This spring, the Minnesota Legislature made it impossible for news organizations here to do the classic "felons with hunting license" story that many newspapers (including mine) have done in the past.

They passed a bill that made private key information from the Department of Natural Resources' license database. This includes everyone who has obtained a license for fishing, hunting, trail use and other activities. The person's name, address, driver's license number and date of birth are now private.

The Minnesota Newspaper Association's lobbyist tried to stop the measure, as well as a citizen activist who does a lot of work on public records. But other than a couple of news stories in small publications, it largely went unnoticed. (I was particularly out of the loop because I was home on maternity leave and engrossed in my twin newborns).

The bottom line was that the DNR got one lawmaker to propose the bill and there wasn't a loud enough voice opposing it. The bill was stuffed into another, unrelated measure and was essentially ignored because lawmakers were too busy focusing on the state's financial woes.

The back story on this is that the DNR gave the St. Paul Pioneer Press this data in 2006 then denied us the subsequent year. They suddenly claimed that the data was coming straight from the drivers license data maintained by another state agency, and protected as private under the Drivers Data Privacy Protection Act (DPPA).

According to news stories published this spring, the DNR plans to discontinue taking data from the drivers license database and wanted to find a way to make this information private.

The big question I have - and haven't yet found an answer to - is why somebody(s) feels this should be private? What big muckety-muck with fishing and hunting licenses didn't want their information to be public?

This was the biggest shutdown of data we've seen in a long time, but not the only one this year.

All of the other shutdowns also make private names and addresses, including: lists of individuals whose power has been shut of by a private power company; contact information of citizens signing up for a disability accessible crime alert program; and contact information for participants of a program called "Safe At Home."

See a pattern here? Privacy, Privacy, Privacy.

This shows that the once very open Minnesota Data Practices Act (our open records law) is being eroded more and more each year.

At a meeting of a local open government coalition group in early August, the state's preeminent authority on public records said one of the biggest dangers to our open records law is the financial mess that news organizations are currently in. We don't have the means to fight the fights anymore. And, at least in Minnesota, there isn't currently another loud voice to take their place.