September 9, 1993; St. Louis County
9/9/1993 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.
Facts and Procedural History:On August 20, 1993, the Public Information Policy Analysis Division (PIPA) received a request for an opinion from Mr. Mark Anfinson, attorney for the Mesabi Daily News located in Virginia, Minnesota. The facts he recited were as follows. The St. Louis County Board is in the process of hiring a new county administrator. After consideration of applications, the County Board reduced its original list of applicants to three candidates and scheduled those three people for interviews with the County Board. Mr. Anfinson's client sought access to the names of those individuals and was told that the names would not be released until the candidates had undergone psychological testing by a private firm. It was Mr. Anfinson's view that these three applicants had become finalists for purposes of Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43 and therefore their names were public data. When his client did not receive the names from St. Louis County, Mr. Anfinson wrote to request a Commissioner's Opinion. In response to Mr. Anfinson's request, PIPA , on August 25, 1993, wrote to Marilyn Krueger, Chair of the St. Louis County Board of Commissioners. This letter informed the County of Mr. Anfinson's request, acquainted the County with the Commissioner's authority to issue opinions, asked for information the County might be able to provide to support its position of withholding the data and informed the County of the Commissioner's intent to issue an expedited opinion in this matter. A copy of this letter was sent to Mr. Allan Mitchell, the St. Louis County Attorney. On September 1, 1993, PIPA received a letter via facsimile transmission from Mr. Mitchell. In this letter Mr. Mitchell discussed the procedures put into effect by the County to select its new administrator and recited the history of the process followed by the County in selecting finalists for the position of county administrator. His letter was supplemented by a variety of memorandum and letters from various county personnel. In summary, the County's position is that they had reached a point in their selection process where only three candidates would be considered for the position. Under the selection process set up by the County, each candidate would be interviewed by the St. Louis County Board only if the candidate had not been ruled out of consideration by criminal history and credit checks into their background. In addition, before being selected to actually be interviewed, the candidate would have to successfully complete an evaluation process conducted by Personnel Decisions, Incorporated (PDI), a personnel consulting firm selected by the County to evaluate the candidates. Mr. Mitchell's letter stated that the criminal history, credit checks and PDI assessment for the three candidates were not completed until after the close of the business day on August 23, 1993. Once all three candidates were recommended by PDI, the County made their names public in a press release issued on the morning of August 24, 1993. Issue:The issue raised in Mr. Anfinson's request for an opinion is:
Discussion:Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43, the personnel data section of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act reverses the normal presumption that all government data is presumed to be public. In the case of personnel data, the legislature has chosen to provide a very specific list of data elements and types of data on public employees and on applicants for public employment that are public and then to go on to state that all other personnel data is private. (See Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43, subdivisions 2, 3 and 4.) In the case of applicants for public employment, Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43 states that certain data on applicants for public employment are public from the moment an application arrives in an agency subject to Chapter 13. Section 13.43 does provide special protection for the names of applicants by classifying those names as private data until the applicant becomes a finalist. In the instance of a personnel selection process such as the one used by St. Louis County, the name of any applicant for the position of St. Louis County Administrator would become public data when the applicant was selected to be interviewed by the appointing authority, the County Board. Analysis of the County's position leads to a conclusion that the County selected candidates to be interviewed by the County Board on a conditional basis. The County's explanation emphasizes that both the selection process and the communications made to candidates made it clear that a given candidate would not be interviewed if he or she did not survive the background checks and PDI assessment. The treatment of names of finalists in Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43 reflects a legislative judgement that balances the right of the public to gain access to information about candidates for public employment against the right of those candidates to not have their candidacy known to others. The legislature struck that balance at the point at which a candidate becomes a finalist. If the candidate is actually going to be interviewed by the appointed authority, then his or her name must be public. The candidates for the position of St. Louis County Administrator were, at the time the Mesabi Daily News made its request for their names, only tentative finalists. They were informed that the County Board would interview them but only if they survived the background checks and the assessment. In actuality, they were not finalists for purposes of Minnesota Statutes Section 13.43 subdivision 3 because the County's review of the background checks and PDI assessment could have lead to a decision to not interview a candidate thereby disqualifying that candidate as a finalist. Opinion:Based on the correspondence in this matter, it is my opinion that
Signed:
Debra Rae Anderson
Dated: September 9, 1993
|
Legislative authority and intent
Personnel data
Applicants for employment
Candidates for employment
Finalist for public employment (13.43, subd. 3)
