SB1598

The act also allows a governmental entity to release a vehicle identification number and specific collision information about that vehicle to the investigating officer’s employing law enforcement agency, including a person acting on its behalf who is authorized by contract to obtain the information. This new permission supplements the existing written-request-and-fee access provisions; it is not a mandatory bulk release or permission to sell the information to any requester. The wording for an authorized contractual recipient changes from an agency’s “agent” to a “person acting on behalf” of the agency. Final law.

The new vehicle-specific release must exclude personal information as defined in the referenced law and must withhold or redact the listed details: people’s names and identification numbers; birth dates except the year; addresses (except ZIP codes), and telephone numbers; license plates; insurer names and policy numbers; specified notification, arrival, death and commercial-report dates; the investigating officer’s identification number; and where an injured or deceased person was taken and who transported that person. The act expressly applies these duties to the governmental entity as well as the department for releases under the affected provisions. Existing access for people with a direct or proper interest, and the separately available redacted report, remain; the bill does not create those channels or change the existing report-copy fee. Final law; Earlier collision-report law.

All five versions have identical operative text, and the official index lists no amendments. There is no different adopted floor proposal to report. A conflict clause gives this act priority over the session’s nonsubstantive code-correction legislation to the extent they conflict. Introduced; Senate committee; Senate-passed; House committee; Final law; Version index; Amendment index.

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Law enforcement gains an express criminal-investigation purpose for obtaining this information, and governmental entities gain a limited vehicle-specific disclosure option. Those changes may help investigations and information handling, but the act provides no measured crime-reduction benefit. Collision participants retain the listed privacy protections for these releases; agencies still must determine the applicable access channel and perform required redactions. The bill is not a new damages remedy or a requirement to publish a collision database. Final law.

The March 28 introduced fiscal note—the only fiscal note indexed—anticipates no significant fiscal impact to the state or local governments and assumes costs can be absorbed using existing resources. It supplies no dollar estimate or multiyear cost table. The act makes no appropriation. Fiscal note; Final law.