Texas lawmakers will consider a bill aimed at shielding records and information relating to public employees, among others.

No coincidence here. Anyone who followed SB 48 (& HB 520) in the 2021 session of the Kentucky General Assembly, recognizes a different rationale but the same adverse consequences to the public's right to know.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/21rs/sb48.html

And, as in Kentucky, "Public information experts say there is no clear reason why the changes proposed in the bill would be necessary."

The Texas bill "would require an individual's written consent for a state agency to share their personal information."

The bill defines protected information to include "'one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of the individual,' in addition to location or identification numbers, but does not define what information meets that criteria.

The bill's sponsor 'declined to answer questions for this story but said in a statement that the legislation comes in response to an increase in cases of personal data being compromised.'"

"There are already a lot of protections for privacy," said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. "If you're looking at government records, it's going to be inevitable that you're going to sometimes need to look at certain data like names, or where that person in a public agency works or salary. Many different aspects of individual information may be important, but it's not something that compromises the privacy of the person."

In Kentucky, the rationale advanced for the vetoed SB 48 was ensuring protection of particular categories of public employees and specified officials. The mechanism for securing protection differed as well, requiring employees and officials to submit written requests to any public agency that maintains personally identifiable information to give confidential treatment to the information and remove it from electronic records keeping systems.

But both Texas's and Kentucky's (failed) bills have the same net result. Despite existing protections for personal privacy, the bills might be used to erect barrier to public information in which there is a significant public interest.