There are times for the government to protect information.
There are big secrets such as weapons codes or battle plans. There are small, personal ones such as an individual’s Social Security numbers or bank account. But by and large, the default with public information is that it is supposed to be just that. Public.
Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives pushed through a bill to give more access to public health data about diseases including COVID-19 on Monday. In a tally that surprises no one, the 113-87 vote broke along party lines. But is this a situation where both sides are right and the solution was to pass a better law?
Republicans such as Speaker Bryan Cutler, R- Lancaster, are championing the legislation, which would tweak existing Drug Prevention and Control Law, bending it from favoring confidentiality to making any records “maintained as a result of any action taken in consequences of such reports or any other records maintained” open to Right-to-Know Law searches.
On the other side are those such as Rep. Dan Frankel, D- Allegheny, who see this as a dangerous invitation to problems with hacking and information security, calling mistakes “all too easy.”
There is an abundance of the word “any” in the legislation, which could be a problem when you are talking about people’s medical information. But Democrats shouldn’t just shut down the idea of access to important information about public health concerns, especially in a pandemic, because of an obstacle that might occur but hasn’t.
”I don’t have confidence or comfort moving forward with this without more conversation about what this does,” said Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D- Philadelphia.
That’s important to know — as well as being a kind of bedrock for passing any law. What is the intention? What are the parameters? Cutler said it would allow more and better access to things such as vaccination and infection data broken down by germane categories like school districts. That would be great. Let’s have that information.
But just like the Wolf administration has been castigated for not having good plans in place before it announces them as it heads down the pandemic policy highway, legislators on both sides have to be careful to not make the same mistakes in the midst of a political wrestling match.
COVID-19 data is not as simple as public or private. It is a knotted ball of information that should be more open than it has been tangled with personal aspects that should be protected. Making it a party-line issue shows neither side sees the whole problem.
— The Tribune-Review/TNS
