Baby Rescued and the Budget!
Ohio Public Records Briefing - Edition #91
Happy July!
Did you all have an Independence Day full of fireworks, fun, and family? (We’re fans of alliteration if you couldn’t tell!) This edition is a very important one as we’re primarily going to detail what public records changes made it into the budget bill. That’s right, while you were binge watching videos like this last week, the General Assembly and Governor DeWine were finalizing the state budget (which included other kinds of laws covering things like public records).
While some of these changes are simple, others are going to take some time, analysis, and probably a future court case or two to sort through. With that in mind, here’s our preliminary summary.
The Budget!
Governor DeWine signed the budget just ahead of the July 1st deadline. The governor exercised 67 line-item vetoes on the 5,700 page budget bill! The good news for us is that none of those vetoes were related to public records. Let’s look at the public records changes:
LPR / Flock Cameras
A new exception (R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(yy)) is created to protect data and images from license plate readers maintained in a law enforcement database. This means that any images as well as any other data (e.g., GPS or location data) captured by license plate readers is now a “yellow light” exception that can be withheld.
Attorney work product:
A new exception (R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(zz)) is created to protect “Attorney work product record.” This exception protects records that document the independent thought processes, mental impressions, legal theories, strategies, analysis, or reasoning of an attorney or the agent of an attorney made in reasonable anticipation of litigation. This exception protects records that aren’t CLEIR or trial preparation records. Based on the text of the law, this exception doesn’t have any expiration date, and these records could be withheld indefinitely.