passopenrecords.org

No, that’s not my Super Bowl prediction. That was the final vote in the Senate yesterday in favor of Senate Bill 1, the overhaul of Pennsylvania’s antiquated open records law. It has been a long haul as well as an overhaul, and the process, which began a year ago, is not over yet. The House still needs to vote on the bill, and then Gov. Ed Rendell must sign it into law.

The House vote is an up or down vote – they cannot amend yesterday’s version of Senate Bill 1. House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Greene) has said he does not know when that body will vote.

And House leaders are close-lipped about the bills chances.
“We’ve really got to take a look at the legislation that passed the Senate – see exactly what they did, what changes they made – because it does affect more than just the House and Senate,” said Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R-Jefferson). “This bill will actually affect real Pennsylvanians.”

The governor has indicated that he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk.

“Pennsylvania needs a stronger open records law, because transparency builds trust in government,” said the bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware). “A strong open records law is the foundation of true government reform.”

I agree with Senator Pileggi – and while there are things I had hoped to see in the bill that are not here – Pennsylvania has come a long way on this issue in a year. Much of the credit for that goes to Senator Pileggi, who made this his signature issue, and to members of his staff. Open records is not a particularly sexy topic to the public, but it is a critical issue to good government, and Pileggi was both out in front of it and open to suggestions. In particular, his decision last April to switch his position on the presumption of access was the key to bringing together a number of groups, including the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, in support of Senate Bill 1. This was leadership at its best.

As ever, the arcane and obscure language of legislative bill writing will leave many future issues at the mercy of bureaucratic interpreters. But SB1 is a significant step forward. It:

• Creates the presumption of access
• Expands the definition of a public record
• Brings the legislature under the scope of the law
• Makes legislative and judicial financial records presumptively public
• Expands the definition of an agency
• Places the burden of proof for denying access on the agency
• Increases penalties for non-compliance.

The Senate also overturned two objectionable House provisions: one would have prevented access to dates of birth and the other would have exempted all existing records from the new law.

As Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Allegheny), who had opposed weaker versions of SB1 and had earlier offered a strong bill of his own, told the AP: “We have a great new progressive bill, and the sunshine is shining a lot more clearly.”

I hope the House signs the bill when it next meets.

“It may not go as far as some folks think it should, but I think it goes a long way and I think it will be much easier for people to access information at the state and local level,” said Sen. Gerald J. LaValle (D-Rochester), who told The Beaver County Times of his own experiences “in the 1990s of just how stingy government officials can be with information.

“Gov. Tom Ridge’s administration had rejected LaValle’s request for an audit used to justify the roughly $200 million buyout of a firm in charge of the state’s auto-emissions testing program.

“LaValle recalled that the administration spent about $80,000 on the audit but refused to release it. The audit was never released because the courts sided with the administration.”