Rockford Hills (City Hall) – We want to first thank you, the people, in putting your trust in us through your votes and through your support in the campaign trail. For those we did not speak to or convince, we thank you for exercising your opinion at the polls and participating, your voice will not go unheard. 

One of our campaign promises was to improve communication and we seek to honor that now to clarify some information which has been lacking regarding H.R. 353 the FOIA bill, a bill that was recently veto-ed. First off, we thank the legislators who put the time and effort into drafting this bill, and we recognize their want to honor their promises in getting that bill moving, however both ourselves and Governor Marino were approached about issues which we will detail shortly.

Because I was not yet in office, our staff passed on that information to Governor Marino who then elected to veto that bill. She provided her reasoning in her notice of veto which can be viewed here. While we had no power in this, we agree with her decision to do so and would have done so ourselves. 

Drafting of legislation is a complex process and while we are unflinching in our knowledge that the legislators had the best intentions with this bill, we believe some details were missed. Those details are extremely important and open up large gaps which could unintentionally victimize the citizens of our state and put important, life changing records at risk of improper release.

The issue that was brought to our attention was the definition of “Next of Kin” who are given blanket permission to get access to a person’s records by this bill. There is no definition given for next of kin in the FOIA bill, however it does reference a definition only in part from a different bill, H.R. 345, but even that definition is too vague. That bill just indicates “A person’s closest living relative or relatives.” Given family trees are not registered with the state, aside from adoptions, it leaves those who are hoping to fulfill FOIA requests with no reasonable way to do so or easy mechanism to follow. More importantly it leaves an easy way of exploiting this process for bad actors. When we are dealing with something as precious as our identities, our records, and our private information, we want to see a more specific definition of next of kin.

While we support citizen’s rights to gain access to their information and we look forward to another version of this bill, we wholeheartedly agree with Governor Marino’s decision. We invite the citizens affected by this to contact their new State Representatives to suggest a resolution for this issue so that they can get this bill back to a vote as quickly as possible. 

We would also like to use this opportunity to deeply thank our departing state reps and executive branch who have put blood, sweat, and tears into an extremely difficult term. We know they will all go on to great things and wish them a well deserved rest. 

Sincerely,

Jeremy Barbant

Governor of San Andreas