Railroad Accidents Open Records (H 7835)

We opposed a bill which would make it crime to release any police report involving a railroad fatality and all communications between railroad employees in those situations. We noted that if the intent of the bill is to protect the names of individuals involved in these fatalities, APRA already has a long-standing exemption for personally identifiable information that requires use of a balancing test to determine if there is a strong enough public interest in the information that outweighs any privacy concerns. This is an appropriate standard to use, and there is no compelling reason to exempt information from that balancing when something as consequential as a railroad fatality occurs.