Bill that would make more attorney general data public fails in Minnesota House vote
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House Republicans saw the first bill put to a vote this year fall to defeat, delivering a setback on a GOP measure to require more data disclosure by the attorney general’s office.
The bill, which failed to get the needed 68 votes Thursday, would have declared more data from state attorney general investigations as public. It could be withheld only if it is regarding individual people, but not if it applied to organizations, businesses or nonprofits.
The bill could re-emerge later in the year.
House Majority Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said it would add transparency to the office.
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“It’s a very, very small bill. Should be very uncontroversial, you would think,” Niska said. “It changes two words in Minnesota’s sunlight law, which is called the Data Practices Act. It’s the law that protects our right as the people of Minnesota, to know what's going on in our government so that we can hold our government officials democratically accountable.”
The bill stems from a 2022 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that agreed the Attorney General did not have to turn over data about organizations or groups under Minnesota’s open records law. An energy industry group sued to try to get information from Ellison on private attorneys his office worked with lawsuits over possible climate harms of fossil fuels.
Niska said the current law allows for the attorney general’s office to work with advocacy groups without having to disclose it.
“They are able to protect data even when no individual is involved, even when there's no personal privacy interest that would be protected by that data,” he said. ”So what that has resulted in in the Attorney General’s Office is that they get to hide policy-making information the special interests that are influencing the work of that office. And they also get to hide investigative data.”
DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison disputed that transparency was the real aim. He said the bill is an attempt to hurt the work of his office.
Ellison said it would make working with other states on cases more difficult, as well as make organizations and businesses fear retaliation if they cooperate.
“We are imbued with the same privilege that any other law office has in the area of client attorney-client privilege, and with work product privilege, that’s the law business,” Ellison said. “What they want to do is somehow claim that we’re not giving them the data that they’re entitled to. But we’re not a regular agency. We are a law office.”
The bill was also the first test of the 67 to 66 majority Republicans have in the House. While they have a majority that can bring bills forward, they don’t have the 68 votes in the party to pass legislation without some DFL support.
Legislators often seek to expand or build exemptions into the state open records law. But the Legislature itself isn’t bound by the Data Practices Act that covers state agencies, local governments and other public entities.
Niska was asked about that before the vote.
“That’s been a question that’s been around a long time, that the Legislature has never been subject to the Data Practices Act in Minnesota,” he said. “There are some particular reasons that that hasn’t historically been done.”
In the past, legislators have argued that they need to protect interactions with constituents or that deliberations should be protected. Those laws have led to a lack of transparency in settlements and complaints dealing with legislators.