passopenrecords.org

Who says that the politics has become so divisively partisan that nothing can get done in Harrisburg anymore?

Maybe open records reform is the key to bipartisanship. Certainly, it is an issue that seems to cross all political and philosophical boundaries from right to left. Could it bring together Republicans and Democrats in a state legislature in which the majority could not even agree on a speaker – and so ended up electing one from the other party?

That’s one, and perhaps way-too-optimistic, way to read last week’s legislative tea leaves, after the majority leaders of both the Pennsylvania senate (a Republican) and the Pennsylvania house (a Democrat) publicly stated that reform of the state’s abysmal open records-law will be a top priority when the legislature returns in the fall.

Indeed, Senator Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) issued a press release in which he said that “improving Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law is his top priority for the fall session.” Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Greene) told reporters that the House Democrats will also make a new open-records law one of the principal items on his agenda.

Here is an issue that nobody would touch for years, and the result was that Pennsylvania has become a model of open-records obfuscation. Now, suddenly, the issue may become a model for bipartisan government reform.

We shall see.

“We have made great progress this year by implementing many important government reforms,” Sen. Pileggi said. “But the cornerstone of reform is strengthening our Right-to-Know Law.”

Amen.

Pileggi made headlines last month, when he announced he had changed his mind about “flipping the presumption” – and he now supports the notion that all government records are presumed to be open to the public unless they are specifically exempted by law. Pennsylvania is one of the few remaining states in which the burden of proof is on the requester to demonstrate that he or she is entitled to have access to a “public” record.

Of course, just what will and will not be exempted from the new law will ultimately determine exactly how much reform we are actually going to get.

But Pileggi, at least, is saying the right thing on that matter as well.

“Changing the presumption on open records in Pennsylvania won’t be a simple task,” he noted. “Everyone recognizes that some records should not be made public. We need to make the list of exceptions as narrow and as clear as possible, to give the public access while protecting legitimate interests.”

Capitolwire.com reported on Wednesday that DeWeese had announced that open records, property taxes and campaign-finance reform will top the Democrats’ fall agenda.

These two public pronouncements are very, very heartening. But they remain only words until they are turned into law. We look forward to following the progress of the legislation and the roles of both leaders in passing meaningful reform.