passopenrecords.org

At the risk of sounding like the grinch so closed to Christmas, I have to share this story from Kori Walter of the Herald-Standard.

The moral of his story is twofold:

(1) Emails are already the communication of choice for those who seek to fly under the radar. Walter reports that House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Greene) confirmed that he had turned over thousands of emails (about 31,000 in fact) to Attorney General Tom Corbett as part of the latter’s investigation into “bonusgate” – the $3.6 million (yes, million!) in bonuses handed out to legislative aides at the end of last year.

(2) There is money to be made in “ethics training.” The emails were discovered during an internal probe led by William G. Chadwick, a consultant who gets $25,000 a month (yes, a month!) to lead the training. In the light of what he found, such training is clearly needed, but what does it say about our legislature that the taxpayers need to pay a thousands a month so they can learn to do the right thing?

By the way, DeWeese told Walter that he would not release the emails, offering the rationale that “certain e-mail traffic is already on the Internet.”

“The information has been out there for five weeks,” he said, “and it’s been accessible to 30 or 40 people.” Seems like the rest of us might therefore have a right to know.

It’s hard to disagree with Tim Potts, founder of Democracy Rising Pennsylvania, who told Walter that the bonus scandal reinforces the need for a stronger open records law that applies to the Legislature, noting that “it shouldn’t take a criminal investigation for people to see what’s going on in the Legislature.”

On a brighter note (I guess), the Freedom of Information Act blog just named the collective efforts of Pennsylvanians to change our Right-to-Know law its top story of the year.

2007 Countdown: Top Story Number 5 – PA Attempts to Change its Right to Know Law

This year, the biggest story at the state level, has been Pennsylvania’s attempt to change its anti-requester friendly Right to Know law to a more disclosure friendly Open Records Law. Unlike other states, this is more than just adding a few amendments to an open records bill that is already law. This exercise is an attempt to replace a bill that says the public can’t have records unless it fits into one of the categories that the government says they can have to a new bill that says records are public unless they are otherwise exempt.

And finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized: So close, yet so far,

In spite of themselves, Pennsylvania legislators almost completed a new open-records law that would move the state from among the worst to among the best.

But reform doesn’t come easy in Harrisburg. Especially when it comes to shining more light on the sausage factory.

Rather than end the year on a high note, legislators broke for the holidays without accomplishing much in 2007.

Before adjourning, the House did approve unanimously a bill that would greatly enhance Pennsylvania’s now pathetic public “right-to-know” law.