Commonwealth of Massachusetts STATE ETHICS COMMISSION One Ashburton Place - Room 619 Boston, Massachusetts 02108 Hon. Barbara A. Dortch?Okara (ret.) Chair Karen L. Nober Executive Director May 5, 2015 Todd Wallack Reporter Boston Globe todd.wallack@globe.com Dear Mr. Wallack: This is a follow up to my letter to you of April 30, 2015, and our conversation on May 1, 201 S. The legal basis for the requirement to redact home addresses and other information from Statements of Financial Interests (?SFls?) before producing them in response to public records requests was noted in my April 30Lh letter. G.L. c. 268B, 3(d) requires the Commission to make SFIs available for public inspection, but, ?in its discretion,? to exempt home addresses from public disclosure. In 2004, the Legislature amended the public records law, G.L. c. 4, 7(26)(c) and to exempt from disclosure home addresses and home telephone numbers of non-elected public employees, and names, home addresses, and home telephone numbers of state employees? family members. We understand the purpose of those amendments to be the protection of the safety and privacy of non-elected public employees, and of family members of all public employees. In addition, a separate public records law exemption, G.L. c. 4, requires redaction of information ?the disclosure of which may constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.? The Commission therefore understands G.L. c. 4, 7(26)(c) and to require the redaction from SFIs of the home addresses and telephone numbers of non-elected public employees, as well as the names, home addresses, and home telephone numbers of all public employees? family members, and the names of trusts that incorporate the names and/or addresses of public employees and their family members, before SFIs are publicly released. In addition, the Commission understands G.L. c. 4, 7(26)(c) to require redaction of personal email addresses of state employees and their family members. Moreover, we believe that the requirement that we redact home address and similar information for non-elected public employees and public employees? family members is reasonable and appropriate, in that these exemptions to the public records law are intended to protect important privacy and security interests. As explained in my previous letter, our primary Phone: 617-371?9500 or 888-485-4766 Todd Wallack May 5, 2015 concern is with the fact that our current redaction process is labor-intensive, and, therefore, time- consuming. As a result, the redaction process affects our ability to respond quickly to public records requests for SFIs, especially when numerous SFIs are requested. As I noted before, we regret these delays and agree that they are inconsistent with the statutory goal of making SFI information (to the extent not protected) available to the public in a timely way. As I also noted, we are actively working to eliminate these delays by procuring a new electronic SFI ?ling application, which, we expect, will enable us to redact protected information ??om SFIs using an automated system. We have successfully advocated for bond funding to replace our current SFI electronic ?ling application with the current and former Executive Branch agencies responsible for capital bonding projects, and also with the Legislature. The requested funding has been provided, and we expect that a new application will enable us to greatly reduce or eliminate the delays and costs that are currently unavoidable when we ful?ll requests for large numbers of SFIs. We expect to have this new system Operational before the end of this year. In sum, we do not take any issue with the current state of the law, but rather with the current state of our electronic resources. The current system is not set up to perform redaction operations more ef?ciently because it was developed in 2002. At that time, it was uncommon for this agency to receive requests for large numbers of SFIs. The legacy system predates the current expectation that large amounts of information will be readily available electronically, and it also predates the 2004 changes to the public records law requiring protection of home address and other information, as already described. Very truly yours, ?by; Deirdre Roney General Counsel