Report from the trenches, part 1
Sep 17th, 2007 by dani_k
As I wrote last week, the Pittsburgh chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the PA Freedom of Information Coalition presented their Forum on Open Government & Pennsylvania Open Records Law Workshop this Saturday.
The forum was well-attended, with about 60 journalists, citizens and students packing the room. The sessions were videotaped by Point Park College journalism students, and the Pittsburgh SPJ hopes to have the videos posted online soon.
The first session, “Pennsylvania’s Open Records Law Now” outlined what today’s open records law does and does not do; moderated by Kim DeBourbon of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, participants included Ron Barber, an Attorney for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; Jim Manolis, an attorney for the New Castle News; and Teri Henning, General Counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
Barber began his presentation by admitting he gets choked up just reading the preamble to the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act. West Virginia ranks 7th on the Better Government Association’s 2002 Integrity Index in FOI laws- far above our place at number 47. The Declaration of Policy reads as follows (note: emphasis mine):
Pursuant to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government which holds to the principle that government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them, it is hereby declared to be the public policy of the state of West Virginia that all persons are, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments of government they have created. To that end, the provisions of this article shall be liberally construed with the view of carrying out the above declaration of public policy.
Whew! In stark contrast, PA law puts the burden on the requester to prove that the records should be public. And there are currently only two areas where a document can even be considered to be public: A “Money” document (e.g.: a budget) or a “Decision” document (e.g.: minutes from a zoning hearing) - yet even these are only loosely defined, and often decided on a case-by-case basis. This is just part of the reason that the PNA gets over 2,000 calls per year on their legal hotline each year. It’s also interesting to note that the PA FOIC is doing an audit/report card on state agencies and open records - the results will be available by the end of the year.
Teri Henning also spoke on case law that’s established the guidelines in PA so far - and the PNA has a lot of great resources - including the PA Open Records Law and an Open Records sample letter - available on their website.
I’ll post on the second and third sessions later.