On January 29, 2013, the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee will take up SF No. 60, a bill that proposes to make citizen e-mail addresses submitted to government entities “not public” data under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. Such information includes e-mail addresses submitted for snow-plowing and other types of notification.
Last week, the House Civil Law Committee heard testimony from the author of the House companion bill, and referred the matter to the body’s Data Practices sub-committee for further deliberation.
The House version of the bill (HF No. 20) was amended last week to remove language that allowed e-mail addresses to be shared for “government purposes.”
MNCOGI has taken the position that e-mail addresses submitted for notification purposes should remain public data, but that government entities should notify citizen submitters that their data will be publicly available under the Data Practices Act.