Texas Lawmakers Fight Secrecy By State Supreme Court

The Texas Supreme Court – a state once thought to have the strongest Public Information Act in the nation – has recently issued rulings that will hide records regarded as public, such as contracts between a governmental body and a private business. That has added to “growing secrecy about how state and local authorities spend your tax dollars,” the Dallas Morning News reports. In the first decision, in Boeing vs. Paxton, the Court essentially made secret contracts and other documents that detail billions in deals between private businesses and all branches of Texas government. A 2015 ruling in Greater Houston Parternship vs. Paxton undid a three-decade-old precedent requiring nonprofits that use public funds to open their books to the public. Concern about the turn toward secrecy has led a Republican in the state House and a Democrat in the Senate to file identical bills looking at strengthening the state’s open records law.