passopenrecords.org

Picking up from where we left off last Friday, here is a second sampling of articles and opinions from across Pennsylvania. What remains remarkable is not just the staying power of open records reform through the slow summer months, but the way it has galvanized people all across the political and philosophical spectrum. Ironically, with all the discussion of PennDOT’s refusal to release bridge data – on the grounds that (1) the information did not meet the definition of a public record and (2) the public might not be able to handle the information rationally – and Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler’s unexpected reversal at this month’s public hearing before the House State Government Committee, transparency in government appears to be a bridge that unites folks who can agree on little else.

This is just one more reason why open records should be at the top of the agenda when the legislature reconvenes next month and why both houses should pass a real reform measure that make the government open, accessible and accountable to the people it represents.

• From Tony Phyrillas: This editorial was published in The Pottstown Mercury. It sums up the need for campaign finance reform and open government in Pennsylvania, where lobbyists control Harrisburg. Politicians won’t act on these important reforms unless the people demand it. Where does your legislator stand? How much money has your legislator accepted from lobbyists? You need to know these things before the 2008 legislative elections. Here’s the editorial:

Rep. David Levdansky, an Allegheny County Democrat, told a House panel this week that his bill for campaign finance reform is an attempt to change influence-buying and lobbyist pressures in Harrisburg that are at the core of criticisms of this state’s legislature.

Calling campaign finance reform “the mother of all reforms,” he said that changing the way political campaigns are funded is a critical step toward renewing the public’s trust in state government.

“You change how we raise money … you will fundamentally change the entire legislative process,” he told the panel.

But with momentum building to make state government more open and accountable to the public, the movement to reform campaign finance rules has also grown. At least four bills have been introduced in the House this year and a proposal has been floated by the governor. They call for widely differing limits on contributions.

As Levdansky said, these proposals are not just about setting a limit on how much money a candidate can raise. They are aimed at reforming the system, top to bottom, but taking money out of the power equation.

Quite simply, it’s about time.

• When the Beaver County Times sought the ratings assigned to bridges following their inspection last April, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation denied the request on the grounds that they were “internal documents,” the release of which could endanger public security.

Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler had an epiphany of sorts . . . when he agreed, after first refusing, to make bridge ratings public at the request of state Rep. Babette Josephs, chairman of the state House Government Committee. Biehler called it a “judgment call.”

But the collapse of the main span of Interstate 35W in Minnesota, the urgings of Gov. Ed Rendell to release the information and Josephs’ insistence may have helped the secretary to see the virtues of governmental transparency.

The fact is, however, that government officials and clerks routinely make judgment calls about what is the public’s business and what isn’t, and denying or providing records to the public on the basis of little more than whim.

Whether local, state or national, government is supposed to work for and be responsive to us, the people. Yet, there are legions of folks working in government who don’t get it, as if they were employed by a secret society in which individual members of the press and public are considered a nuisance.

Pennsylvania needs a Right-to-Know Law that abolishes the notion that providing public records to the public is a judgment call. It needs a law that presumes that the public has a right to see all records, unless they have been excepted in law for a specific purpose.

• From Bob Heisse: It was a remarkable House State Government Committee hearing [earlier this month] for anyone following the long-sought hope for a stronger open-records law in Pennsylvania.

The panel chairman, Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, started it all off at the Capitol by saying that government records should be open, period.

The sponsor of the progressive bill before the committee, Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fayette, reasoned that it was all about taxpayers and taxpayers’ money, and real action to open records would restore trust in the General Assembly.

Then the unscheduled first witness, state Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler, reversed PennDOT’s course before the very eyes of a packed hearing room by declaring that bridge safety ratings — previously denied to reporters — would be made public after all.

Biehler’s ray of sunshine made headlines across the state, as it should, but the hearing itself deserved headlines, too.

All 19 House State Government committee members, including Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, attended, and the priority of this issue really came into focus on a steamy August day.

Open records didn’t make the cut in July when the state budget and likely tolls for Interstate 80 emerged from the General Assembly. That’s no surprise, given the scope of the issue, but some of the best news coming out of Harrisburg this summer is the attention it’s getting.

While I spoke as an editor, I said I represented you because I hear from so many readers. Your interests are varied, no question, but you clearly want to be informed in a timely manner about where your tax money is going and what’s happening in your community.

Improving access to records in Pennsylvania will benefit you, even if you don’t actively attend meetings or request documents from a school or municipal board.

• From Brad Bumsted: Crash data are a state secret

It took a horrific accident in Minneapolis with vivid TV images to prompt PennDOT to agree to release numerical ratings of bridge inspection reports in Pennsylvania.

Well, almost.

PennDOT was going to blow off a state House committee hearing and continue to withhold the information. It took a kick in the pants from House State Government Chairwoman Babette Josephs, a Philadelphia Democrat, to prompt Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler to show up at the hearing and agree to eventually release the information on 25,000 PennDOT-owned bridges. The agency previously termed the data “confidential” and “classified” and too complex for the public to understand.

But while the bridge information falls within “the public’s right to know,” according to Biehler’s boss, Gov. Ed Rendell, the agency continues to thwart the release of data showing where the most severe vehicle accidents take place in Pennsylvania.

It points out glaring weaknesses in the state’s Right to Know law, paternalistic attitudes among top state officials and a tendency in Pennsylvania’s closed government culture to say “no” to the release of information.

It’s flat-out hypocritical.

It defies all logic to say the public has a right to know about bridge inspections but not the worst accident sites.

• Bridge records public property

Did it take a bridge collapse in Minneapolis for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to relent, after months of resistance, and let the public see its bridge inspection ratings?

Apparently. Just before PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler testified Tuesday before a House committee debating a tougher open records bill, he had a change of heart and decided to release the bridge ratings, which had been sought by two newspapers.

Not to be flippant, but what will it take for the Legislature to have a similar epiphany and enact an open records law that brings Pennsylvania out of the dark ages? Our own bridge disaster? Another pay-raise debacle?

Actually, it only requires a sense of duty of residents and some logical exclusions for sensitive information. Pennsylvania’s open records law is one of the worst in the nation. It places the onus on an applicant to show why a record should be released rather than requiring public officials to explain why it shouldn’t be.