Ohio public records law question

Recordkeepers & administrative public offices across Ohio are in a quandary this week, awaiting word from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Attorney General Marc Dann on how to proceed with changes recently made to the state’s public record law following passage, last December, of Substitute House Bill 141… and the confusion’s growing, according to a Columbus Dispatch article Sunday.

“The bill tweaked privacy protections already afforded police officers, firefighters, EMTs, prosecutors, and others,” the article says, but it’s the bill’s deletion of the phrase about personal information “maintained in a personnel record” from the original wording of the statutes that’s caught Secretary Brunner’s attention and that of Attorney General Dann.

Franklin County Auditor Joseph Testa, who was one of the ones first seeking advice, commented that with the “personnel record” stipulation stripped, it appears any public record, which could include deeds, mortgages, transfers of ownership, and voter registration. “Basically, what this bill would do is say these things are no longer public records,” Testa told the Dispatch. “It’s very, very far-reaching, and not a good direction to be going in.”

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien formally requested guidance from the Attorney General in April. The Secretary of State has issued an advisory to Ohio election boards, also “in the interim…encouraging the sharing of the advisory with their individual prosecutors, so as to allow counsel the opportunity to become familiar with the new provisions and determine whether or not to notify other political subdivisions in the county whose employees may be protected by this legislation.”


H.B. 141
(bill analysis)