Records on state employees' unused sick leave are public

From the Winter 2000 issue of The News Media & The Law, page 12.

The state Supreme Court in Des Moines ruled in October that the public has a right to know how individual government employees are compensated for unused sick leave. But the court said releasing the addresses, dates of birth, and genders of the employees would amount to an invasion of privacy that an exemption to the state's open records law is meant to protect.

The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette had requested records concerning the amount of sick-leave compensation city employees received in 1996. A union for city workers objected to the request, saying that whatever interest the public has in monitoring government expenditures is outweighed by the employees' right to privacy.

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The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette reporter Rick Smith requested from the city of Cedar Rapids records concerning the identities of municipal workers and the amount of sick-leave compensation each had received in 1996. The local chapter of a government worker's union, which represents the affected municipal workers, brought suit in state court in Cedar Rapids to prevent the city from disclosing the information. The Gazette Company, the newspaper's publisher, and the Iowa Newspaper Association, among other state journalism organizations, joined the case as intervenors.

The Cedar Rapids trial court ruled that aggregate information about sick-leave compensation is public under the state's open records act, but that linking the information to particular employees -- through name, address, date of birth, and gender -- would be an invasion of privacy protected by the law's privacy exemption.

In its appeal, the Gazette Company urged the state Supreme Court in Des Moines to recognize the public's considerable interest in monitoring compensation paid to government employees. To rule that the release of such information violates the privacy interests of government employees frustrates the well-established right to know how government is spending public money, the Gazette argued.

Furthermore, the newspaper argued that basic employee information such as name, date of birth, and home address is not personal information that should be protected by the privacy exemption. And even if the information were personal, the newspaper urged, the public's interest in monitoring government spending outweighs any privacy interest in keeping that information secret.

"[T]his case is not about private citizens, but rather public employees, with a diminished expectation of privacy," attorneys for the Gazette Company argued to the court in briefs. "The aggregate of the information sought, i.e., identities, addresses, and leave sought and amount paid for it, is information that sheds light on how the government works -- whether public money is spent appropriately on compensation of its employees."

The workers' union, however, argued that the information requested by the Gazette is protected by the open records act's privacy exemption, which covers "personal information in personnel records." Such information can be made public, the union argued, only if an allegation of fraud or abuse exists to overcome the presumption in favor of privacy. No such allegations have been levied in this case, the union noted.

"The information requested by media intervenors would provide the public very little information about how city government works or how the decision making process occurs," argued the attorneys for the union and its local president, Wayne Clymer, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court. "However, the privacy interest in date of birth, utilization of sick leave, gender, utilization of vacation days, utilization of comp time, and other individual use of the various categories of pay sought to be disclosed impinge on much more than a very slight privacy interest."

In addition to information about the amount of sick-leave compensation city workers had received, the newspaper said it needed the corresponding names, addresses, genders, and dates of birth of the workers to confirm who had received what compensation.

The Supreme Court in Des Moines in October rejected the newspaper's contention that the requested information is not personal information covered by the exemption. Instead, the court engaged in a balancing test that looked to the public purpose behind the request, the scope of the privacy invasion, and whether the information was available elsewhere, among other factors.

Ultimately, the court ruled that the newspaper can obtain the names of individual employees and the amount of sick-leave compensation each received because the public has a right to know how public employees are compensated for unused sick leave.

Releasing information about the amount paid to public employees for their unused sick leave does not violate the employees' right to keep their medical histories private, the court announced.

Compensation given to public employees is a matter of legitimate concern to the public, Justice Linda Neuman wrote for the court. The fact that some employees might be embarrassed by reporting on compensated sick leave "is not a controlling consideration." The public interest is not satisfied by the limited disclosure in aggregate form with no link to an individual name, Neuman wrote.

But the Supreme Court stopped short of ruling that all of the requested information is public. More personal information such as employee addresses, genders, and dates of birth is protected by the open records law's privacy exemption, the court ruled.

"The gravity of the invasion into an employee's personal privacy with this information far exceeds the revelation of sick pay details," the court said. "[W]e are not convinced that the disclosure of addresses, gender or birth dates advances the general purpose of the open records law or the particular examination proposed here by the media -- to open to public scrutiny the use of sick leave and vacation pay by public employees in 1996." (Clymer v. Cedar Rapids)