December 20, 1993; School District 504 (Slayton)
12/20/1993 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.
Note: In December 1999, staff of the Information Policy Analysis Division, on behalf of the Commissioner, redacted not public data from this opinion. The redaction was necessary to bring the data in the opinion into compliance with amendments the Legislature made to Minnesota Statutes, section 13.072, the advisory opinion enabling legislation. Facts and Procedural History:On December 1, 1993, the Commissioner of Administration received a request for an opinion from Ms. Claire C. Olson and Mr. Kevin J. Rupp, attorneys for Independent School District No. 504, the Slayton School District, and hereinafter District 504 .In their request for an opinion, the school district attorneys stated the following facts. X was employed by District 504 as a high school teacher until November 1, 1993, the date of his resignation. In October, 1993, an individual brought information regarding X's conduct to the attention of Superintendent Cornelius Smit. Specifically, the individual presented Superintendent Smit with two documents from X's martial dissolution court file: an Affidavit of X's wife, and X's Responses to Requests for Admissions. Upon receipt of this information, Superintendent Smit authorized the Ratwik law firm to conduct an investigation into the allegations regarding X's conduct. X resigned from employment with the School District, as a part of a settlement between the School District and X, before the investigation was completed.
Superintendent Smit is the School District's Responsible Authority. On November 15, 1993, X wrote Smit requesting a copy of his personnel file and demanding to know the source of the information which initiated the investigation. Smit provided X with a copy of his personnel file. Smit denied X's demand for the identity of the source. This denial is based on the District's determination that the identity of the source is unrecorded and thus not government data subject to dissemination. Further, the District has determined that even if the source's identity was government data, the data is harassment data (Minn. Stat 13.43. subd. 8) to which X is not entitled.
Issues:
The issues raised by Ms. Olson and Mr. Rupp in their opinion request, were stated by them as follows:
Discussion:
Issue 1:Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes Sections 13.03 and 13.04, subdivision 3, X is entitled to gain access to either public or private data on individuals that identifies him and is currently maintained about him by District 504. Public and private data on individuals are discrete classifications of government data, which is the all encompassing term used by the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (hereinafter MGDPA ) to describe the overall subject of the Act which is the regulation of government data. Government data is defined by the MGDPA as . . . all data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by any state agency, political subdivision, or statewide system regardless of its physical form, storage media or conditions of use. In the course of dealing with certain allegations made about X, Superintendent Smit met with an unnamed individual. This individual provided the Superintendent with copies of court records that were part of the information filed in a marital dissolution action involving X. According to the facts presented by District 504, Superintendent Smit did not, either at the meeting, or at any time thereafter make any written record that identifies the individual who shared the copies of the court documents with him. The only place this data exists within District 504 is in the mind of Superintendent Smit. X has the right to gain access to public or private government data maintained about him by District 504 or its agents. The real issue here, as discussed by the District's attorneys in their request letter, is whether data that only exists in the mind of the District's superintendent is government data within the meaning of the MGDPA? Given the very broad definition of the term government data, there has been for a number of years an open question as to the status of information whose only situs is in the mind of a government employee. That question was answered in the Keezer case decided by the Court of Appeals in late 1993. (See Keezer v. Spickard, 493 N.W. 2d 614 (Minn. Ct. App. 1992), review denied February 12, 1993.) In this case, Judge Peterson, writing for the panel, made it very clear that, in the view of the Court, the legislature did not intend for . . . the term 'government' data to be literally interpreted to include unrecorded data that exist only in a human brain. (Keezer, at 617.) From the facts presented by District 504, it appears that the only place that the information that identifies the individual who shared the copies of the records from the district court record with Mr. Smit is in the superintendent's mind. If it were recorded elsewhere within the District, X would have access to it if it were public or private data. (Keezer, at page 618) Based on the holding in the Keezercase, it is clear that the identity of this individual is not government data for purposes of the MGDPA. Issue 2:
Given the Commissioner's conclusion on the first issue raised by District 504, it is not necessary to offer an extensive opinion on the second issue. For the data in question to be harassment data, it would have to be government data. It is not.
Opinion:Based on the correspondence in this matter, my opinion on the issues raised by Ms. Olson and Mr. Rupp are as follows:
Signed:
Debra Rae Anderson
Dated: December 20, 1993
|
Personnel data
Mental impressions (See: Keezer v. Spickard, 493 N.W.2d 614)
Mental impressions (Keezer v. Spickard, 493 N.W.2d 614)
