BALTIMORE — Last month our exclusive reporting revealed state leaders in Maryland froze the roll out of a pioneering online privacy law.
It was supposed to set limits on police access to DNA data uploaded by Americans researching their ancestry.
Legislators who crafted the model rules say our story about their stalled implementation, came as a shock.
Especially for a bipartisan law that passed one vote shy of unanimously.
"Extremely disappointing and surprising, much more so that we had to find out on the news," said Maryland Senator Charles Sydnor lll.
And in a new sign of trouble, the Maryland Health Department just blew past a key deadline.
By Oct. 1, the department was required to set up a licensing program for labs that use forensic genetic genealogy. That’s the process police use to compare DNA from a crime scene, to DNA uploaded onto ancestry websites, in hopes of solving murders and rapes.
Asked about the missed deadline, a health department spokesman replied with a statement he gave us weeks ago, essentially saying we’re still working on it.
Internal emails we obtained show the Maryland Department of Health is blaming a lack of funding for the inaction.
We’re also learning there’s pushback from Governor Larry Hogan, who oversees the health department.
After our piece aired, his office criticized the law as an unfunded mandate.
RELATED: Maryland Quietly Shelves Parts Of Genealogy Privacy Law
But there’s this new wrinkle.
In Maryland, the governor sets the budget and only the legislature can cut it.
It turns out, Hogan never asked to fund the new rules.
"To say that this is some sort of unfunded mandate is something just simply a cop out for them not doing what they're supposed to do in enforcing the law," said Sydnor.
The governor is apparently not a fan of the law. A spokesman from his office telling us it was “haphazardly drafted without consulting the stakeholders that it will affect, in this case, public health officials in the middle of a global pandemic."
But legislative records show the Maryland Department of Health did offer input, and a cost estimate of about a quarter million dollars a year.
"This was a really good way of getting a bill created and implemented. We had all parties at the table," said Sydnor.
With Hogan leaving office on January 14, it may fall on his replacement to finally implement privacy rules, on some of the most personal data, your DNA.
