[Vision2020] Judge opens Bustamante's personnel file

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (October 4, 2011) Moscow-PullmanDaily News.

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Judge opens Bustamante's personnel file
By Brandon Macz Daily News staff writer | Posted: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 12:00 am
Latah County 2nd District Judge John Stegner opened former University of Idaho assistant professor Ernesto Bustamante's employment records to full public disclosure Monday following oral arguments from legal counsel for both the university and several media outlets.
Stegner had been charged with resolving a question of Idaho public records law as it relates to the release of personnel information for a former public official and whether language in one statute extends to the dead. The university filed an action for declaratory relief following multiple public record requests for Bustamante's personnel information after his Aug. 22 killing of UI graduate student Katy Benoit and later suicide.
UI counsel Kent Nelson said the university would first comply with pending search warrants issued by the Moscow Police Department, which is continuing its investigation into Benoit's murder, and work with media counsel to determine the best way to package its records for the press, adding there were at least 70,000 emails to sift through.
Bustamante shot Benoit 11 times with a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun while she was smoking a cigarette on her back porch. He killed himself hours later in a hotel room several blocks away.
He had been in a sexual relationship with Benoit that deteriorated in May after Benoit claimed he'd put a gun to her head on three occasions. Benoit filed a complaint against Bustamante with the UI on June 12. He resigned from the UI on Aug. 19.
In his arguments Monday, Nelson said the university was seeking as much transparency in the matter as possible, but was also seeking clarification as to whether a public employer was bound to provide the same privacy protection for a public employee as a doctor would for a patient or an attorney for a client, and if that continued in the event of a former employee's death.
"The question is, does that confidentiality last after his death," Nelson said. "Does former mean former forever?"
Nelson said if the case came down to simply clarifying the rights of the dead, the matter would be put to rest, but if not, there was also Bustamante's actions to consider that might compel Stegner to favor public disclosure.
First Amendment attorney Chuck Brown, who was representing TPC Holdings Inc. - Moscow-Pullman Daily News and the Lewiston Tribune - the Idaho Statesman, The Associated Press, Cowles Publishing and the Idaho Press Club, said if the state's public records law protected the privacy of the deceased, then the law would have stymied every historian or biographer who had ever endeavored to write about a former government official.
Idaho Code also states that personnel information for a former public official can't be released without written consent from the individual in question, Brown said, which can't be provided by the dead and therefore a deceased person does not qualify under privacy exceptions in the state's public records law.
Brown said if Stegner needed to weigh privacy over a public's right to know, Bustamante's actions and a timeline of how the UI handled Benoit's complaint against the former psychology professor would certainly need to be added to the scale. That information had been agreed to by all parties in stipulated facts submitted to Stegner prior to oral arguments. That, and a recently filed complaint by the Benoit family to join the case in requesting disclosure of Bustamante's employment records, was sufficient information for Stegner to make a decision, Brown said.
Stegner issued his decision quickly following the end of counsel arguments, stating Bustamante was a former public official, and had the Legislature intended for the privacy of a public official to carry over after their death, it would have drafted Idaho Code differently.
"I feel that I am called upon to resolve the ambiguity," he said. "Preference to public disclosure wins out on this one."
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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 


 
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