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SALT LAKE CITY -- A push has begun to make a public employee salary database a little more anonymous.
Right now the salaries and other information of public employees are public. You can find it on websites like utahsright.com. But Rep. Kraig Powell, R-Heber City, wants to remove the names from public salary info when it is disclosed to the public.
"I think that this idea of the salaries of public employees and how widely they are disseminated would not have come up if we didn't have the Internet," he says.
Powell says the current disclosure law is an invasion of privacy, and it hurts workplace morale.
"It actually does present some obstacles in your relationships with your co-workers and whether you have bad feelings," he says.
But Powell says the biggest concern is identity theft.
"When you can get online and you can get an exact name, you get a job title, you get an employer, you get a salary, you're pretty close to a loan application," he points out.
He says he has heard of that happening. That's why he's sponsoring a bill to remove the names from salary information of anyone who is paid by taxpayer dollars. But Powell does say he knows it's not popular with the public.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
