passopenrecords.org

Open records reform continues to be one of the most written-about issues in Pennsylvania this summer . . . even during the so-called dog days of August, when the legislature is out of session and Capitol news is traditionally slow. There is hope. There is skepticism. There are stories on local, county and state issues. But most of all there is a refreshing and unprecedented tenacity to hold officials accountable on the issue.

Today and Monday, we will give just a sampling of stories, editiorials and columns that have been piling up in our in-box.

• The seeming capriciousness of PennDOT’s decision to withhold, then release the bridge safety ratings was not lost on Carl Lavin, a deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Lavin, who testified after Biehler [at the House hearings earlier this month], said the Philadelphia School District had refused to release a consultant’s report on student violence against teachers — until a teacher was seriously injured by a student Feb. 23 and the Inquirer planned a story about the district’s refusal to release the report.

“Miraculously, that report became available,” Lavin told legislators. “A judgment call, just as you saw today.”

• You win if amendment on open records carries

Even if you never go to City Hall for a copy of the general fund budget, open records are important to you. And even if you never go to a school district office to see a copy of the payroll records to find out how much a certain school principal is making, open records are important to you.

Open records create clear accountability for the public officials who work for you.

So if you want to go to City Hall or another government office to see a public document that actually belongs to you, no bureaucrat will be able to say, “Why do you want to see this record?”

The new open-records legislation would also force the Legislature to comply with open-records laws. Amazingly, under current law, legislators are free to keep their own records secret.

• Bucks Dem candidates call for openness

Commissioner hopefuls want county to post more online.

Brandishing a thick pile of green and white striped paper churned out by a dot-matrix printer, Democratic commissioner candidates Diane Marseglia and Steve Santarsiero ripped into the Bucks County administration Wednesday for doing a poor job disclosing basic financial information.

The 400-page printout? It’s the county’s detailed 2007 budget.

The document – for which they were charged $40 – is difficult to read and even harder to decipher, they said.

”If our manager gave us this at budget time, we would not be pleased,” said Santarsiero, a Lower Makefield Township supervisor.

Santarsiero and Marseglia also criticized the incumbent commissioners for failing to post, on the county Web site, more basic information they said taxpayers are entitled to, such as meeting minutes, the budget and the annual independent financial audit.

Republican Commissioners Charlie Martin and James Cawley defended their information management, saying the Web site has come a long way in recent years and is highly useful.

”I would stack our Web site against the Web site of just about any county in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, particularly in the last few years,” Cawley said.

• Ask and it shall be given. We’re not sure who did the asking or who inserted the judicial retirement benefit language in House Bill 1295, only that it came out of the state Senate.

But credit Tim Potts of Democracy Rising PA with this find, tucked away in the bill: “Appropriations for the Superior Court, Commonwealth Court, Courts of Common Pleas … may be used to pay for health benefits for senior judges working … for a minimum of 75 days in the prior calendar year.”

What does that mean?

That means judges 70 and over who opt to sit part-time after mandatory retirement can continue to claim some of the best health benefits in the nation. Pennsylvania taxpayers can sleep well knowing they take care of their own.

Count on the Keystone State’s keepers of the keys to be consistent, if nothing else.

• First the good news.

Pennsylvania does not have the worst open records laws in America. Not even next to worst. It’s third.

And there are bills pending in the General Assembly that would allow greater public access to public records.

But it’s downhill from there.

That might change soon. Or not.

Pennsylvania’s Open Records Law is based on the Orwellian assumption that public records are not automatically considered public.

“Everything’s presumed to be secret and closed, other than vaguely defined things as public record,” says Kim McNally de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition. The agency — composed of lawyers, people in the media and others who care about the public’s right to know — was founded shortly after the 2005 state pay-jacking fiasco.

“You have to prove that a public document is public record,” Ms. McNally says of the current law. “The court expense keeps a lot of records in the hands of government only. We want the law to say that the government and records belong to people, with limited exceptions.”

Why has the Pennsylvania Legislature been so closed-minded about open records?

“They don’t want us to know what they are doing. It’s that simple,” says Tim Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising PA, a good-government group in Harrisburg. “They don’t want to legitimize our right to know.”

“Open records laws are a litmus test of the reformers,” he says. “If it’s not passed it says clearly and distinctly that the General Assembly has not gotten the message. It has not even been put on the floor for a vote.”

Tim Potts remains skeptical that the Legislature will pass meaningful open records legislation.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says. “And not one minute before.”