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Committee adds amendments to bill streamlining judges’ personally identifiable information redaction process
Summary
House Bill 199 would change how judges' personally identifiable information is removed from public government websites, replacing a centralized database idea with a form-based process routed through the Administrative Office of the Courts and local governments; committee approved amendments and passed the bill.
Representative Kelly introduced House Bill 199 as a cleanup measure aimed at protecting judges' personally identifiable information from public disclosure and to reduce cost to taxpayers. "We realized that having 1 website where everyone's personally identifiable information was kept together may not be the best idea in case it got hacked," Representative Kelly said, describing why the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) sought a different approach.
Under the measure described in committee, judges would fill out a form listing contact details such as phone numbers and home addresses; the AOC would use that information to coordinate with county and city governments to remove or restrict those data from public websites. Kelly said the change follows conversations with cybersecurity experts and aims to reduce risk and cost: an earlier plan estimated an implementation cost near $177,000; the revised process would cost about $27,000, producing roughly $150,000 in savings to taxpayers per the sponsor's presentation.
Committee members probed whether the protection could be extended to other elected officials and whether property records would be affected. Kelly said last year's related measure (Senate Bill 580) and this year's proposal were specifically focused on judges, though he acknowledged the question of extending protections could be revisited. He also confirmed the bill's scope was intended to remove certain data from public websites, and that property-record redactions and other local practices vary.
The sponsor offered written amendments described as changes in verbiage and process; the committee approved the amendments by voice vote and then passed the bill.
Votes at a glance: House Bill 199 — amendments adopted by voice vote; bill passed by voice vote. No roll-call tally was recorded in the transcript.
