passopenrecords.org

From the June 6th edition of the Philadelphia City Paper:

The Holdup
How one senator is trying to prevent the free flow of information.
by Charles N. Davis

Congress, apparently content to explore ever new depths in public disapproval, is on the verge of having a single member derail the most meaningful reform of the federal Freedom of Information Act in years.

How can that be, you ask, when overwhelming majorities support the legislation in both the House and Senate?

The secret hold, of course. Ever heard of the secret hold? It’s a beauty — a real relic of the stuffed shirts of yesteryear, smoke-filled rooms and fat cats with stogies guffawing over the latest bamboozle of the taxpaying schmucks. Think country clubs, secret handshakes and bizarre rituals.

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), the nation’s largest journalism-advocacy organization, used the power of the blogosphere to find out whose legislative bludgeon was buried in the back of open government. We called every senator, one by one, until at last — when it became clear he could hide no longer — U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) came blinking and grimacing into the sunlight and admitted that it was he who placed a secret hold … on a bill that addresses secrecy in government.

You can’t make this stuff up.

This is how it works in Washington, kids: Sen. Kyl — this year’s Secrecy Champion — has several as-yet-unstated objections to the Freedom of Information Reform Act, a truly wonderful bill that would significantly improve one of the strongest tools Americans have to supervise the inner workings of government and hold elected officials accountable.

The bill has plenty of bipartisan support. It is the product of tireless work and advocacy by many open-government and press-freedom groups and fine legislative craftsmanship by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The U.S. House of Representatives in March approved a version of the bill with 80 Republicans joining 228 Democrats for a 308-117 vote.

Read the whole article.

Could it happen here?

You tell us.

But before you answer, remember the fears addressed recently on these pages and elsewhere. Yes, there is a public surge for reform, including open records reform, right now in Harrisburg. Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware County) has pledged to amend his Senate Bill 1 to “flip the presumption.” House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Waynesburg) earlier announced: “I’ve been knocked off the donkey. I’ve seen the light.” Rep. Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery), co-chairman of the Speaker’s Commission on Legislative Reform, has said that people are more interested in having lawmakers improve the state’s Right-To-Know law than any other reform.

And Mansfield University’s Annual State Survey of residents 18 years and older found that nearly three out of four Pennsylvanians want the state government to operate transparently by providing easy public access to all records and papers.

But we all know there are plenty of people, including state legislators, presidents of universities and representatives of agencies at all levels of government, who see this whole thing as one bad dream from which they soon hope to wake up and find the world just the same as it was before. It seems a safe bet that they are working in the shadows and behind closed doors to make sure that real open-records reform never sees the light of day . . . and that what finally gets sent up for a vote – because too many people are pushing for reform to have it go away – will be at once toothless and useless.

They say that making legislation is like making sausage – you don’t want to watch the process, look too directly at the ingredients, or check the cook’s hands too closely. I’m with them all the way on the sausage. But as for lawmaking, I want to see how my laws get made, what goes into them, and who is stirring the pot.

The Freedom of Information Reform Act pending in Washington has strong bipartisan support. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a margin of almost 3-1. It received overwhelming support from the Pennsylvania delegation, with only 2 dissenting votes – Joe Pitts (R-16) and Bill Shuster (R-9). And yet, it is stalled in the Senate, because of the secret shenanigans of a single Senator, and it may never see the light it is trying so valiantly to shine.

Could it happen here? You bet it could.

The more important question is, will it? We need to make sure it doesn’t. One way to do that is to support those legislators who have taken principled positions on this issue. . . . and to insist that others follow their lead. It is time they came out from the shadows and told all of us where they stand.

Open records reform has broad bipartisan support. It is long overdue. It is important. And it must not become the hostage of the special interests who want to kill it.