The Texas Supreme Court this morning ruled that details of Gov. Rick Perry’s travels can remain secret, overturning two lower court rulings that found travel vouchers filed by state troopers should be made public.
In an opinion written by Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, the court ruled that the threat of physical harm trumped the state’s open records law.
“The public’s right to ‘complete information’ must yield when disclosure of that information would substantially threaten physical harm,” he wrote.
The Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American Statesman had filed suit in 2007 to obtain the detailed travel vouchers for the governor’s security detail.
The Department of Public Safety, which provides security for Perry, argued that public scrutiny of those expenses would jeopardize the governor’s safety.
The newspapers argued that the public has a right to know how its money was being spent.
Two lower courts had ruled that the records should be public, but Perry, through the DPS, appealed to the state Supreme Court.
In a 7-0 decision, justices sent the case back to district court, but noted that it considered concerns about the safety threat to be real.
The threat that revealing the full extent to which a small group of rich guys finance Perry’s global gallivanting might be poorly received by the public is even bigger, of course. The Lege got involved in related matters at the end of the special session. You’d think that all those supposedly suspicious of government teabagger types would not like this sort of thing, but if you do you’re hopelessly naive. None of this will matter to them until Texas gets a Democratic Governor. In the meantime, what are you looking at? Nothing to see here, move along.
Huh? “Would threaten physical harm? For trips already taken? Does the Texas Supreme Court think evildoers have Wayback Machines?
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