An important piece of legislation was unanimously approved last week by both the House and Senate, and it’s now headed for Gov. Dayton’s desk. Commonly known as S.F.1770–- the “Timberjay bill”—may not have captured many headlines, but its significance goes to the heart of government accountability. The bill would overturn an unfortunate ruling last fall from the Minnesota Supreme Court, and reaffirm that citizens have a right to information about private businesses that contract with government entities.
The legislation is rooted in efforts by the Timberjay, a newspaper that serves Ely and Tower, to get information about a major school construction project. Publisher Marshall Helmberger, concerned about costs and other troubling aspects of a project, asked the school district for details about the construction contracts.
The district didn’t have these records, so Helmberger went to the contractor, citing a provision in state law that requires public access to certain information held by a government contractor that shows how the contract is being performed.
But the contractor in this case, Fortune 500 company Johnson Controls, refused Helmberger’s request. The Timberjay sued and won its case, only to have the ruling overturned by the state Supreme Court.
The Timberjay bill seeks to clarify the state’s Data Practices Act so there’s no question that the public has access to details showing how private companies are performing contracts with government agencies in cases where the agency fails to obtain all of the pertinent information from the contractor.
There’s a potential problem however. Before giving final approval to the bill, the House last week added an amendment dealing with a separate data practices issue involving the state Department of Public Safety. Apparently the Department doesn’t like the amendment, and may be trying to persuade the governor to veto the whole bill. Such a move would be extremely unfortunate, because the public benefits of the Timberjay bill itself far outweigh whatever minor issues the Public Safety amendment may entail.
In every community in the state you can find many examples of private companies doing business with government agencies. The Timberjay wrangle, at its core, epitomizes the everyday efforts of reporters and taxpayers to ensure that public business—in this case, the spending of billions of public dollars—is open to the scrutiny of citizens.
Gov. Dayton should sign the Timberjay bill so that this important goal can be secured.
Lisa Hills
Executive Director
Minnesota Newspaper Association
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