passopenrecords.org

Both Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati (R-Jefferson) and Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Chester) have pledged to have a new open records bill on Gov. Ed Rendell’s desk by the end of this month.

“We have to continue to restore the public’s respect and trust in the [House and Senate] chambers that has been somewhat tarnished in past years,” Mr. Scarnati told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette earlier this week.

You don’t have to look far to see why we need a new law . . . and it isn’t only to restore the public’s trust in their state government, as important as that is.

The fact is, that without clear direction from Harrisburg, local officials all across the Commonwealth are making their own decisions about what the public gets – and doesn’t get – to see.

Take Easton, a city of about 26,000 in the Lehigh Valley and famous as the hometown of former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes.

When 23-year-old Officer John Alestas drove his car into the front of a Wawa store at 4:30 a.m. last September – barely seven months after he had been hired – he became the third city police officer to have run afoul of the law in 2007. All three incidents involved alcohol, and two of them involved automobiles.

With a record like that, you might think that the people of Easton would be at least interested in how the case was resolved. Well, there is much they won’t know because, in the opinion of City Solicitor William Murphy, it’s none of their business.

As a condition of Alestas’ returning to work, the city council required him to write letters of apology to the mayor and the council members. In addition, the city received letters of support for the officer’s reinstatement.

Not surprisingly, the city’s newspaper, The Express-Times, asked to see the letters. The request, which was made on Oct. 24th, was denied two weeks later on the grounds that it did not fit the legal definition of a public record because the letters were “not generated by or a product of the agency, the City of Easton.”

Let’s see: the accident involved a probationary officer of the city’s police force, and the letters of apology were demanded by – and sent to – the elected members of the city’s governing body and to its chief executive.

These are not public records?

Well, maybe some of them are . . . because when The Express-Times appealed the decision, the city released letters received by the city council – but it continued to withhold those received by the mayor.

Clearly we need clarity – and we need consistence across Pennsylvania. The legislature has promised to provide both this month. It needs to do so. It has been more than a year since Pileggi first offered Senate Bill 1, and a new open records law remains at the heart of reforming state government and restoring public trust.