Hide and Seek
Oct 30th, 2007 by JamieB
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 Tribune-Review calls it “Swiss-cheese open-records reform.”
“In the aftermath of the 2005 pay raise and with a grand jury investigating possible corruption in the Pennsylvania Legislature, he write, the state House should be trying its best to reform the way it does business.
“Or so you’d think.
“But recent events suggest both political parties in the Democrat-controlled House have been anything but contrite.
“What are they trying to hide? Even if the answer is ‘nothing’ it sure has the appearance of trying to conceal past records at a time when the attorney general is investigating all four caucuses to see whether bonuses paid to legislative staffers in 2005-2006 helped finance campaign work.”
• “Talk about ironic,” wrote Susan Schwartz, Pa. Sunshine Chairwoman Society of Professional Journalists, in a letter to the editor of the Times-Tribune, “[the House State Government Committee] moved a bill killing sunshine legislation in the dark of night, and didn’t leave enough time for open records advocates to change it.
“We told legislators we wanted open government and accountability back when they rushed their own pay raises through in a midnight vote. Clearly, they didn’t get the message.
“It’s time to tell them again. Please, write your legislators and tell them we want real open records reform. We aren’t mushrooms; we don’t deserve to be kept in the dark.”
• “What we’ve feared all along,” wrote the Herald-Standard “is that the legislature would make much pomp and circumstance about revising the open records law, but eventually pass a watered-down version that contains a list of exceptions as long as Shaquille O’Neal’s arm.”
• And, wrote the Observer-Reporter in Washington, “[t]he fear now is that we’ll get something labeled ‘reform’ that won’t change anything at all.
“As Tim Potts, of Democracy Rising PA put it, the new standard is ‘what is the least we can get away with’ rather than ‘what’s the best we can do.’ Sorry, this isn’t reform.”
Wouldn’t a good dose of transparency — i.e., meaningful open records reform — go a long way toward ending this game of hide-and-seek. Or is that just being naive?