For the last two years, Reclaim the Records, a not-for-profit activist group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates, has been fighting to free Massachusetts vital records information from the Department of Public Health (DPH) and its proxies.
Some of these records are already online behind paywalls, while others exist nowhere on the internet, or are only available onsite at the DPH’s research room. They’ve been pushing for access to un-certified copies of records along with their respective indexes that genealogists, historians, and journalists need.
Repeatedly the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records (SPR) has rejected the Department of Public Health’s excuses for withholding records.
The DPH has tried citing privacy, fraud, and public safety, and at one point, even reaching for a public records exemption that was meant to prevent terrorism.
But Reclaim the Records says “the law is clear that public records are public unless the government can point to a specific exemption in statute. And they have repeatedly failed to meet that burden.”
To their credit, DPH has provided some data in the last year, which Reclaim the Records is currently working to make public for everyone to use freely. They have however, recently been derailed by an attempt to upend four centuries of Massachusetts records-access practice.
Buried inside Massachusetts’ latest budget bill, Section 43 of H.5377 would close un-certified birth and marriage records for 90 years, death records for 50 years, and give DPH sweeping power to decide who has a “legitimate need” to see vital records.
They could potentially use this to close down access to certified copies (which have always been open to the public in Massachusetts) and all the indexes (which are also open to the public).
After losing a public-records fight to the genealogy community, DPH is now trying to rewrite the law, and wants to do it with a sneaky budget maneuver,” Reclaim the Records recently told supporters. “Sour grapes, sore losers — and a potentially terrible blow to public access that has been a hallmark of the state government since Colonial times!”
Massachusetts has one of the oldest traditions of public vital records access in the country. Vital records help families find each other, researchers study public health, journalists investigate government failures and help descendants to reconstruct histories that were never properly preserved.
You can read Reclaim’s director Alec Ferretti’s more detailed account which catalogs his efforts over the last year when trying (and succeeding) to get records out of Massachusetts.
Reclaim the Records is asking those interested in this issue to reach out to the Massachusetts Committee on Ways and Means (the people who deal with budgets) to voice your opinions on potentially closing off Massachusetts vital records.
It would also be useful to write to the chairs of the Committee on Public Health along with Governor Maura Healey:
Governor Maura Healey: Contact form: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/email-the-governors-office
Representative Aaron Michlewitz, Chair, House Committee on Ways and Means: Aaron.M.Michlewitz@mahouse.gov
Senator Michael Rodrigues, Chair, Senate Committee on Ways and Means: Michael.Rodrigues@masenate.gov
Senator William Driscoll, Senate Chair, Joint Committee on Public Health: William.Driscoll@masenate.gov
Representative Marjorie Decker, House Chair, Joint Committee on Public Health: Marjorie.Decker@mahouse.gov
“We at Reclaim The Records are hard at work still fighting for the acquisition and free publication of the indexes, records, and uncertified copies that should already belong to the public,” the organization said.
“But this work takes appeals, legal research, lobbying, public pressure, and a truly unreasonable number of hours. The government has lawyers, staff, and a budget. We only have you.”
Read more about Genealogy in new York State.
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