AG rules landlords remain unnamed

GALVESTON — The Texas Attorney General’s office is siding with the Galveston County Health District in its decision not to release the names of property owners whose residences were at one time occupied by lead poisoned children.

Under the Texas Open Records Act, The Daily News requested the names of 12 landlords and the addresses of their properties after they were identified in a report by the Baylor College of Medicine. The report revealed 20 percent of the children poisoned in the last 15 years lived in properties owned by those 12 landlords.

But Baylor researchers did not name the property owners, saying the health district should decide whether to release the information. Researchers obtained the addresses of poisoning victims from the health district.

The county’s legal advisers refused to release the information, saying they were prohibited by state and federal patient confidentiality requirements.

In a letter written by Allan D. Meesey, assistant attorney general with the department’s open records division, the state agreed with the county.

He cited section 552.101 of the Texas Government Code, which says reports, records and information relating to cases or suspected cases of lead poisoning are confidential.

Winifred J. Hamilton, Baylor’s director of environmental health and the author of the Galveston lead report, said last year she hoped the city or the county would use the information to shame the landlords into cleaning their properties.

Other cities, like Boston, have used similar tactics to help address their lead contamination problems.

Galveston’s lead poisoning cases are six times higher than the state average.

Baylor’s study paired medical data with property information from the Galveston Central Appraisal District in an attempt to predict where contaminated properties not already identified as such might be located.

The map shows a hot spot of likely contamination between 25th and 48th streets, both north and south of Broadway.

Two-thirds of Galveston’s housing stock was built before 1978, when the federal government banned lead in residential paint.

For More Information Contact:
Kurt Koopmann
Public Information Officer
Galveston County Health District
409-938-2211 or 409-392-0007
kkoopman@gchd.org