Posted in Open Records on Oct 31st, 2007 No Comments »
The Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition (PaFOIC) and PA Newspaper Association hosted a Forum on Open Government on Monday evening at the Fredricksen Library in Camp Hill, PA.
Kim deBourbon of the PaFOIC hosted the event, and Scott Gilbert of WITF-FM served as moderator.
The first panel’s topic was “What must or must […]
Posted in Open Records on Oct 31st, 2007 No Comments »
Well, we are in the thick of it now. The Senate State Government Committee unanimously approved an amended version of Senate Bill 1 that, among other things, “flips the presumption,” sets up an open records clearing house, cuts the agency response time, increases the penalties, and generally tries to bring uniformity to the process across […]
Posted in Open Records on Oct 30th, 2007 No Comments »
As both the House and the Senate struggle with the issue of what to do about open records (see AP reports), the rumblings on the hustings continue to build. . . .What are they trying to hide? What happened to reform? Do they think we aren’t paying attention? etc.
• Brad Bumsted of the Pittsburgh […]
Posted in Open Records News on Oct 29th, 2007 No Comments »
These two stories from the Associated Press — the Senate State Government Committee voted to send SB 1 to the full Senate; while the House pushed back its debate on HB 443 for at least a day.
• A state Senate committee unanimously approved a bill today to overhaul the law that sets limits on public […]
Posted in Open Records on Oct 29th, 2007 No Comments »
As the evisceration of House Bill 443 continues, attention has turned both inside and outside the legislature to Senate Bill 1, whose main sponsor, Senate Majority Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), has called passing meaningful open records reform his number 1 priority. Senator Jim Ferlo (D-Allegheny), who has sponsored a competing open records bill, SB 765, has […]
Posted in Open Records on Oct 28th, 2007 No Comments »
Around the state and across the country, people are watching closely what both the House and the Senate will do to open records this week.
Good open records / e-mail thinking in Ohio
There’s a move afoot in Ohio to clarify that private e-mail accounts are unsuitable for government work.
By “private e-mail accounts”, what they’re getting at […]
Posted in Citizen Stories on Oct 28th, 2007 No Comments »
In Berlin, PA, The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat is trying to obtain a settlement agreement between Berlin’s former police chief and the borough council.
The Lebanon Daily News reports on the challenges facing genealogy researchers in PA.
The Tribune-Review reports that Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato wants to restrict the amount of information available […]
Posted in Open Records News on Oct 27th, 2007 No Comments »
• State Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fayette), sponsor of a bill to increase public access to government records, still wants the legislation passed after the House State Government committee modified it considerably.
House Bill 443 would change Pennsylvania law to presume all government records are public and that only narrow exceptions should be made. Some members of […]
Posted in Open Records on Oct 26th, 2007 2 Comments »
As the writer of this letter to the editor of the Times-Tribune makes clear, open records is an important issue to the people of Pennsylvania. It is how we find out what our representatives are doing. It is also, the writer points out, a good way to gauge their attitude toward us, the voters, and […]
Posted in Open Records News on Oct 26th, 2007 1 Comment »
There is been strong and pretty much unanimous reaction across Pennsylvania to the changes that were made to House Bill 443 one night last week in the State Government Committee. The reviews, which are sampled here, condemn both the substance of the amendments and the way they were rammed through. Rep Mike Vereb (R-Montgomery), a […]