passopenrecords.org

Even Harvard Law School is following our efforts to update Pennsylvania’s open records law.

From David Ardia of the Citizen Media Law Project:

The Pennsylvania House and Senate are considering new legislation designed to strengthen the state’s Open Records Law. This is welcome news, as Pennsylvania’s current law is one of the most antiquated – and public-unfriendly – laws in the country. (It’s an indication of Pennsylvania’s disregard for public access that I had to link to the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s website for the current version of the law because the state’s legislative website does not include laws enacted prior to 1975, and the Pennsylvania law came about in 1957.)

There are currently three Open Records reform bills pending in the Pennsylvania House and Senate: HB 443, introduced by Rep. Tim Mahoney; SB 1, introduced by Sen. Dominic Pileggi; and SB 765, introduced by Sen. Jim Ferlo.

The Evening Bulletin, which does a good job comparing the three versions, is sanguine that a reform bill will pass this session:

A major obstacle standing between proposed reform and passage is the reformers themselves. They all appear to agree on the need for more access to public records, but they don’t all agree on how it should be accomplished. It is more difficult to find and acquire public records in Pennsylvania than just about anywhere else in the country. Legislators, terrorized by the threat of being cast and perceived in an election year as against reform, appear ready to vote for open records reform.

To help recalcitrant legislators do the right thing, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and PassOpenRecords.org are sponsoring a public “PA Open Records Challenge.” Let’s hope they succeed in pushing through a reform bill. It’s long overdue.

Hurray for South Dakota . . . it makes Pennsylvania look good

Hunting guest list kept secret

Look around and you will find, in this case a state with as dismal an open records law as Pennsylvania.

In South Dakota, you can’t even find out who is invited to the governor’s pheasant hunts. That’s right, that state’s high court ruled against the newspaper that has been seeking the guest list as an open record.

Not so, the court says.

Why the South Dakota governor didn’t release the list in the first place is beyond me.

But, of course, that’s why strong open records laws are needed, because many politicians won’t volunteer any information that can be protected. The South Dakota legislature would have to strengthen the law.

Just like the situation here in Pennsylvania.

Finally, some reactions to the reactions to PNA’s Open Records Challenge:

• Reaction predictable to records requests

Keepers of the government bureaucracy have built their empires on a foundation of public apathy, and by Bartleby the Scrivener, they intend to keep it that way. After all, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

So it was not surprising in the least when spokesmen for several government organizations reacted with horror to a project by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association to test whether government records are open to public access.

Douglas E. Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (motto: “Now what do you want?”), had a hard time coping with the idea that more Pennsylvanians might actually ask to see the public records:

“It is unconscionable for an organization that claims to protect the people’s interest to advocate clogging up public offices with busywork requests to satisfy a contest.”

Yikes! There it is: requests for public information are “busywork,” diversions from . . . well, whatever. It doesn’t make a lick of difference why residents want to see public records. They are entitled to see them. Hill’s reaction betrays the reason that the contest is relevant in the first place.

He has an ally in Thomas J. Gentzel, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (motto: “Not you again”):

”. . . We believe the attitude behind this is to create a hardship for local governments and then point to that as proof that there is a problem.”

Yikes! again. There it is. An excuse before the fact.

• Don’t let fretting local officials stall progress on ‘right to know’ reforms

When it comes to reforming Pennsylvania’s right-to-know laws about open meetings and open records, a lot of attention is paid to Harrisburg.

At least in principle, however, legislative leaders get it. The heads of both party caucuses have either taken steps to be more open or have pledged to do so when the Legislature reconvenes this month. Likewise, Gov. Ed Rendell has signed on to a key piece of making records more open.

But, an exchange in recent days between those leading an open-government campaign and those representing local elected officials suggests that, like politics, this fight is going to be local. Local officials have statewide organizations and lobbyists, so their views count. It would be a shame if this spat held up or stopped the change now happening in Harrisburg.

Specifically, the Pennsylvania Local Government Conference represents school boards, county commissioners and city, borough and township officials. It has objected to a campaign organized by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association that encourages people to ask government bodies for public records.

The government officials say this will result in frivolous requests, ”busy work” that will prevent staff from otherwise serving the public. However, there is no evidence that any such disruptive mischief has happened at any of Pennsylvania’s 5,000-plus government agencies as a result of the open-records campaign. And, remember, when people do make such requests, the object is a legitimate public record – which ought to be quickly and easily available anyway.

There is momentum in the Legislature and the governor’s office to move in the right direction. No one wants hurt feelings or self-serving worries to stop that.

• Records aren’t that easy to get

Our Open Records Law remains as bad as ever, and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association has issued a challenge to citizens, asking them to request one public record from an agency of their choice. With more than 5,000 local agencies to choose from, there is little chance that any particular county, municipality, authority, etc. will be overly burdened.

Yet, that is one objection raised, albeit parenthetically, by the Pennsylvania Local Government Conference, an umbrella group that represents counties, cities, boroughs, townships, municipal authorities and school districts. In a letter to PNA, it objected principally that the campaign ignores “the plain fact that we fulfill the vast majority of records requests easily, immediately and completely, and instead persists in portraying records retrieval as some arbitrary and torturous process.”

But in our experience there are times when that is an accurate description of the process. We had an example last week.

Burgettstown Borough is preparing to take action Monday on an ordinance dealing with dog problems, from attacks to excessive barking, and also regulating the presence of “exotic” animals. In an attempt to write a story informing residents about the issue, one of our reporters asked the borough building for a copy of the proposed ordinance.

The request was refused on the grounds that it was only a proposal and it might be misconstrued as law. (Bizarrely, we were told we could come to Burgettstown and read it, but a copy could not leave the premises.) We then called a councilman who told the borough employees to release the document, but he had to intervene a second time when they insisted on waiting to get permission from the solicitor.

• Reform: Was It Just Talk?

There’s been a lot of positive talk this year about reforming Pennsylvania’s archaic Right to Know Law, which is supposed to provide citizens easy access to matters of public record but, in practice, makes it extremely difficult.

But was it just talk?

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association has been in good-faith discussions with local and state government groups and representatives regarding changes and improvements to the Right to Know Law.

To get a clearer picture of how the law works now for the people who should matter most – average citizens – PNA in August launched its Open Records Challenge.

The response of the Pennsylvania Local Government Conference tells us many of those in the public realm still do not understand what the Right-to-Know Law is supposed to be about.

The challenge was criticized by the local government officials as an unconscionable waste of time, money and resources.

Government accountability at any level is not annoying if the process is easy and there is nothing to hide. But our democracy is full of examples on local, state and national levels of misuse and abuse of the public’s funds and trust. In almost all cases, the root cause is a lack of accountability.

The PNA is right to insist on Right to Know Law reform – both on behalf of all media outlets and citizen taxpayers – that would install a level of accountability that is fair to all parties and easy to execute.

That this routine challenge being executed by the PNA is cause for alarm from leaders or public officials tells us we’ve got a long way to go on the Right-to-Know Law.