Committee advances bill to exempt DOCR employee work schedules from public records

House Bill 1415, which would add Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employee work schedules to the list of exempt records, received a due-pass recommendation from the House Industry, Business and Labor Committee after testimony that an employee had shared nursing schedules with a recently paroled resident.

The bill’s sponsor, Representative Emily O’Brien, told the committee that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCR) is not considered a law-enforcement agency under the current open-records provisions and therefore its employee schedules are not currently protected. She said the bill “would add the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation work schedules to be an exempt record.”

DOCR’s chief human-resources representative testified the exemption is needed “for two reasons: employee safety and prison facility safety.” The witness described an incident in which an employee used a personal cell phone to photograph nursing schedules and sent the image to someone who had recently been paroled. The employee was later terminated, the witness said, but added the department could not discipline specifically for sharing schedules because the schedules were considered open records under current statute.

Committee members asked how schedules are currently released and whether they are posted online. Committee questioning established that DOCR schedules are not posted online and that members of the public could request them under the existing open-records interpretation; staff-level distribution within a facility can also occur. Vice Chair Osterley pressed whether an administrative policy could stop staff from sharing schedules; DOCR’s representative said internal policy could limit employee sharing but would not solve public-records requests because statute currently treats such schedules as open records for non-law-enforcement agencies.

Some members said the bill was narrowly targeted to DOCR; others suggested the question could be broader and apply across agencies. Representative Shower and others said they supported the bill given safety concerns working with convicted individuals; Representative Shots (resisting the motion) noted the committee had only one documented incident and raised the possibility of administrative procedures and requester screening.

Representative Ruby moved to give HB 1415 a due-pass recommendation; Representative Casper seconded. The committee adopted the motion on a roll call and assigned a sponsor to carry the bill to the floor.

The bill now proceeds to the full House for consideration; effective dates and any fiscal notes were not specified during the hearing.