The Senate has agreed unanimously to amendments to HB 447, legislation to expand an existing public records exemption for information about government infrastructure. The current law exempts those records from release only when their release “would jeopardize” public safety. Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, said that required a very difficult “knowing standard.” But, he told the Senate, “The problem, as the legislation was prepared, was it changed ‘would’ to ‘could’ – specifically, to “could be used to.”

“It could be this, and it could be that – and that was in the eye of the beholder,” Davis said. “So you swung the pendulum from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other.” That change, he said, aroused “a substantial degree of discomfort” among journalists and others. “Very candidly, we agreed,” he said. “So the bill was held temporarily.”

Stakeholders got together and settled on a “reasonably likely to” jeopardize public safety standard, Davis said, amid debate about would, could, should and so forth. There was also agreement on excluding “public expenditure records,” to make sure they weren’t inadvertently exempted from public disclosure. That wasn’t something the bill’s sponsors initially wanted to do, Davis said, but, “That’s what compromise is.”

Amid jokes about “would” and “could,” the Senate unanimously backed the amendment, and Senate Assistant Majority Leader Chuck Winder, R-Boise, declared, “The ‘woulds’ have it.” The amended bill now still needs final Senate passage and concurrence from the House in the amendments before it can go to the governor’s desk.