Kids’ names may be struck from reports

Parent raises issue after personal data revealed in school bus crash.

In what could be COLUMBUS — a major shift in Ohio’s public records law, the names of children involved in hundreds of school bus accidents across the state each year would be withheld from disclosure on police reports.

Republican State Reps. Jeff Rezabek of Clayton and Peter Hambly of Brunswick are co-sponsoring a bill to exempt from public disclosure information on minors who are passengers in school bus accidents.

Medina resident William Horton asked Hambly to change the public records law after his 8-year-old son was a passenger in a school bus accident in May 2016. Horton was alarmed to learn that personal injury lawyers obtained his son’s name, date of birth, address and phone number from a traffic crash report.

“I felt that the law must be changed because if anyone can get this private information, what would stop criminals, fraudsters, pedophiles and other people who prey on children from getting this information?” Horton said in written testimony supporting House Bill 8.

The bill has support from the Ohio School Boards Association and others, but it is strongly opposed by the Ohio News Media Association, which says it’ll set a dangerous precedent of redacting information from routine police reports on traffic accidents. Those reports provide basic details on what happened, where, when and who was involved.

Ohio’s Open Records law, which provides for scrutiny of state and local government documents,