passopenrecords.org

There continues to be a lot of positive coverage of the Reform Commission’s recommendations on open records reform, and of Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware)’s support for the “novel concept, and one not always embraced in Harrisburg, . . . that most public records are in fact open – not closed – to the public.”

But those accolades continue to be laced with fears:

Fears that the list of exemptions may end up undoing the intent of the legislation.

Fears that “this impetus for change [will] get watered down with exceptions demanded by lobbyists, municipal officials, law-enforcement types and others who’d prefer not to have the public monitoring their business.”

And fears that “this is, after all, Pennsylvania, where people power is an anathema to many elected and appointed officials. The best way to describe the current law is “that’s for us (public officials) to know and you (the public) to find out. It’s crucial to remember that the commission’s votes are not binding on the House. It is only when these recommendations become law that they will make a difference.”

• More evidence that at least some of our legislators are serious about this issue was apparent in the fact that Pileggi’s bill will also substantially increase the penalties for public officials who violate the rules. This provision is echoed in Sen. Gibson Armstrong (R-Lancaster)’s open-meetings legislation, which would increase the fines for violations by a factor of 10 – and require public officials to pay those fines out of their own pockets. Armstrong and Pileggi are working to “dovetail” their bills, which is another good sign.

• On the other hand, Bill White’s column in the Allentown Morning Call provides more evidence from the public officials’ failure-to-get-it department:

An Upper Macungie woman on her way home from shopping says she was nearly trapped and gunned down last month on a township street by men who apparently chose her at random – and the police decided to keep it quiet to avoid panic.

In fact, not only did the department try to cover it up, but it is actively investigating who leaked the report, which had been sent out only to area law enforcement agencies.

Someone thought the public had a right to know? Shocking.

The closest thing to a newspaper story in response to this shooting report was a story 11 days later in the weekly Parkland Press, with the headline, ”Berks-Lehigh Police urge safety when shopping.” It was a generic collection of tips about avoiding criminals at shopping districts, offered by the department ”in its ongoing commitment to serving the residents.”

Call me crazy, but I suspect this would carry a little more weight if readers knew some guys may have been SHOOTING AT A REAL SHOPPER in their community on her way home.

Just a hunch.

Publicizing police news is partly about keeping people informed about what’s happening in their communities. They have a right to know.

But in some cases, it’s also about alerting them so they can be more careful - about guys disguised as cops who commit sexual assaults, about burglars operating in their neighborhood, about attempted abductions of children, and certainly about gunmen attacking people at random.

• Lloyd Huck, a Penn State trustee emeritus and former board chairman of pharmaceutical giant, Merck, wrote a letter to the Harrisburg Patriot-News that urges caution in opening the university’s records to the public. In marked contrast to the approach of the university’s president, Graham Spanier, Huck declares his strong support for “transparency on the part of public institutions,” and he focuses both his attention and his low-key, reasoned arguments on two specific issues – protecting both donor privacy and intellectual property.

• Finally, a story from next door in New Jersey that has the ring of the PHEAA farce – except that the legal bill the taxpayers got stuck with was only a fraction of ours – which I suppose makes the PHEAA saga more a tragedy than a funny story.

The Pleasantville school district’s refusal to release school board meeting records has cost state and local taxpayers more than $50,000.

The Press of Atlantic City sued in January after the board’s lawyers, Hunt, Hamlin and Ridley of Newark, refused to provide records of closed-session meetings held on five dates in 2006. The newspaper won the lawsuit.

The story also brings back memories of the long-suffering Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon’s secretary who “accidentally” erased 18 minutes of tape that led to the final act of Watergate.

[Board Attorney Ronald] Hunt told the court that tapes for four sessions were found to be blank and may have been erased, leaving no records of those meetings. Other transcripts were of limited value because they did not identify who was speaking.

Eventually the board admitted it had violated the law and promised to keep better records.

Stay tuned . . .