This is the week, and as we wait for the verdict on open records from our elected representatives, we sill have a lot of questions.
Here’s one: If almost everyone – at least publicly – now accepts that public records are presumed to be open unless they are subject to a specific exemption, shouldn’t the government clearly explain each of exclusions and exemptions written into law?
That seems obvious to the point of redundancy.
So why, then, are autopsies – which are open records under current law – closed under the pending bill?
As the Herald-Standard of Uniontown wrote a few days ago, “Autopsy records are currently open to the public, so why should the state take a backward step? We haven’t heard anyone articulate a good reason for keeping those records secret.”
And as the Patriot-News of Harrisburg wrote last month: Exempting autopsy records would “represent a 180-degree turn from existing law, under which autopsy reports are treated as open records, publicly available. Going backward on this would be a huge mistake. . . .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.
“Our authority on autopsy reports,” the paper noted, “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. In a letter to the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, Shellem wrote that ‘in each of those cases, one of the first things I looked at was the autopsy report.’”
So it is with arbitration hearing transcripts and awards.
As the Herald-Standard also pointed out: “the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, is behind the effort to lobby legislators to keep arbitration records private. The PSEA may be a powerful special interest group, but lawmakers should have enough backbone to know that when it comes to spending public money, every red cent should be accounted for.
“We fail to see what the PSEA fears by having such information available to the people who pay the bills.”
Same with dates of birth . . . and a host of other things in little print that nobody wants you to notice.
Stay tuned.