Passing time
Dec 17th, 2007 by JamieB
While we wait a month for the Senate to return to Harrisburg after the holiday break and take up the House-modified version of Senate Bill 1, we need to:
1. Keep the pressure on. There is a good deal of momentum now to get something done in the reform realm, and open records seems to be the go-to place right now. “It’s hard for me as I sit here to think of an issue that has as broad a support as open records, which is next up to bat,” Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Chester), the prime sponsor of SB1, told the Lebanon Daily News. Yet, let’s not overlook what Rep. RoseMarie Swanger (R-Lebanon) told the newspaper about the overall push for reform: “I really see very little desire for change up here, and I think it will be hard coming.”
2. “Get it right,” in the headline words of yesterday’s editorial in the Harrisburg Patriot-News. “Better that the Legislature get it right in enacting a new open-records law than get it done quickly but imperfectly.” In particular, the Patriot-News laid out a compelling case for dropping the exemption of autopsy reports, which are actually open to the public under the current law. “Our authority on autopsy reports,” the paper wrote, “is Patriot-News staff writer Pete Shellem, whose reporting has led to the release of four people serving life terms for crimes they did not commit. . . . While the argument is made that open autopsy reports would lead to their misuse, the fact is that they are open under existing law and there is virtually no record of misuse. This is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
3. Ask questions: What is behind the House vote to delay the implementation of a new law – for which we have been waiting 50 years – until 2009? “That means twelve more months of citizens being kept in the dark about their governments. Another year of refusing to provide open, accountable government.”
4. Remember: For those who wonder (a) why the blanket exclusion of all emails from the open-records law was a bad idea and (b) why many state legislators nevertheless pushed the idea hard, the investigative work of Dennis Roddy and Tracie Mauriello of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette provides some compelling insights (excerpts below; read the entire article):
E-mail messages exchanged by top aides in the Democratic caucus starting in 2004 make clear that taxpayer-funded bonuses were given to legislative employees for their work on election campaigns.
The messages, obtained by the Post-Gazette, are a key component in an investigation by Attorney General Tom Corbett into the bonuses and whether they constituted an illegal use of state money for political work.
In startlingly blunt language, a group of aides, at points working under the direction of then-House Minority Whip Michael Veon (D-Beaver) rated the political work of state employees, sometimes adjusting the amounts of the bonuses based on time they spent in the field or, in one instance, in getting presidential candidate Ralph Nader off the Pennsylvania ballot.
“Mainly, I based my decisions on the number of days people spent in the field,” wrote Eric Webb, director of Democratic member services, in one of the e-mails, “but a few people were bumped up for extra efforts, like being a phone bank captain,” or “helping with the Spanish phone bank.”
The system that produced the pay bonus scandal now roiling the state Capitol took shape at least three years ago when a cadre of top House aides began tracking campaign hours put in by Democratic caucus employees and then tied them to taxpayer-funded salary bonuses.
The e-mail messages also show apparent widespread use of the Democratic caucus employees, offices and computer systems for political work.
In all, 31,000 archived e-mails thought to have been deleted were later recovered.
The inquiry also found that virtually every e-mail regarding pay bonuses sent on the caucus computer system in 2006 had been erased, as had all record of Mr. Veon’s e-mails. What investigators later uncovered were e-mails from 2004 and 2005 that included an outline of the scheme that suggested it had been ongoing for several years.