Montana Governor Judy Martz (R) and leading state lawmakers recently abandoned a state bill which would have given the government authority to withhold any information from the pubic that it deemed “sensitive.” State Senator Walt McNutt (R-Sidney) stated that Senate Bill 142, which was crafted in order to protect public works from terrorist attacks, is being dropped because the legislation would have created an atmosphere of too much secrecy. The Senator explained that the legislation would have made it possible for agencies to abuse their privilege and withhold a great deal of information.

Apparently initial efforts have begun to develop data quality and data access legislation at the state level. OMB Watch has obtained model legislation for both bills that was reportedly drafted by the The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE), a strong supporter of both policy efforts at the federal level. Both state level model bills are clearly patterned after federal policies. The state data quality bill borrows heavily from the just recently completed Federal Data Quality Guidelines.