passopenrecords.org

Legislators and other public officials who have been relatively good on making public their own records may actually be less likely than others to support expansion of the right-to-know law.

Why?

Because, according to some with whom I have spoken, they think they are doing enough, and they worry about what more may be demanded of them if the current push for reform is successful. One legislator told me that, first as a township supervisor and now as a state representative, he has consistently made available more information than is required by law. And he wasn’t sure what more he should do. I think he may genuinely be unaware of both (1) the number and extent of cases in which access to information is routinely denied or, as in the case in the article below, made exorbitantly expensive and/or difficult to get, and (2) how much more transparently almost every other state operates. My sense is that he looks on the current push for reform is a tempest in a teapot and, that he believes that, after all the exemptions have been negotiated, there will be little real change in the way public agencies operate.

This made me think that, in our tendency to focus on the most egregious examples and recalcitrant officials, we must not overlook the crucial need to educate those who are more open with the public about the need for fundamental change in Pennsylvania. We assume, because they comply with – or even exceed – the current requirements, that they are sympathetic to legislative change. That may turn out to be wishful thinking.

We need to work on our friends as much as our foes because we need to make sure that every legislator understands that there is a problem in Pennsylvania; that the state badly needs such fundamental reforms as “flipping the presumption” and making legislative records subject to the right-to-know law; and that 47 states have more transparent governments than ours, not because their legislators were too dumb to avoid it, but because it is a much more credible and effective way to govern.

$1,000 an hour?

A Dauphin County man sued Allegheny County on Tuesday over what he considers an exorbitant fee of $1,000 to obtain the county’s property assessment database.

Craig J. Staudenmaier stated in the lawsuit that in April he requested the database in electronic form to be placed on a compact disc. He did not request any special format or special extracts, the lawsuit states.

Staudenmaier, a Harrisburg lawyer, is accusing the county of violating the state’s Right to Know Law by charging excessive fees for public records. County officials could copy the database in less than one hour and without using extra personnel, the lawsuit states.