Senator Runestad asked and was granted unanimous consent to make statements and moved that the statements be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Runestad’s first statement is as follows:
The concept of releasing this juvenile justice information to universities to collate the data, put the stuff together, do the research, is a good suggestion but it’s very limiting. The universities will be constrained by whatever the court system determines in terms of the use of this data. That’s not how research is done properly. If the courts don’t like the way it’s being put together, if they don’t want a certain outcome, if they do want a certain outcome, all of that could be put in this memorandum of understanding. Once you have determined that the individuals’ names are not going to be out there, from that point on we need to know, as the public, what’s happening, not what the court wants us to believe because they’ve constrained the data. Well once the data is out there, we should be able to get that information freely from the universities.
So this amendment will strike out the provision that allows information received by the researcher via the data use agreement with scale to be exempt from FOIA. While the courts aren’t a public body, and so on the whole they are exempt from FOIA, I believe that the moment they release this information to the public body, like a university, it should be accessible to the public which in turn means that it should be subject to FOIA. I see no reason why this information should be kept out of the public’s reach. Once all personally identifiable information has been removed, this data will pose no risk. Allowing this information to be FOIA-able will only increase transparency and allow for more discourse and honesty around this data. When they have that information, we should be able to see what’s going on in order to make sure it was properly done. I would like support for my amendment.
Senator Runestad’s second statement is as follows:
This amendment, similar to the last one, is to get information out to the public. This is very, very valuable to know what’s happening in juvenile justice. But to have a memorandum of understanding on how the data is to be used, drafted by the court, this unlimited power to stipulate the terms of how the researchers can access and use this data defeats the whole purpose. We don’t know if they’re constraining this for a certain outcome. Once that data has been released, there is no information that is personally identifiable, and that any—as this amendment says—de minimus data from a specific area is deleted so you can’t identify a particular juvenile, then that information should be available to every single member of the society. There is no harm. All that does is make sure that we can have other researchers take a look at it, it could be looked at in terms of its accuracy. What’s being done here doesn’t do any good for the public. So my amendment would simply say that once that data is released and you’re not going to have any personally identifiable information, anyone can look at that data, check that data, so that the public can be sure of the transparency, which is what should be required in this bill.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4647, entitled
A bill to amend 1980 PA 299, entitled “Occupational code,” by amending section 1113 (MCL 339.1113), as amended by 1984 PA 25.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: