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What follows are excerpts from the testimony of Carl H. Lavin, deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer at Tuesday’s hearings on House Bill 443. For Lavin’s full testimony – and that of Teri Henning of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and Bob Heisse, editor of the Center Daily Times – go here.

How do we insure that public officials operate effectively and efficiently? How do we recognize when they do and hold them accountable when they fall short? How do we build trust in government? The free flow of public information, gathered in the name of the public and at public expense, achieves all these goals.

The people who need a strong right-to-know law can’t always make it to a legislative hearing. But the people who need a strong law are dependent on the people in this room.

• Seaser Tiller won’t benefit when you improve the law, but there are other Seaser Tillers out there. Seaser was 9 months old when he drowned in a bathtub in Northeast Philadelphia. His mother had left him to check email. The family was under active DHS oversight. As The Inquirer reported in a June article about DHS failures, Seaser Tiller got lost: “DHS knew the 9-month-old boy might be in danger. His mother, September Tiller, had a history of abusing and neglecting her children.”

The Department of Human Services is now trying to improve the services it provides the most vulnerable children, children like Seaser Tiller. Why? Because of a series of articles The Inquirer has published since fall about a string of deaths of children in families receiving services from the department. To report those stories, we asked the city for a list of all fatalities of children from families receiving DHS services. They said no. We asked for copies of the agency’s reports analyzing the deaths. They said no. We asked for summaries of the recommendations made after each death was reviewed. They said no. Our intrepid reporters pushed and dug and came up with the material on their own, and their articles describing egregious conditions under which many children died won a national award. After our articles, the Mayor pushed out the top two people at the agency, named a review panel, and instituted new procedures.

• There will be other Bryan Jones, too. On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Jones, who was unarmed, was fatally shot by police officers in Philadelphia. The attorney for his family, Bruce Ginsburg, has been frustrated by the department’s unwillingness to turn over basic information. Was Jones shot in the back of the head or in the face? We don’t know. “We don’t even know the name of the police officers who shot him,” Mr. Ginsburg told The Inquirer.

In 2006, 20 people were shot dead by Philadelphia police officers. This year, the pace has continued. Who are the officers involved? What has their career trajectory been? Do they have personnel files full of commendations or full of warnings? We have asked the Philadelphia police department for the names of the officers. The department denied our request. When a government employee as part of his official duties kills a person on the street, should the people have a right to know the name of that official?

• The school district of Philadelphia knew it had a problem with violence against teachers. An independent consultant studied the situation and completed a 47-page report. We asked for that report, but the district refused. Not until months later when students attacked Frank Burd, a teacher at Germantown High School, and we said we would write a story saying the report was being kept secret, did the district release the report. It concluded that a lack of training, inconsistent discipline practices, and high turnover in personnel all led to a breakdown in procedure. Problem students who should have been transferred to special schools were left in regular classrooms. Belatedly, the district made changes. This may help other teachers, but it came too late for Mr. Burd. That attack broke his neck. He is still recovering.

• In Iowa, the state Department of Transportation website lists every bridge, the year it was built, the year it was reconstructed, and the score it received on a “sufficiency rating.” In Pennsylvania, our department of transportation seems to think the public is not ready for this information. Our bridges are rated only on a pass-fail basis – either sufficient or insufficient. The full scores of the Iowa bridges are available to the public. The full scores of our bridges remain secret.

These public records belong to the public. 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.

A carefully written right-to-know law will recognize how information flows today. It will also recognize that there are many Seaser Tillers, and Bryan Jones, and Frank Burds out there who are counting on you to do the right thing.