passopenrecords.org

Every campaign needs slogans for yard signs and T-shirts and bumper stickers. So we are launching a contest to come up with some good ones. Send us yours.

Here are a few (mostly) silly ones to start things off . . . and by the way, there is no state Office of Public or Open Records, so feel free to substitute the government agency of your choice. And send us your stories.

• Lift the lid on Pennsylvania government

• Front: What’s the difference between hide & seek and state government?
Back: In Pennsylvania, not much.

• Let the Sunshine in.

• Opening soon at an agency near you: public records

• Saran wrap: the perfect cover for public records

• Let’s put the public back in public record

• Seek . . . and ye shall wait

• Follow the bouncing bonus.

• Front: Pennsylvania Office of Public Records
Back: Permanently out to lunch

• Front: Thank you for calling the Office of Public Records
Back: Please hold

• Front: Open Records
Back: Closed

• Front: Thank you for calling the Office of Public Records
Back: Your call will be answered in approximately 18 months

• “Wait. Wait. Don’t Tell Me!”

• Front: What do fancy restaurants and state agencies have in common?
Back: “Waiters”

We know you can do better!

For anyone out there who does not believe that voter anger over the 2005 pay raise the state legislators voted themselves and the judges lingers on, check out two recent articles:

Dennis Roddy writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Two years after voter rebellion over a midnight pay raise spilled over onto the ballot for Pennsylvania’s high court . . . , echoes of that pay raise, and the current Supreme Court’s ruling that the portion of it going to judges could not be rescinded the way the increases to legislative salaries were, remain a looming shadow.”

And John Micek reports in the Allentown Morning Call on a Supreme Court candidate whose campaign commercial boasts that he did not take the pay raise. It neglects to point out, however, that he was not eligible to receive it.

What does all this have to do with open records? A lot. It was voter anger over the pay raise that led to wholesale replacement of state legislators in the 2006 elections and put reform high on the Harrisburg agenda. The citizens’ right to know is the foundation of effective democratic government, and meaningful open records legislation is the foundation of the current momentum for reform.

We have got to keep that momentum going until we get the laws we need and deserve.