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Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove (left) and Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, attend a June 2018
meeting of the Legislative Commission on Data Practices. (File photo: Kevin Featherly)

Data Practices Commission set to expire

 By: Kevin Featherly  June 12, 2019 0

The Legislative Commission on Data Practices will become defunct at the end of this month,
leaving the Capitol without the joint House-Senate panel that has explored the intersection
of technology and individual privacy since 2014.

However, the senator who planned to hold its gavel this year says he wants to continue its
mission, if he can figure out a way.

“I would say don’t go too far away to summer,” said Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove. “I
plan on having a kind of unofficial ad hoc committee focusing on data privacy issues through
the interim.”

Doing that is somewhat easier said than done. Specifically, once the commission is
disbanded on June 30, the Legislative Coordinating Commission will no longer offer members
per diem payments. Should they choose meet on their own over the summer and fall, they
won’t get paid.

Payments to cover lawmakers’ travel and other daily expenses on meeting days could be
made from regular legislative committee budgets. But that’s a limited option. Limmer could
offer per diem payments to Senate Judiciary committee members, because he chairs that
committee.

But, as it happens, he is the only one of the Data Practices Commission’s four senators who
also serves on Judiciary.

The four House Data Practices Commission members—former chair Rep. Peggy Scott, R-
Andover; Rep. John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul; Rep. Eric Lucero, R-Dayton; and Rep. Kelly Moller,
DFL-Shoreview—all are members of House Judiciary. But Lesch, the Judiciary committee
chair, could not be reached for comment.

The two chambers’ leaders also would have to approve meeting on an ad hoc basis, Limmer
said. But he doesn’t think attracting members would be a problem.

“I’m sure there would be members that would want to do it,” Limmer said. “We can create
quite a list of interesting subject matter to devote to it.”

Commission’s role
The group’s role has been to study data privacy issues and make bill recommendations to
the rest of the Legislature.

Last year, for instance, it met five times. During those meetings, members debated medical 
records privacy, government data breaches, the privacy implications of genetic testing
services and first responders’ use of the controversial drug ketamine.

A year before that, it studied location tracking warrants, police use of automated license
plate readers and the privacy of government personnel data.

Its recommendations sometimes made their way into legislation. For instance, location
tracking warrants and government data-breach provisions were included in House and
Senate data privacy mini-omnibus bills this year. The Senate even passed its version, 63-0,
on May 17.

However, the House version never got beyond a second floor reading and none of the bills’
language ended up in the final Public Safety omnibus bill, signed by the governor on May 30.

Though its term was set to expire in June, there were attempts this year to keep the Data
Practices Commission alive. House File 1935—the House version of the State Government
Finance omnibus—included a $265,000, two-year appropriation to keep it in operation
through 2026.

The Senate mini-omnibus on privacy also included language to preserve the commission, but
that bill never made it to the governor’s desk.

“It’s an unfortunate mishap of this year’s session,” Limmer said of the commission’s loss.

Another option
Greg Hubinger, the Legislative Coordination Commission’s director, said Tuesday that there is
another option that Limmer could pursue.

The Legislative Coordinating Commission, a 12-member group that includes both top House
and Senate leaders, has authority to establish bicameral working groups or subcommittees
that deal with public policy issues, Hubinger said.

Hubinger said the LCC would have to be persuaded that there is a continuing need for the
Data Practices Commission’s work to continue. If that happens, the group formed could
include all the current commission members or others not currently part of the group.

“Usually when the LCC creates a subcommittee, it authorizes the House and Senate
leadership to appoint members,” Hubinger said.

Hubinger said he has not been approached to ask the LCC to consider such a proposal.
Minnesota Lawyer could not reach Limmer for a follow-up interview after speaking to
Hubinger.

Limmer did say that if the committee is not somehow reformed or replaced over the interim,
it could be resurrected as part of a supplemental budget bill in 2020. But he doesn’t want to
wait that long, because the entire Legislature will be running for re-election that year.

“Very few people are going to want to take time away from our local communities and listen
to some banal discussion of data practice procedures as opposed to going out and pressing
the flesh out in the hinterlands,” he said. The current interim would be far more productive,
he said.

No matter which path is taken, Limmer is determined to get the Data Practices Commission
reformed. Much work that group already has done remains unfinished, he said. Plus, he said,
new threats to citizens’ privacy and government transparency constantly pop up.

“There’s always work to be done in data practices,” Limmer said. “We kind of forget and it’s
just a matter of time before issues start blowing up [resulting in] abusing the rights of our
citizens.”
 ABOUT KEVIN FEATHERLY
Kevin Featherly, who joined BridgeTower Media in mid-2016, is a journalist and former
freelance writer who has covered politics, law, business, technology and popular 
culture for publications and websites in the Twin Cities and nationally since the mid-
1990s.

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