STATE

House backs government transparency bill

2015 court rulings weakened freedom of information law

Sean Collins Walsh
scwalsh@statesman.com,
Senate Bill 943 from Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, seeks to restore the strength of the Texas Public Information Act. [Stephen Spillman / for Statesman]

In a major victory for government transparency advocates, the Legislature has given final approval to a bill that would undo parts of two 2015 Texas Supreme Court decisions that critics say gutted the state's freedom of information law.

The House's vote Friday night in favor of Senate Bill 943 was the capstone of a multisession effort by Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, to restore the strength of the Texas Public Information Act after the court opened loopholes allowing state agencies and local governments to keep secret basic information and documents about how they spend taxpayer money on outside contractors and quasi-governmental entities.

"The Legislature is finally in a position to restore the public's right to know," Watson said in a statement Friday night. "If Texans are to hold their public officials accountable, access to public information is essential."

The Senate previously approved the bill 29-1, and the bill will now go to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.

Last session, Watson's first attempt at addressing the two court rulings — Boeing vs. Paxton and Greater Houston Partnership vs. Paxton — passed the Senate but foundered in the House, where then-Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, did not bring it up for a hearing in the Government Transparency and Operation Committee, which he chaired. Elkins lost re-election in 2018.

"SB 943 restores transparency ... by closing a loophole so big an airline can fly through it," Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, who carried the bill in the House, said on the floor Friday. It passed on a voice vote.

The court rulings expanded exceptions to the Public Information Act that allow governments to withhold records on contracting if the vendors claim the documents would reveal trade secrets or proprietary information, and on their dealings with quasi-governmental entities like chambers of commerce, that receive taxpayer money.

The rulings led to a broad application of the exceptions. The city of McAllen, for instance, refused to disclose how much it paid singer Enrique Iglesias to perform at a parade.

Watson and Capriglione worked before and during the session to craft the bill in a way that would minimize opposition from business interests that feared the new law would force them to reveal information that could be useful to their competitors.

Instead of requiring that all records that were publicly accessible before 2015 be available going forward, like the 2017 version of the legislation attempted to do, the new bill spells out information that cannot be kept secret, such as the terms of a contract, including price, duration and performance evaluation methods.