Does everything have to be seen?

From time to time on this blog, we have pointed to the issue of privacy and potential ID theft posed by the practice of certain newspapers posting public employee and pensions by name.  While courts have seemed to see the handing over of raw payroll data as a required public disclosure, we have noted that whatever purposes such posting has – ostensibly “good government” – could be accomplished using job titles without names, statistical distributions, etc.

It may seem at this point that nothing more could be said or done about the impact on UC.  Note that private universities face no such requirement despite their large-scale receipt of public monies in the form of research grants, government scholarship and loan programs, tax-favored treatment, etc.

Yours truly writes a weekly “column” for another website, the Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN).  You might be interested in today’s column on this subject which results indirectly from a brouhaha about posting CalPERS pensions.  It can be found at:

http://www.employmentpolicy.org/topic/402/blog/mitchell%E2%80%99s-musings-7-29-13-need-privacy-transparent [Click on the pdf link.]

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