Legal fight named for Tubby Smith

Outside earnings and freebies for public officials and employees could become secret if the so-called Tubby Smith Act becomes law.

Inspired by a college newspaper’s efforts to publicize the Gophers basketball coach’s side deals on things such as shoe contracts and summer camps, government agencies and public unions are pushing for changes in public information laws that would keep everything from police officers’ off-duty moonlighting to U researchers’ contracts with drug companies out of public view.

Public employee unions and other groups, particularly the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation, are lobbying for the change. Opponents, who have offered a competing proposal that would keep the information open, say the public has a right to know about potential conflicts of interest among workers in often sensitive positions of public trust.

The debate pits the public’s right to know whom public workers might be beholden to against those workers’ desire for privacy. Much of the information in question had been considered available to the average citizen and the press for almost 25 years — until a state ruling last year.

DFL Rep. Joe Mullery of Minneapolis said public workers’ privacy is important. “I don’t think that everybody, because they become a public employee, has to give away everything,” he said.

But attorney Mark Anfinson, who represents the Minnesota Newspaper Association, said it also is important to be able to scrutinize such things as a high-level government regulator doing contract work for a private business, or a police officer working security for a downtown hotel who must then answer a call at the location while on duty.

“The context of knowing what Tubby Smith or what [University of Minnesota men's hockey coach] Don Lucia make in added compensation, while interesting, isn’t the most vital thing in the world. But if this is broadly adopted, there are implications that are more consequential,” Anfinson said.