passopenrecords.org

If the House State Government Committee Hearing on Tuesday is any indication, the issue of open records reform should be a hot topic when the legislature returns in the fall. and Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler agreed to release PennDOT’s hitherto classified information on the state’s bridges.

The hearing room was packed – unlike many legislative hearings in the dog days of summer, it was well attended by committee members, and at some points, it was standing room only in the audience.

More than once a legislator called the issue of revamping the state’s outdated open records law a critical need and one of the most important ways to give the public a reason to trust their elected officials again.

Rep. Babette Josephs (D-Philadelphia), chair of the committee, said supporters are “serious about opening records and documents to the public.”

Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fayette), sponsor of House Bill 443, the open records legislation that was the center of discussion at the hearing, put it bluntly. He said lawmakers want to get open records reform legislation passed - “no more BS-ing the public.”

Rep. William Kortz, (D-Allegheny), agreed saying, “Too many shenanigans have gone on.”

Rep. Matthew Baker (R-Bradford), the minority chairman of the committee, said that there also has to be careful balance on what should and should not be public. A past victim of identity theft, Baker said he is concerned about what personal information could be released.

Another indication of how important the issue of open records has become was the unexpected first testifier at the hearing. State Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler publicly reversed a decision made by PennDOT a few days ago when officials denied a request by the Beaver County Times for numerical ratings on the structural integrity of the state’s 25,000 bridges. Josephs had written Biehler a letter asking him why the information was not public and pressing him to release the scores, which include the state’s 54 steel deck truss bridges that are of the same design as the Minneapolis Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed last week. During the hearing Biehler said he would now allow the Times to have that information.

Bob Heisse, editor of The Centre Daily Times in State College testified that a better open records law is important because people want to know what is going on in their communities. He said that sometimes police don’t release important public safety information that people should know and that school boards hold meetings without any public scrutiny.

Carl Lavin, deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said his reporters have been denied important information (i) from the police when officers have been involved in shootings, (ii) from the school district about school violence incidents and (iii) from the city Department of Human Services on child safety issues.

“These public records belong to the public,” he wrote in his testimony. “For a democracy to function smoothly, citizens need access to public information – to their information. That is why the First Amendment was written. That is why you are working so hard to write better right-to-know legislation.”

Teri Henning, general counsel of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, also testified about the bill. She explained that the PNA supports many of the bill’s provisions, but also discussed several concerns the association has with the bill, including increased agency response times and the potential penalties associated with commercial use of public records.