Aaron Landry

Mayor R.T. Rybak’s Minneapolis Utility Bill, originally uploaded by Aaron Landry.

When I started paying my City of Minneapolis utilities online, I did what many curious people likely did when confronted with the fields to enter your address: entering my neighbor’s after I was done paying my bill. After a number of clicks, to my surprise I had my neighbor’s bill in front of me. With the number of interface bugs the system had I figured it was a fluke and forgot about it.

In the last few months, the City of Minneapolis rolled out their new Utility Billing system which has a much friendlier interface, seemed to be a lot more secure and now offers paperless billing. While the system isn’t perfect, for a municipal utility site I can’t complain. A week ago, Kyle (of More Cowbell and Reveille Magazine) messaged me saying he may have found a “bug” with the new utility system similar to what I noticed before. After playing with it further, we realized we could access anyone’s bill by typing in their address in the right place.

We questioned if this was not a bug and actually an unusual way to access public records. I contacted the City of Minneapolis and after talking to a few people I got a lot of details and helpful background from Matt Laible in their communications department. First off, utility billing information is public information under state law:

All government data collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated by a government entity shall be public unless classified by statute, or temporary classification pursuant to section 13.06, or federal law, as nonpublic or protected nonpublic, or with respect to data on individuals, as private or confidential. The responsible authority in every government entity shall keep records containing government data in such an arrangement and condition as to make them easily accessible for convenient use.

It should be noted that there is an exception for electrical billing only. Being I don’t pay the City of Minneapolis for my electricity it doesn’t apply to me.

While this system does not include people’s names and phone numbers, they are public record as well. I was shown an email from 2006 where Assistant City Attorney Lisa Needham was asked about the subject and after studying the law concluded that:

…information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers would be considered public data and must be released pursuant to a data request. The only information that would remain private would be social security numbers if those are collected.

She also added that “the Department of Administration (which oversees data practices) has urged the legislature” to make this data private in a similar manner to electrical utility billing. As of today, it is still public.

The bottom line is that essentially all the information the city has in regards to you as it relates to your utility billing is public information.

So here’s how to access it: At City of Minneapolis Utility Billing, click on the “Standard Access” tab. Then type in the address you want to look up. If given a list of options, select the address that is most correct and that’s it. To access a different account, you need to hit “Log Out” in the upper right. Rather straightforward, isn’t it?

It does not give you access to do anything malicious. You just see how much your neighbors pay for water, sewer, refuse and drainage and their payment history. The only activity you can do to someone else’s account is to pay their bill for them.

I did a quick sweep through some of Minneapolis’ elected officials and as shown in the photo above, Mayor R.T. Rybak pays his bills on time and seems to use a lot more water than I do. Council Member Paul Ostrow from Ward 1 has about a $100 bill each month, paid on time. CM Diane Hofstede from Ward 3 currently has a $215.87 credit because their bill seems to be paid in large amounts in advance, including a $500 payment in mid-July 2008. My neighbors CM Gary Schiff in Ward 9 and CM Sandy Colvin Roy in Ward 12 have bills that average around $50-$60, just like my utility bills, and they seem to be paid on time as well.

While I don’t take a particular side if this information should be public or private, I do have a problem with residents not being aware of the level of information that can be pulled up about themselves. Nobody I talked with about this post was aware they could view other residents’ utility bills. So let your neighbors know — and if you’re nice, pay their bill for them.