passopenrecords.org

Yes, the pay raise scandal happened years ago, and the voters punished legislators and judges in the 2006 elections. They are undoubtedly ready to move on and look for their elected leaders to do the same. But that doesn’t mean that they are any less wary than they have been, and greater transparency in government remains an important touchstone for restoring the public’s trust in its government.

And here are some recent reminders about why the mistrust – and the anger – arose in the first place, why it would be shortsighted to think it had simply evaporated, and why we must continue to push vigorously for real open-records reform.

• No one has to wonder, two years after the Legislature’s outrageous pay raise, if voter anger has subsided over the public-be-damned antics of Harrisburg. Not if you’ve been following the Post-Gazette’s reports on pay bonuses given last year to state House staff members.

The latest revelation showed that departing state Rep. Mike Veon, the No. 2 leader in the Democratic caucus, spread around bonuses of nearly $80,000 to a dozen staffers at his Beaver Falls office.

The money – all public dollars, of course – is part of the nearly $2 million in legislative staff bonuses that is the focus of an investigation by a state grand jury.

At issue is whether some of the bonuses, in fact, represented pay for work on political campaigns – a violation of state law. One of the revelations by the Post-Gazette was that of the 100 employees who got the largest bonuses, 80 had volunteered for or contributed to Democratic campaigns.

That’s been enough to keep the grand jury and state attorney general busy, and each new discovery is enough to enrage the voters with news that the same culture that hatched the pay raise is still afoot in the Capitol.

• Pennsylvania’s student loan agency spent about $2.2 million over five years on promotional giveaways, such as logo-inscribed golf balls, pencils, clothing and reusable glowing ice cubes, a newspaper reported.

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported Sunday that in the five years ending June 30, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency purchased, among other items, . . . $3,400 worth of gummy brains candy.

”Gummy brains? The officials at PHEAA must have gummy brains if they were willing to waste scholarship money on these types of wasteful expenditures,” said Rep. Josh Shapiro, D-Montgomery.

PHEAA spokesman Keith New said such spending has ended.

The newspaper calculated that the promotional items’ cost since 2002 would have funded 553 of the $4,000 grants available to students attending state universities, or 885 of the $2,500 community college grants.

• Pennsylvanians are a generous bunch. You gave almost $4 million in bonuses – above salaries and liberal benefits – to people who work for your state senators and representatives during the past two years.

And Keystone State residents obviously value the political process highly inasmuch as the bulk of that bonus money apparently rewarded staffers not for legislative work but for electioneering.

At least that’s what a grand jury led by the state Attorney General’s Office is investigating.

• Last week I posted something about the problems members of the media have faced with obtaining public records from civil servants. Before the week was out, I was met with a brand new excuse from an executive director of a government agency who didn’t want to give me a copy of a feasibility study on bringing water to a new waste coal power plant being developed in Washington County. In a nutshell, the executive director of the Washington County Conservation District denied my request because he didn’t think I would be able to understand the report. Here’s how it went:

[Gary] Stokum [executive director of the conservation district office] said it would take a geologist to correctly interpret the report, and that it might be “misconstrued” and reported inaccurately in the newspaper if he wasn’t present to explain the document to a reporter.

“What good is it to you if you don’t understand it?” he said.

[Washington County Commissioner J. Bracken] Burns said he paid Stokum a personal visit to explain the county’s liberal open records policy Friday afternoon after becoming alerted to the difficulties people were having with getting a copy of the study.

Burns said it’s not necessary to “run an IQ test” on someone or judge their competence before making copies of public records available to residents.

Stokum then called the newspaper shortly after 3 p.m. Friday to say that the report was at a copying company and would be available to a reporter as early as Thursday.

“Well, you managed to rattle enough chains,” he said.

• Clay Calvert, Curley professor of the First Amendment, said open records are important because citizens have a right to see how and where taxpayer dollars are being spent.

“In a democratic society, it’s crucial that we know what takes place,” he said.