By Jim Siegel
The Columbus Dispatch
Copyright 2007 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
COLUMBUS, Ohio — An anti-identity-theft bill that would allow Ohioans to freeze their credit reports and require governments to remove Social Security numbers from documents posted on the Internet was unanimously approved by the Senate yesterday.
The bill also would scrub the names of police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, prosecutors, parole officers and some youth-services employees off government documents on the Internet. Names on property and voter-registration records would be replaced by initials.
The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police has argued that the change is needed to avoid giving criminals easy access to documents they could use to seek retribution against safety forces. But others, including the Ohio Newspaper Association, have called it an unnecessary restriction.
“Secrecy regarding public affairs and public officials that are paid for by the taxpayers of our state is dangerous,” Columbus lawyer and public-records expert Frederick Gittes wrote in a letter to senators. “Corruption is born and nurtured by secrecy.”
The vote came one day before the Privacy/Public Records Access Study Committee is expected to approve its final report. The panel was created by lawmakers to study public-records access and how it relates to identity theft. A key recommendation calls on lawmakers to “maintain, and not restrict, broad access to public records.”
Sen. David Goodman, co-chairman of the study committee, said he did not see a conflict between the report and the provisions of Senate Bill 6 that remove names from documents available online.
Compared to a measure the legislature passed in December 2006, “I think this bill actually creates greater openness,” the New Albany Republican said.
Goodman said the bill approved in December could erase all records of safety personnel from the Internet, instead of keeping initials. Others have not interpreted the bill that broadly, although it has caused confusion among county officials.
“I’m always for openness. I have concerns like anybody else of creating a secret police or having a secret government behind a veil,” Goodman said. “But there are always certain exceptions in being reasonable in addressing the personal safety of people on the front lines protecting us.”
Rep. Larry Wolpert, a Hilliard Republican and the other co-chairman of the records committee, agreed, noting that paper records such as deeds and mortgages can still be copied from county offices.
“Some situations require consensus and compromise, and this is probably one of them,” he said.
Senate Bill 6 now moves to the House, which in May passed a measure with similar credit-freeze provisions but without many of the additional requirements.
In addition, the bill would:
* Put into law the governor’s executive order that requires the Office of Information Technology to establish security policies to safeguard personal information held by the state. The move comes in response to the theft of a state database that contained personal information for more than 1.3 million individuals, businesses and other entities.
* Let the secretary of state refuse documents bearing Social Security numbers or federal tax numbers.
* Expand the statue of limitations for identity-theft prosecutions from one year from discovery to five years, and expand the time for civil action from four years to five.