COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina’s health and environmental agency blacked out the names of all the visitors to its headquarters the day leaders interviewed candidates to be the new director.
The State newspaper requested the visitor log for Sept. 27, the day the Department of Health and Environmental Control conducted interviews for its new leader.
The newspaper got back a copy of the sheet, with a large black rectangle over the names of all the visitors.
There is nothing in South Carolina law that allows the information to be withheld, said Jay Bender, a lawyer who has represented the newspaper and other media outlets on First Amendment matters.
“You’re signing in to go into a public agency. I can’t imagine how that would be confidential,” Bender said.
The agency said it is following a portion of open records law allowing it to not release information that would be “an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy.”
“The sign-in sheet you requested contains the names of citizens who visited DHEC for a variety of reasons, some of which may be personal in nature,” DHEC spokesman Tommy Crosby wrote in an email. “Therefore, the department redacted the names on the sheet.”
State-owned utility Santee Cooper also requires visitors to its headquarters to sign in. They released that information when requested by the newspaper last year in a different open records request.
DHEC has been searching for a director for 15 months since Catherine Heigel announced she was leaving in July 2017.
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Information from: The State, http://www.thestate.com
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