Another personal story: A Grove City Sunshine Law fiasco
May 20th, 2007 by dani_k
We recently received a reader’s story about open records through our “send us your story” form.
Here’s Jason Reeher’s story, in his own words:
I have witnessed firsthand why Pennsylvania needs better Open Records laws. The weaknesses in the Sunshine Law and Right to Know Act practically dare public officials to disregard the public; accountability becomes a burden to be avoided rather than a solemn duty to be upheld. Worst of all, elected officials who are questioned about documents or procedures often become defensive or even belligerent—turning on the citizens they purport to serve.
One evening in October of 2005, I was attending—as I often do—a meeting of the Grove City Area School Board. When the board members failed to convene at 8:15, I, along with other attendees, started to wonder what was going on. The board members and superintendents finally convened about 20 minutes late and the board president initiated the regular meeting without an explanation.
I later found out that the board has been in “executive session,” one of those nebulous meetings where the public is excluded and the business discussed is private. This was not necessarily a problem.
What was problematic about the Grove City School Board’s proceedings that night was the board’s failure to announce the executive session and its purpose, a clear violation of the Sunshine Law. Why had the board been behind closed doors? How could the school district conduct an official meeting and not tell the public they were doing so?
I contacted the school district and let them know that this was unacceptable, citing the Sunshine Law. Rather than taking them to court—which I could have done—I thought it fair to offer a remedy: the board could redo the meeting, announce their mistake, and state the purpose for the executive session. (Recognizing that a judge would likely order a similar remedy had the case gone to court brings up a glaring weakness in the Sunshine Law. I can think of no other law where such a “do-over” suffices; it is akin to getting caught speeding and the police officer tells you if you simply drive back down the street at the legal speed he’ll rip up the ticket…)What happened next shows why the Keystone State’s Open Records laws badly need to be reformed.
Rather than thanking me—after all, any citizen present that night could have taken the board to Common Pleas Court due to the obvious Sunshine Law violation—the board proceeded to ATTACK ME INSTEAD. At the reconvened meeting, the school superintendent argued that the do-over was simply to “clear up any misconceptions of wrongdoing.” Although the board president offered a mea culpa, saying that she forgot that the executive session is to be announced during the subsequent regular meeting, she said it was a mistake and not unlawful. Finally, the school solicitor addressed me directly. In words that would be printed in the local paper, the district’s lawyer told me that the failure to announce the executive session, in his legal opinion, wasn’t a violation of the Sunshine Law, but rather a “hyper-technical response” by an overzealous citizen, that the school board members “were volunteers” who “worked hard into the night” and didn’t deserve such criticism of their procedures.
In the media firestorm (or what passes for one in this little college town in Mercer County) that followed, I patiently explained my position. There are no degrees of guilt in the Sunshine Law. The school board should be more sensitive to the public, and treat executive sessions with the utmost care, limiting them to absolute necessity and announcing their purpose. Secret meetings, I argued, undermine our democratic system. The least the school district could do was to announce such sessions. Being volunteers didn’t give elected officials a free pass to do whatever they wanted.
In the Grove City School Board case, district officials violated the Sunshine Law because they could—it was the path of least resistance. A stronger Sunshine Law would serve notice that public meetings should be public. A higher Open Records standard in general would also stop tossing concerned citizens to the wind, dictating that we spend our own resources to hire lawyers when a clear violation has taken place. I may have “won” in the Grove City case, but only by taking a lot of personal criticism first. And no one even paid a fine.
As an epilogue, one bright spot: the district did apply one more of my suggested remedies, as two board members and the superintendent subsequently attended a Sunshine Law seminar at my request.
The Grove City Sunshine Law fiasco is a sordid tale, but it is at least simple and straightforward. My next run-in with Pennsylvania’s ineffective Open Records Laws would involve a local police department, a borough manager, a town solicitor, and one very angry district magistrate. One simple Right to Know request eventually produced thousands of words from lawyers, judges, newspaper reporters, and sundry elected officials, not to mention a town scandal that has gone down in local history. And my case never even went to court!
But that, as they say, is a story for another day…
Jason C. Reeher
Grove City, PA
We’d like to thank Jason for sharing his story with us. If his story has piqued your interest, you can visit his blog.
I thought I was reading about our town, Oley, Pennsylvania. We’re a small rural village surrounded by an agricultural area, historic-designated area, and no real businesses other than small businesses. We also have a school board who thinks we grow money on trees in our back yard.
I first came to know my school board when I had to advocate on behalf of my child, and ran into road block after road block. I followed the chain of command, ultimately ending up at a school board meeting. I was appalled at how the taxpayers were treated, and had some very obviously difficult questions for the board. I have been involved ever since and it gets worse and worse and worse.
Relating all this to the open records and public right to know law, our superintendent’s stepson was hired as a FLOATER (substitute without a teaching degree), and was there almost every day of the school year, and my interest was that I thought that a job had conveniently been created for him via the substitute list.
I wrote my letter to the district asking to see the substitute call in list from the beginning of the school year. In addition to finding that this person indeed had been called in almost every day, I found out some other very disturbing issues. In the first 110 days of school of this particular year, I counted up the teacher absences and there were 1,104 teacher absences in 110 days of school. There were days when there were 45 teachers absent from the district. I of course brought this up at a board meeting, which angered everyone, and they said that I was wrong. Since the school district charges us $.25 a page for copies, I made another appointment to go in with my own copying machine. I requested the same documents, but instead of the original documents that I saw the first time, I was given copies the second time around. I questioned this fact and was told that these were the originals. It is very easy to identify copies, as where there had been highlighting which I saw on the original, this area was now gray, and whereas paper that is written on, handled and worked with, the pile tends to be more full, and with myself being a secretary, this jumped out at me right away. The pile of paperwork they gave me the second time around was about 1/2 of the thickness from the first view, and it had a months’s more papers in it. Well, the secretary came in to me very upset, and was questioning me as to whether or not I thought she was lying, to which I replied, if the shoe fits. That is all I said. Two days later I get a letter in the mail from the solicitor stating that if I continue to harrass the employees, I will not be allowed into the building any more.
I again wrote a letter stating that I wanted to view the original documents that were handwritten on, and again I received a denial for these items, as I had previously seen them, and the district would not honor the request. I brought this up at a board meeting and then was told that the secretary works from photocopies. Interesting, as there really is no need to waste the paper, secretarial time, electric, toner, etc., when you can work from the original. I asked that question, to which all I got was looks and no answer. Our board only looks around at each other with blank looks and then says nothing. They never answer any questions.
In addition, I noticied that most of the absences on this list were for approved absences and not sick time, which meant that the superintendent scheduled these teachers off (sometimes up to 45 a day, and we only have 162 teachers in the district) and these absences didn’t even count against them. I also found out that in addition to substitutes called in, we call FLOATERS in, just for the heck of it in case someone needs help. At this rate, our school district will have more employees than it does students. This also translates into approximately $85,000 dollars of taxpayer money for substitutes.
Our school board also tried to keep the public from speaking and asking questions at board meetings. Obviously we are asking the correct questions and making them quite uncomfortable, so they want to shut us down. That was another fun meeting.
We have the speediest board meetings in the world, lasting approxiamtely 45 minutes, and the story goes on and gets worse.
Thank you for your time.