passopenrecords.org

With Senate hearings slated for 9:30 this morning, it’s hard keep up with all the open records stories that have emerged in the last few days. What follows is a brief summary, which tells but part of the story of (1) why Pennsylvania badly needs right-to-know reform and (2) why the foundation of that reform must be to clearly establish the presumption that public records belong to the public. The bill that will be under discussion this morning – Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi’s (R-Delaware County) Senate Bill 1 – does not “flip the presumption.” EDITOR’S NOTE 6/05/07: Pileggi is amending his legislation to reverse the presumption

And that, as Associated Press reporter Mark Scolforo wrote in his weekend overview of where things stand, is “not particularly good news for anyone expecting significant widening of the Right-to-Know Law.”

“Will changing the Right-to-Know Law be the marquee reform accomplishment lawmakers will wave before voters next year?” Scolforo asks at the end of his article . . . and concludes, “It’s far from a done deal.”

No, that’s not particularly good news.

By the way, Governor Ed Rendell’s proposed legislation puts Pennsylvania in line with most others states by presuming that a public records is public unless there is a good reason not to disclose it.

In other news:

• The sorry saga of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency – or PHEAA – just keeps getting sorrier. As Jan Murphy reported in Thursday’s Harrisburg Patriot-News, the agency paid two well-connected law firms more than $400,000 to keep the records of its board’s $860,000 spending spree secret. Murphy keeps slogging through the swamps of secrecy to get to the bottom of this mess – 19 months, one supreme court verdict and counting – and just when you think she has exhausted the story, she finds something else.

Gerald Zahorchak, the state’s secretary of education, was aghast when the he learned of the legal tab. “How many scholarships does that represent?” he asked. The answer: 102 scholarships at the maximum of $4,000 per student. Remember, that’s just the legal bill. The board spent that $400,000 trying to hide how it had spent $860,000 on such fiduciary items as $100 facials, $175 falconry lessons and $150 cigars. That money could have underwritten another 215 scholarships.

Let’s see, the board spent $409,000 to hide $862,000. That’s $1.27 million that could have provided scholarships to 317 kids. . . . $1.27 million – I wonder if that’s more than Joe Paterno makes.

A PHEAA spokesman seemed grateful that now, at last, the agency’s situation has been clarified. While the costs of litigation were more than PHEAA wanted to spend, Keith New told Murphy, “We know that a lot of our information needs to be public.”

That may not come as a big surprise to anyone but PHEAA’s board.

• The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that jurors’ names should be made public, the AP’s Mark Scolforo reported.

“Disclosing jurors’ names furthers the objective of a fair trial to the defendant and gives assurances of fairness to society as a whole,” wrote Chief Justice Ralph Cappy. “But the average citizens’ concern that the media will be camped out on their front lawn and fear of physical harm can be alleviated.” The court said that the names of jurors could be sealed to “preserve higher values,” such juror safety or harassment or jury tampering, and that there was no constitutional right to jurors’ addresses.

• “Legislature takes big step on open records,” editorialized the Erie Times-News last week, of the Senate’s unanimous passage of a bill requiring that the names, job titles and salaries of employees of the three branches of state government be posted on the Internet.

“Step by step, inch by inch, the state Legislature is slowly acknowledging that it understands it can’t afford not to change. That should be applauded, because the idea would have been unheard of, even a year ago, for the state Senate to consider passing a bill to lift the veil of secrecy on government operations.

“This is a sea change for Harrisburg and its infamous pay-grab fiasco on July 7, 2005. You can’t say the political culture has fundamentally changed, but it looks like Harrisburg seems to be headed in the right direction.”

• “Six months have passed since Pennsylvania voters sent a historic message to the state Legislature demanding an overhaul in how government does business, starting with the need for more openness and transparency,” noted the Herald Standard of Uniontown. “To date, while the House and Senate have nibbled around the edges, changing some of their internal operating rules to accommodate those goals, no new legislation has been approved.

“Simply changing the rules isn’t enough. They can be easily changed in the future, in a regressive way, and they have no penalties for noncompliance. And every single rule governing the House and the Senate could be changed without correcting one major flaw: The Legislature’s inexplicable exemption from the open records law.”

• And finally, wrote the Pottstown Mercury, “The Right-to-Know Law debate will be a litmus test of sorts on just how far legislators are willing to go on the reform front. A failure to change the presumption will show that legislators are more serious about what looks like reform, instead of embracing true change.

“Rendell has put forward the proposal to enact this basic and fundamental change toward transparent government. Can the legislative “reformers” carry out the mission?

“Time will tell.”

Hopefully, not nearly as much time as it took Jan Murphy to get those public records.