PIM interview: Data privacy activist Rich Neumeister is always on the case

[This interview first ran in the April 10, 2009 issue of the PIM Weekly Report.]
Among the hordes of lobbyists who ply their trade at the Capitol, only a few are unpaid citizen activists. And of these, the most indefatigable is privacy and public data expert Rich Neumeister, who’s been treading the halls there for 30 years now. Last month Neumeister won the prestigious John R. Finnegan Award from the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information, and he was, appropriately, the first Finnegan winner who is not employed in the industry.

PIM talked with Neumeister this week about three or four privacy and public data-related measures that he’s bird-dogging at present, and about why he keeps at it after so many years.

PIM: Let’s talk through the bills you mentioned to me at the Capitol. One of them deals with disclosure of public employees’ outside remuneration, correct?

Neumeister: For a great number of years, our statutes have said that if a public employee received additional remuneration either publicly or from a private source, that type of information has been public. Say, for example, a person is employed in a position where a supervisor or director wants to know what your outside income or outside involvement might be because it might conflict with your public job, they’ll ask for that information, and that information becomes government data. There can be concerns about undue influence, cronyism or whatever.

PIM: And there’s a bill now to make it non-public.

Neumeister: Right. And the way that bill came about is, last year the Minnesota Daily asked the University of Minnesota about the outside income that Tubby Smith and the other coaches at the university were making. The university then decided to ask for an advisory opinion from the Department of Administration. These opinions aren’t legally binding. But if a public entity relies on such an opinion, it can be a [legal] defense [for their actions].

The commissioner of administration issued an opinion that remuneration means only public moneys. What they decided to do, which in my view is unusual, is to turn that opinion into a bill proposal [that would have the force of law]. It’s in HF1083, the [Rep. Joe] Mullery [(DFL-Minneapolis)] omnibus data practices bill. The Senate version is by [Sen.] Mary Olson [(DFL-Bemidji)].

There was testimony on the Senate side that “remuneration” has historically meant data on public or private payments to these employees, if the information is collected. But what you have now is a possibility that this could become law, and you would lose the opportunity to find out about public employees’ outside work.

PIM: Another bill you’re tracking would diminish the standard for correcting errors contained in employment background check files.

Neumeister: Yes. It involves a person’s ability to make sure that when criminal records are used in background checks about them, they’re accurate. What they’ve been trying to do is insert a “good faith effort” standard [for maintaining the accuracy of records]. That provision has been overturned in the Senate version, but that language is still in the House bill.

PIM: And this would replace a current legal standard that requires the correction of any errors in the background check records.

Neumeister: That’s the law. It’s a brand-new law, and it’s been discussed for many years. The first year it was killed by the data brokers. Last year, under the leadership of [Sen. Mee] Moua [(DFL-St. Paul)] and a couple of other senators, they put it in a conference bill, and it’s set to become law in July or August of 2009.

But now the data brokers are coming back to sort of water it down. This is what the [House] bill now says: “Business screening services shall make all updates to Minnesota criminal records as most recently provided by the agency or courts in a timely manner and make a good faith effort to insure that the records are accurate. Business screening services shall not be liable for inaccurate data which is the result of a good faith effort to comply with this section.”

That good-faith language was taken out on the Senate side. It may or may not make it back in conference.

In that same [omnibus data practices bill] is a DNR [public data provision]. On the Senate side, [Sen.] Mary Olson makes all DNR records that relate to licenses–boats, ATVs, hunting and fishing licenses–non-public. For the last three years, they’ve been non-public because of some connection between DNR and the Department of Public Safety. Driver’s licenses are protected by federal law. If someone plows into your yard in their car and you see the license plate and want to get their information, you can’t even get that. The bottom line is that you’ve got to hire a private dick to get that information for you.

So what they did, between the DNR and DPS, was [to say] that the federal law covered DNR license data. But basically, it’s a Swiss-cheese kind of protection. They say they’re all non-public, but they’ve got, you know, something like 14 different exceptions. In the Senate omnibus bill, [Sen.] Mary Olson is proposing to make all DNR license data non-public. In the House proposal that [Rep. Mary Liz] Holberg [(R-Lakeville)] did, there’s an opt-out provision. In other words, the data is public, but you can opt out of your records being public.

The other bill [I'm watching] involves the University of Minnesota and information about when they’re partners in private equity and venture capital types of things. They want to have less public accountability than the current Board of Investment that handles the pension fund investments and things like that. Their point of view is that because of our freedom of information laws, they can’t get some of the premier firms that do private equity and venture capital [to work with them]. They use Sequoia as an example. Sequioa is one of the big ones. They helped to get Google going, and reaped millions of dollars for those people who invested in it.

What the university is proposing is much different from what our Minnesota Board of Investments has [done]. They’re not interested to have market values disclosed. They’re not interested to have the internal rate of return disclosed, and some other things like that. That’s an issue, from my perspective, because you want to be sure that the investments are good and that they’re ethical and there are no conflicts of interest. Their view is that too much FOIA means these venture capital people aren’t going to invest, because they don’t want other venture capital people to come in and find out where they’re putting their money and their efforts. The university says they do get a high rate of return on things they’ve done in the past, and that it helps with scholarships to the U and things like that.

It’s a fair issue. I recognize that there are some things that should remain non-public, but I’m looking for more specific things, like how much money do they pay the people who manage those funds. They don’t want to say what they’re paying specific companies. They’re willing to give the aggregate numbers, but that’s all.

One version of this that I worked on with [Rep. Jeremy] Kalin [(DFL-North Branch)] is now in the House data practices bill. In the Senate, it’s in the higher ed bill.

PIM: Congratulations again, by the way, on your recent Finnegan award. How long have you been playing the part of citizen lobbyist on privacy and public data issues over there?

Neumeister: As a kid, I lived near the Capitol, so I’ve always had the Capitol in my veins. I still remember living on Sherburne Avenue and going down to the old fallout shelters, which are the tunnels now. You saw all the crackers and cans of water they had in the shelters.

I started going up to the Capitol in the late 1970s to deal with issues of prison reform. Bill McCutcheon was my state senator at the time, and I would go up and get stuff from his office. As time went on, I did some volunteer work for Common Cause at the Capitol, I did some volunteer lobbying for the St. Paul Coalition for the Homeless back in ‘81. But the interest in freedom of information and privacy is something I’ve had for 30-plus years. I still remember Sy Hersh’s story in December of ‘74 that pointed out all the stuff that was happening with spying on Americans. That year I lived in Washington, and I worked for a [high school-based] program called Close Up from January to May of ‘75. I did some workshops on spying.

I come from a low-income background. I was a projects kid, raised in the McDonough housing project here in St. Paul. Our family was one of the first families in 1971 to go on scattered-site housing. This is where public housing would go out and buy a house rather than keeping everyone bunched up in the projects. They bought one out on the east side, right near the Battle Creek area. Government was always involved in those kinds of things.

PIM: How many hours a week do you spend at the Capitol, and how many outside hours doing reading and research? Do you know?

Neumeister: It varies. Just take this week–all day Monday, from 8 [a.m.] to 10 [p.m.], and from 8 to 6 Tuesday. It gets busy between January and March. I follow tons of bills–right now 30 or 40 bills. Sometimes you learn things just by reading the [House and Senate] journals that you didn’t see before.

One of the things I spent a lot of time on this year was [police] intelligence. I knew the Department of Public Safety was coming out with an intelligence-gathering bill [SF 1103/HF 1449]. That was hours and hours of research and reading and getting ready. That bill’s going to come back next year, but I was prepared for it. I went and shared with legislators that this was no easy thing, it was something that they needed to take a hard look at. And as you know, that proposal was laid over in committee, and my critique of the proposal as it is is that the devil’s in the details. As I shared with some of the people at BCA, it still needs a lot of work.

And a lot of work with law enforcement. I’m not someone who just comes out hollering. That’s something I’ve always tried to do. Depending on the issue, I try to come back with concrete [counter-]proposals. On something like the intelligence-gathering proposal, if law enforcement and some other [interested] groups can get together and work some things out, I’m willing to work with them. I’ve seen what other states do, and I think we can have a good bill if there’s a need. And I think there’s probably some need for intelligence-gathering. I’ve said that in letters and publicly. But the current bill isn’t the right one.

PIM: You have said that this all started as a function of the role that government played in your life from early on.

Neumeister: I’d say it’s a combination of being raised in a public housing setting and seeing the role government had in my life and my family’s life. Over time your interests develop.

PIM: Why have you kept at it so long? It’s a huge commitment.

Neumeister: Well, I found that one person can make a difference. It’s one thing I’ve always tried to share with people. Individuals can make a difference. That’s what drives me. There are things I think people ought to be able to see about how their government functions. Institutions should not be able to control people’s lives, either public or private. That’s one of the reasons for a piece of major legislation 20 years ago that I brought to the attention of legislators–[former Sen. Gene] Merriam and Steve Trimble–and as a result we in Minnesota have a legal right to get access to our personnel files. We can get free copies of our personnel files. We can either amend, or by mutual agreement delete, incorrect information in our personnel files. And all that is enforced by the Department of Labor and Industry. It’s something a lot of people now don’t know about, but it’s a major law.

And that’s also part of the foundation of the Minnesota data practices law. People have a right to know the information about them that’s held by government.