Senate approves date of birth secrecy bill
The Senate this morning unanimously approved a bill making the birth dates of public employees confidential.
Senate Bill 1753 passed 44-0. There was no discussion. The bill, authored by Sen. Debbe Leftwich, D-Oklahoma City, now goes to the House for consideration. It does not have a title, which is needed to become law.
Open government advocates oppose the bill. Public employee groups support it.
Without dates of birth, it is nearly impossible to conduct accurate background checks of employees who are paid by taxpayer dollars.
We wrote a story about the issue last month showing why it’s impossible to tell whether more than 250 public workers in the Oklahoma City area are sex offenders because local governments won’t release their dates of birth despite state law and a recent attorney general opinion calling for the release of the information. Read the story here.
Public employee birth dates are currently open under the state Open Records Act, and are an open record in many other states.
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Comments
When the state has done a back ground check before hiring people why do you need to use that as a reason to get into the personel life of state employees? Is that how the do treats it’s employees?
I think the Daily Oklahoman should publish the full name and date of birth of all of the OPUBCO employees before asking the State of Oklahoma to do the same.
If you want the information of others (State employees), give up all your information of your employees and everybody else in the State, and you wouldn’t have a problem with this issue. If it’s so good to know, then let the information flow.
Once again, making sure their campaign money is being protected.