February 7, 2001; City of Maplewood
2/7/2001 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:For purposes of simplification, the information presented by the government entity that requested this opinion is presented in summary form. Copies of the complete submissions are on file at the offices of IPA and, except for any data classified as not public, are available for public access. On December 18, 2000, IPA received a letter dated December 14, 2000, from Robert Fowler, an attorney representing the City of Maplewood. In his letter, Mr. Fowler requested that the Commissioner issue an opinion regarding the classification of certain data that the City maintains. At IPA's request, Mr. Fowler sent a clarifying letter dated December 19, 2000. A summary of the facts is as follows. Mr. Fowler wrote that a former Maplewood employee who signed a separation agreement is now alleging, pursuant to the agreement's penalty clause, the City has violated the agreement. The former employee's attorney wrote a letter to the City; the data at issue are those contained in the letter. Mr. Fowler provided the Commissioner with a copy of the letter. Mr. Fowler argued that the data in the letter are private pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, section 13.43, personnel data. Issue:In his request for an opinion, Mr. Fowler asked the Commissioner to address the following issue:
Discussion:Data on individuals collected because the individual is or was an employee of a government entity are classified pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, section 13.43. Subdivision 2 of section 13.43 provides the types of employee data that are public and subdivision 4 classifies most other types of employee data as private. Upon examination of the letter, it is the Commissioner's determination that the data in the letter are data about the former employee and, as such, are classified by section 13.43. The data in the letter are not those listed as public in section 13.43, subdivision 2. Therefore, the data are private and not available to the public. A final note is in order. Mr. Fowler stated that although he believes the data to be private pursuant to section 13.43, subdivision 2, because the letter is a notice of claim and request for arbitration related to [his/her] employment termination agreement, the data arguably could be public under section 13.39, civil investigative data. Mr. Fowler cited St. Peter Herald v. City of St. Peter, 496 N.W.2d 812 (Minn. 1993). In St. Peter Herald, the court wrote, Inasmuch as a notice of claim is not data collected by...a political subdivision,' it cannot be classified as either protected nonpublic data or confidential.' The Commissioner finds the facts of the opinion at hand distinguishable from those of St. Peter Herald. In St. Peter Herald, the court was asked to determine whether the City, citing section 13.39, had appropriately denied access to the notice of claim. The Court did not discuss the applicability of section 13.43, presumably because the data in the notice of claim were not about a current or former employee. In the situation before the Commissioner, the data are about a former Maplewood employee. Furthermore, in St. Peter Herald, the applicability of section 13.39 arose only because the City of St. Peter relied upon that statutory provision to deny access to the data. Here, it does not appear the chief attorney acting for Maplewood has determined that a civil legal action is pending, which must occur before an entity can deny access based on section 13.39. Additional information about section 13.39 and the St. Peter Herald case can be found in Advisory Opinions 94-006, 95-040, 95-050, 96-044, and 98-017. Opinion:Based on the facts and information provided, my opinion on the issue that Mr. Fowler raised is as follows:
Signed: David F. Fisher
Dated: February 7, 2001 |
Civil investigative data
Personnel data
Notice of claim
Civil investigative data (13.39)
Settlement agreements
