’d never publish a story that matched just the names of state employees and sex offenders. To do so would be irresponsible. But without another identifier, like date of birth*, it would be impossible to narrow down the results or even do that type of story in the first place.
And it’s not just checking the criminal history of public employees, something that is presumably done in background checks when they are first hired. Bankruptcies, liens, judgments and other civil matters are also important.
In fact, when our City Hall reporter Bryan Dean requested the date of birth of a city of Oklahoma City employee who is under investigation in the misuse of public funds, the city denied his request. When it finally relented, Dean found out the employee had filed for bankruptcy, something that could have been useful to know for both the city and the public.
If SB 1753 succeeds, then public employees would be afforded more privacy rights than registered voters in the state. As I’ve mentioned before, about 2 million names, addresses and dates of birth of registered voters are already available for a fee from the state Election Board:
The Oklahoma State Election Board sells lists of registered voters to anyone willing to pay its fees. Among the information on there? Dates of birth.
Those voter registration lists are used by political campaigns, academics and commercial database providers such as Lexis-Nexis and Accurint. We buy the data annually for internal fact-checking purposes.
Fran Roche, assistant secretary at the Election Board, said the state brings in between $16,000 to $18,000 a year selling those voter registration lists. The board generally gets about 250 orders for voter registration lists each year.
This is just a guess, but I’m sure most lawmakers–including Leftwich and Terrill–have used that voter information data in their campaigns to target voters by both precinct and age.
–Paul
P.S. For the record, my date of birth is 6/27/75.
Written by Paul Monies
Follow @pmonies
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Comments
If this bill passes, will the Dept. of Public Safety be prohibited from putting the DOB (or home address) on drivers’ licenses for all current or former public employees? Wouldn’t that be a violation of some sort? Or would it be illegal for the DOB or home addresses of all current and former public employees to be shown on the registered voter rolls? Woudn’t that be a violation? I guess we should be the same – why should I have to give my DOB and home address to DPS or the State Election Board if current and former public employees don’t have to?
The real reason for Debbie Leftwich’s brush fire is VANITY: These old dolls and some old guys are embarrassed they are so old. They ought to proud they have lived this long. Me? I’m 84: 4 September 25. Ben Blackstock
The real reason for Debbie Leftwich’s DOB brush fire is VANITY: These old dolls and some old guys are embarrassed they are so old. They ought to be proud they have lived this long Me? I’m 84: 4 September 25. Ben Blackstock
[...] brought up identity theft, an issue that appears to resonate with legislators. (More on that here and [...]
[...] request at their association’s urging. (More background on the newspaper’s request is here.) The workers were upset because the newspaper requested birth dates, salaries and other basic [...]
Well…If all that information is already available, such as with the voter registration information, why dont you and john estus just get the infomration from there. oh, wait…that requires actual work!
What is interesting is that the DOK has been swearing they are NOT going to use dobs and other data to go on fishing trips, that their intent is singular questions related to specific instances.
And yet here are the results- CLEARLY the DOK is data mining large list of employees to see if they can muck up and rake up unflattering information on them.
It really sounds like the DOK needs to get off it’s lazy backside, hire real investigative reports and do this the old fashioned way, check each singular instance.
Of course the real vital stories, who is contributing to the elections of the folks at the capitol, and how it impacts the laws they enact and how they vote.
That would be a real story on government, but the DOK turns it’s back on it, why? Perhaps because it’s owners are some of the most prolific influence peddlers of the bunch.
P.S. “Of course, we’d never publish a story that matched just the names of state employees and sex offenders. To do so would be irresponsible. But without another identifier, like date of birth”
YOU JUST DID PRINT THE STORY YOU HOPLESS DIPSTICKS!!
You all did get one salient point correct- You all are irresponsible…
April: Thanks for your comment. We requested the list of public employees because not every public employee is a registered voter. What we’re talking about here is two different sets of people.
Davo: We didn’t print the actual names of the ones that matched the sex offenders, did we? And your future comments will not be approved if they resort to juvenile name calling. I’m giving you a pass on this first one.
[...] AT STAKE: Senate Bill 1753 exempts public employee dates of birth from the Open Records Act; dates of birth of public workers are now presumed open. [...]
As both a person who has been on the receiving end of identity theft and employed by the state, I can tell you that it’s incredibly hard to “put the Genie back in the bottle”. I realize that you have a job to do, but as a private citizen as well as a government employee, I’d ask you to consider my 4th amendment rights. My “papers” are my personal data – of which my DOB is one. I do not want *anyone* to experience ID theft. Mine was caused by a canceled check and then by someone “guessing” a valid SSN. Not that the DOB was needed, but one less tool for the criminals that would use it.
couldn’t edit the above, but wanted to add if you have
66 percent of something, that’s a rather high number.
Dec: I understand your concerns over identity theft. But DOBs are publicly available in several other places, including voter registration records. As you said yourself, your identity was stolen by canceled checks and your SSN.
It’s amazing that the journalists at the Oklahoman aren’t savy enough to find out if a state employee is a sex offender without being handed a huge data dump of personal information on all state employees.
What you’re arguing for here is valuing the convenience of journalists over the privacy of citizens.
James, I will concede that it’s a convenience issue, but only for the same reason that we don’t type our stories on typewriters anymore, nor do we have typesetters setting out hot type. Almost every business and government agency uses spreadsheets and databases to keep track of records.
I find it curious that the arguments against this open records request always turn to the description of a “batch” request. Of course it’s a batch request, just like the OPEA’s mailing list of state employees provided via spreadsheet to its mail house by the Office of State Finance. You wouldn’t expect OSF to print out each employee’s home address and provide it one-by-one to the mail house, would you?
And the privacy of state workers is already protected under the state’s Open Records Act. Requesters *cannot* get Social Security numbers, home addresses or home telephone numbers.
Paul: I left you a link of how ID theft occurs, you didn’t comment on that, you just indicated that having ID theft is an acceptable risk. Poor me, huh?
As to your comment about the voters have their DOB in a state
database, that’s not the same. I’m in that database, it’s in there for you. Oh wait, that doesn’t (easily) help to find out if I’m one of those sex offenders you’re after.
Your total disregard for my mentioning the 4th amendment to the Constitution is almost laughable, given your employer would be the first one to scream about his Constitutional rights of the 1st amendment.
That is *my* birth date, not the State’s. I had it before I was employed, and I hope to have it after I retire.
You mention your not originally from this country, correct?
I wonder how this is handled in your homeland?
dec
Dec, sorry, I just got around to checking that link. It mentions 3 “keys” to stealing an identity: Full name, Social Security number and date of birth.
Aside from the fact that we didn’t request, don’t want and don’t need SSNs, I would argue that you probably need a few other details, too. Like mothers maiden name, address, etc.
In the UK, they are governed by the Data Protection Act, which was passed to make the UK fall in line with EU regulations. And the UK has only had a formal Freedom of Information Act since 2000, so they are still fairly new to the concept, at least as it’s laid out in statute. I do have to admit that I’m not an expert on the UK FOI laws, though.
Thank you for reading the link, Paul. I feel like we may be
getting somewhere.
“Like mothers maiden name, address, etc.”
Wrong – go to any bank with the 3 key ingredients and see if you can open an account that you wouldn’t have legal rights to. You can.
The problem that compounds the issue is how SSN’s were generated. If you have a persons DOB, and have an idea where they were born, you can now have an idea of a limited set of numbers that was used for a persons SSN.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/stateweb.htm
I would expect to see a HIGH percentage in the 440-448
first three digits of the sample of Oklahoma State employees.
—
One of the idea’s you have expressed is that bankruptcy was one of the targets of this data usage. It sounds as if you are after *anything* to give the State workers is a bloody nose. Bankruptcy isn’t illegal in this country, likened the titled “Sex Offenders in the State”. Where do you intend to draw a line? Divorces? Rotten kids? Church goers?
—
Now, on to the prime point of why you should not have access to the DOB’s, which you have chosen to continually ignore. The 4th amendment to the United States Constitution. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
pay paticular attention to:
“However, in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment is applicable to state governments by way of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”
and on to privacy,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_privacy
you may WANT that DOB, but what legal ground do you have to pursue getting it? That it is on my job application? It is MY SSN. And MY address. You don’t expect your job application data to be made public, why do you expect MINE to?
regards,
dec
Dec, I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this issue.
But you’ve mentioned the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights. If you are a state employee, then haven’t you given up certain privacy rights just by being employed by the state? For example, your name, agency and pay are freely available on the state’s Open Books Web site:
Your employer can fire you for nonpayment of state income taxes, something that usually isn’t done in the private sector. From a Feb. 11, 2008 AP article by Ron Jenkins:
*****
Failing to file state income taxes has caused political headaches for some lawmakers, but for many state employees, the consequence has been especially dire: They’ve been fired.
A 2003 law directs agency heads to fire state workers who do not resolve their income tax problems. The law requires the Oklahoma Tax Commission to notify agencies that have employees who have not filed their state returns.
“We don’t keep track of terminations, but there have been numerous people fired due to this law,” said Paula Ross, an Oklahoma Tax Commission spokeswoman.
Ross said she was aware of the firings because agency officials have reported the employee terminations.
*******
And contrary to your claims, your employment application is a public record. Certain parts may or may not be redacted by your personnel office, but the application is an Open Record:
http://www.oscn.net/applications/OCISWeb/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=80294
B. All personnel records not specifically falling within the exceptions provided in subsection A of this section shall be available for public inspection and copying including, but not limited to, records of:
1. An employment application of a person who becomes a public official;
2. The gross receipts of public funds;
3. The dates of employment, title or position; and
4. Any final disciplinary action resulting in loss of pay, suspension, demotion of position, or termination.
C. Except as may otherwise be made confidential by statute, an employee of a public body shall have a right of access to his own personnel file.
D. Public bodies shall keep confidential the home address, telephone numbers and social security numbers of any person employed or formerly employed by the public body.
“But you’ve mentioned the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights. If you are a state employee, then haven’t you given up certain privacy rights just by being employed by the state?”
Yes. But not at the expense of my US Constitutional rights.
They may not be turned on or off at the convenience of those who would just say “you took the job, live with it”.
If they had made me aware of being “less than a citizen of the United States” by making my personal information available through my application for employment, things might be different. Shouldn’t these things be in writing?
You don’t add things to a written contract after the fact.
I agree with employment with the State being tied to paying my taxes. I did know that upon taking my job. If it were a private sector job, there would still be an issue if I didn’t pay my taxes. It’s illegal. Not in a public venue, but a court of law. And as you have said, several have lost employment – seems the state does keep good records on us.
It would be down right ironic to be employed by the state and not do what every other citizen is asked to do. But, we digress. Taxes have little to do with my birth date.
“And contrary to your claims, your employment application is a public record. ”
I have a lot of respect for our State AG – he’s asked to give his opinion on matters every day. I’m glad they call that “opinion”. It leaves room for changes. Several states have gone on either direction on this very issue.
As you know, the legislature is attempting to further define this issue. I pray they see it in the light of protecting their employees and individuals rights.
“Apathy permits one group that does not value a particular freedom to stand by and watch while it is taken away from another group that does value it. ”
Thomas Jefferson
[...] of birth dates of public employees could come by Wednesday or Thursday on the House floor. A previous version of the bill passed unopposed in the Senate in [...]
Hunters or Fishers have better data protections than state employees.
Oklahoma State Statute 51 O.S.A. Section 24A.23
[...] of birth dates of public employees could come by Wednesday or Thursday on the House floor. A previous version of the bill passed unopposed in the Senate in [...]
An abandonment study can legitimately generate a windfall of depreciation for the owner of investment or owner-occupied real estate. By increasing depreciation, substantial tax reduction can be effected. An abandonment study is appropriate when it is necessary to demolish or substantially renovate tenant improvements within a building. When existing tenant improvements are demolished, the undepreciated basis for the tenant improvements can be deducted in the year in which it is realized they no longer have value or when the demolition occurs. The current owner can deduct the undepreciated cost of the tenant improvements even if the prior owner disbursed payments for the tenant improvements. The tax cut available from improvements installed by previous owner or tenant is not intuitive. An abandonment study identifies the value of the demolished or renovated property.
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