August 12, 2008; City of Saint Paul
8/12/2008 10:14:43 AM
This is an opinion of the Commissioner of Administration issued pursuant to section 13.072 of Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13 - the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. It is based on the facts and information available to the Commissioner as described below.
Note: Minnesota Statutes, section 216B.0976, supersedes the conclusion the Commissioner reached here. See also 09-002.
Facts and Procedural History:On July 14, 2008, the Information Policy Analysis Division (IPAD) received an email dated same, from Chad Staul, Assistant City Attorney for the City of Saint Paul. In his letter, Mr. Staul asked the Commissioner to issue an advisory opinion regarding the classification of certain data. A summary of the facts as Mr. Staul provided them is as follows. In his opinion request he wrote: The City of Saint Paul does not run or maintain a public electric utility. The City residents have those needs met by privately owned companies. Those privately owned companies have turned down requests from the public to disclose all property addresses (presumably residential and commercial) that have gone without power for more than thirty days. The reason for the power shut off has not been specifically requested. Those private electric companies, however, are required by Saint Paul Legislative Code Chapter 46 (enclosed with this email) to provide this information to the City's code enforcement department for the purposes of allowing the City to monitor these properties in accordance with it policies. (This chapter has been in force in some manner since September 20, 1988) The city now has this data and a request is being made on the City to provide all of the property addresses that have gone without power for more than thirty days. This amounts to potentially hundreds of addresses within the City of Saint Paul. Minn. Stat. Sec. 13.685 classifies data on customers of municipal electric utilities as private and nonpublic data. However, there is no similar exception for data on customers of a privately owned electric utility that comes to a government entity. Issue:
Based on Mr. Staul's opinion request, the Commissioner agreed to address the following issue:
Discussion:
Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, government data are public unless otherwise classified. (Section 13.03, subdivision 1)
Although data on customers of municipal electric utilities are classified as private pursuant to section 13.685, the data at issue here are neither coming to the City of Saint Paul from a municipal electric company nor does the City run or own a municipal electric utility. Therefore, the data in question are not classified by section 13.685. Rather, the City is collecting the data in question from privately owned utility companies. The ordinance cited by Mr. Staul requires that the utilities provide the following data to the City: a notice whenever service has been discontinued for any reason for a period of thirty (30) days. The notice shall include the reason for the discontinuation of service. (Saint Paul Legislative Code, section 46.02) Once the property address and reason for discontinuation data are in the City's possession, they are government data. Because there is no statutory provision that classifies these data as anything other than public, they are public. This is the case for data about both residential and commercial properties. Opinion:Based on the facts and information provided, my opinion on the issues that Mr. Staul raised is as follows:
Signed: Dana B. Badgerow
Dated: August 12, 2008 |
Government Data
Municipal utility customer data (13.685 / 13.612)
