passopenrecords.org

You can get a heck of a ride just trying to keep up with the open records bill. In fact, just when we thought we were almost home – with the Senate having passed Senate Bill 1 by a vote of 50 yeas and 0 nays and House set to vote in the next few days – Jan Murphy reports in the Harrisburg Patriot-News that sources tell her the bill faces a difficult time in the House. And the governor now appears to be playing a bit of wait and see on the bill as well.

Jan Murphy is a very good reporter. She received the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence for her extraordinary – and her extraordinarily persevering – coverage over several years of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency’s spending spree that led to huge changes at PHEAA and that provided significant momentum for open records reform across Pennsylvania. So when she says people are cautioning her that the current version of Senate Bill 1 is not a done deal, it is best to pay attention.

But despair is no more useful an emotion than euphoria. We can still get a good bill next week. There is momentum. The Senate has committed that body to reform, and Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), the majority leader and the bill’s lead sponsor, has given us the best chance we have seen in a long time to bring our state into the 21st century on this issue.

And at yesterday’s Government Affairs Conference sponsored by the PNA, House Majority Bill DeWeese (D-Greene), said what he has said before on reform: “We heard the electorate in 2006.”

DeWeese went on to say that “Open Records should be concluded in a matter of days, not months” and that he looked for the House to pass, “in essence what the senate passed with a little tweaking.”

It’s the last two words, of course, that get people worried, as does the statement of DeWeese’s Republican counterpart, Rep. Sam Smith (R-Jefferson), that the House will want to review the “two new amendments” the Senate put this week.

We can’t kid ourselves. There are powerful players behind the scenes who want to take this bill down . . . probably not by killing it – which would not play well at this stage – but by watering it down, by adding modifiers to the language – death by a thousand cuts.

So keep the pressure on.

Both DeWeese and Speaker Dennis O’Brien indicated that the House will take up the bill right after the Governor Ed Rendell’s budget address on Tuesday.

As Sen. John Wozniak (D-Cambria) told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “We should have done this a year and a half ago. . . .If we ever needed to raise the trust level between us and the public, it’s now.”

His words were echoed by Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Luzerne): “Greater access to these public records will ensure that government is accountable to state residents.”

Note: I clearly was wrong yesterday when I wrote that the House only got an up-or-down vote on the bill once it came back from the Senate. Does anyone know the apparently arcane rules that govern the process?