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Sunshine portal should include employee names
Heath Haussamen
When the House Judiciary Committee gave a do-pass recommendation this weekend to a bill that would create a publicly accessible database of financial information from government agencies in New Mexico, it took two steps forward and one step back.
That’s because the committee, before approving the “Sunshine Portal” bill, stripped a provision that would have included employees’ names in the database.
Let me say at the outset that this legislation is excellent, with or without the provision that would include employees’ names in the database. Imagine being able to go online to find, free of charge, detailed, up-to-date state government financial information including tax revenues, agency budgets and investment reports.
No more cumbersome public records requests and delays in receiving information. No more having to pay as much as $1 per page for copies.
But it’s even better if, when looking at lists of employees and the salaries they make, you can see their names, instead of just their titles.
Why? Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, has rightly pointed out the appropriate example. The governor has refused to release any information about 59 exempt employees he claims to have laid off in January. Rumors abound that some of these employees were simply transferred to classified positions.
Were names included in such a database, we’d be able to find out whether that’s true.
Transparency is about accessibility and accountability, and the example of the laid-off exempt employees shows how including employee names could discourage funny business.
Public information is public information
But there’s a more basic reason why employee names should be included in the database. State employee names, like the other financial information that would be included in this database, are public information. With the right public records request, you can obtain the name, title and salary of any state employee.
Public information is public information. Period. It’s all equal in New Mexico.
But what the House Judiciary Committee essentially decided to do on Saturday was make a statement that some public information should be more accessible than other public information. That is counter to the spirit of transparency, and it’s a slippery slope.
According to Welsh, who attended Saturday’s hearing, House Majority Leader Ken Martinez, a member of the committee, argued that it would be mean and invasive to include employee names in the database. And committee member Elias Barela said it could lead to agency in-fighting.
Those are bogus arguments. Giving the public easier access to public information isn’t invasive. And because it’s public information, agency employees can already find out how their pay stacks up against others, if they want.
The citizens of New Mexico have a right to know who their tax dollars are paying. That’s why employee names are already public. Including those names in the sunshine portal would make that public information much more accessible.
The bill should be approved – with or without the provision that would include employee names – but I would encourage the House to amend the legislation to add back in the provision that would include employee names in the database.
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powakee,
I don’t understand what pay disclosure has to do with dignity. I have always considered non-disclosure of pay a corporate game that causes the indignity of pay discrimination and over compensation for less qualified personnel.
Powakee,
In answer to your concerns, I would begin by questioning your assumption that publishing salaries comes at the cost of destroying dignity. And if it does, how does it just destroy the dignity of everyone except the “fat cats”, doesn’t it destroy their dignity too? I would argue that it does, and even more so, because their salaries are unjustifiable.
Therefore if we accept your premise that salaries should not be published, in order to preserve dignity, then no salaries should be published at all.
Then you are left with a trade off; do we gain more through transparency, than we lose in dignity? I would argue that we do. Furthermore, if you decide to keep some salaries secret, where do you stop? Do we have a right to know what the Governor makes? the State Auditor? the Secretary of the Public Education Department?
The amendment was not stripped to protect the little guy as they would have you believe. It was stripped to hide the salary of the “fat cats”. and you bought their story, hook, line, and sinker.
I have to disagree on this one if listing peoples’ names along with their pay or with information that can lead others to determine a particular employee’s pay. State workers give up enough to work for the state. While there are a few ‘fat cats’ and an apparent abuse by the current governor’s office as to the ‘fat cat’ pay that does not mean that every public employee’s pay should be identified. This bill will have the effect of stripping people of their dignity. If the response is that then they can just quit and go work somewhere else then the counter response is that (a) you will end up with a fair amount of turn over; (b) the people who don’t leave will simply be more mistreated by the public; (c) the treatment the public will receive from state workers will be worse than it is now; (d) we will end up with a bunch of state employees that are at a lower common denominator than that which we have now.
You can hem and holler all you want about public access and public information but you have to have a balance and you have to help people maintain their dignity. When the whining for public disclosure answers my concern here then I’ll reconsider my position as to this proposed law.
I am in complete agreement with Heath on this one. The Sunshine Portal should include the names of employees. The people of New Mexico have the right to know who is being paid with their tax dollars and the House should re-insert the provision that includes the names of employees.
How can it be an invasion of their privacy to give their names? The information should be readily available to the public, since in essence they work for us.