passopenrecords.org

Today we continue with our look at different points of view on Senate Bill 1 with excerpts from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lancaster New Era and Democracy Rising Pa. As you will see over the next few days, the debate has not abated with the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 1, and the suggested paths forward are many.

Feel free to join the discussion — that’s what this blog is for.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

No Halfway Measure on Open Records:

Pennsylvanians should have the law on their side when they try to obtain public documents from their local school board or a state agency.

As the Senate wraps up its work, legislators essentially have two choices: Give the public an open-records bill that improves the current law but contains serious loopholes, or create one of the strongest laws for open government in the nation.

The latter is the obvious choice. But doing the right thing in Harrisburg is usually the road less traveled. Voters will soon find out whether lawmakers are on their side.

The new law will contain one all-important principle: All government records are presumed to be open to the public, and the burden will rest on the government to prove otherwise. Current law requires citizens to prove why a government document should be made public.

But legislators are still contemplating provisions that would undercut the effectiveness of the new law. They could place oversight with the state Department of Community and Economic Development, where enforcement would be lacking. An open-records office ought to be under the auspices of the more independent State Ethics Commission, where there’s a better chance of forcing a government agency to comply with requests.

The House version, incredibly, would apply only to government records created as of July 1, 2008. The Senate has the right idea here, its bill pertains to any document, no matter how old.

Also, legislators should reject a House attempt to delete dates of birth from records. That measure would make it nearly impossible to distinguish Sam Smith the burglar from, say, Sam Smith the House minority leader.

If legislators still need reasons to produce a law with teeth, they need look no further than their own rotunda. The state attorney general is conducting a grand jury investigation into whether legislative staffers were paid bonuses for political work. Legislative leaders in both parties have admitted using taxpayer dollars to pay for political polling. And a former legislator has been indicted for allegedly giving a “no-show” job to a relative.

Some of these alleged abuses might have been discouraged if the legislature had to open its books on a regular basis.

From the Lancaster New Era

Pa. pols getting serious about reform

It’s early and nothing is etched in stone, but it appears state lawmakers, after months of debate, are about to carry out real reform in Pennsylvania.

The Senate . . . unanimously passed an invigorated open-records law, a measure that would assure that citizens have broad access to the records of the government agencies that their tax dollars support.

For more than 50 years, Pennsylvanians have lived under one of the weakest open-records law in the nation.

Information that is readily available to citizens in most states — a list of a community’s worst traffic-accident sites, for example — is kept secret in Pennsylvania.

The new measure would assume most government records are open to the public, including most of those of the General Assembly.

But it also contains sensible provisions for privacy for those records that any reasonable person believes should remain confidential — the paperwork of ongoing police investigations, individuals’ personal medical and financial records, and the addresses of domestic violence and stalker victims.

The idea that legislative records, previously closed to the public, would be open to public scrutiny may make a handful of lawmakers nervous. But most know that, unless they have something to hide, there is no reason for worry.

There are no guarantees, of course. . . .The House could stall or kill open-records reform.

But in discussions this past week, leaders of both parties in both Houses seemed genuinely interested in moving Pennsylvania forward.

From Democracy Rising Pa.

Down to the Wire for Open Records
There are two ways of looking at the Senate’s 50-0 vote in favor of Senate Bill 1. It could mean that we are on the verge of having the best open records law in America with Gov. Ed Rendell’s signature only days away. Or that the backroom deal was cut for a mediocre law, and not one Senator had the gumption to stand up for something better. Want to guess?

Time’s up.

If all had gone according to plan this week, SB 1 already would be law. The plan, worked out in secret among legislative leaders, was to have the new version of SB 1 discussed in secret caucus meetings and enacted into law in one day. As Andrea Mulrine, president of the League of Women Voters of PA, observed, “It is the same process that resulted in a disastrous pay raise bill and flawed gambling legislation.”

It’s the usual Capitol fuzzy math: 2 secret meetings = 1 open records law. Once again, citizens would not be allowed to know what was happening until it was too late to say anything about it. Yet the campaign brochures would call it a victory.

Fight Another Day Next Wednesday. Fortunately, Common Cause PA and the League took the lead in arguing for a better SB 1 and bought more time. Both organizations sent letters to legislators throwing penalty flags on holes in the bill that Rendell’s secretary of legislative affairs, Steve Crawford, called “big enough to drive a truck through.” While the letters didn’t stop Senators, they stopped the House. Its members, and we citizens, have until Wednesday to weigh in.

Common Cause issued a critique citing 18 flaws in SB 1. All are easily corrected and, if done, would give PA the best open records law in America. The top 3 are:

• SB 1 puts the General Assembly beyond the reach of the Office of Open Records, which SB 1 creates to enforce the law. In essence, the legislature would make its own rules and enforce them against itself, as it does now. “A citizen’s only recourse to challenge a legislative records denial would be to file suit in the Commonwealth Court, an expensive and time-consuming process,” said Executive Director Barry Kauffman. Common Cause argues that the legislature should be covered by the same independent Office of Open Records that enforces the law for the rest of state and local government.

• SB 1 puts the Office of Open Records in the Department of Community and Economic Development with its director appointed by the governor. This means the office would enforce rules against the same local governments to whom the agency gives hundreds of millions of dollars a year. To avoid this conflict of interest, Common Cause argues that the Office of Open Records should be part of “a truly independent agency like the Ethics Commission,” Kauffman said.

• SB 1’s language about fees for copies of public records makes it possible for agencies to use fees as a weapon against citizen access. “Citizens already own these records and already pay for the staff who manage and protect them,” Kauffman said.

Not Only That… Punishments are puny for those who break the law under SB 1. The maximum fine is $1,500, which is budget dust for state agencies, the legislature, most cities and municipalities and most school districts. The purpose of fines and punishments is to ensure compliance with the law. The purpose of inconsequential fines is to ensure that the law will not be taken seriously when it matters most.

SB 1 should be easy for citizens to enforce without having to endure the cost and delay of court proceedings. It should provide harsher penalties for public officials who repeatedly violate the law, including dismissal from office and criminal penalties.

Piling Irony Upon Irony. If anything is more ironic than an open records law being worked out in secret, it’s the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association endorsing SB 1 and disregarding the problems that Common Cause and the League have exposed.

Last Wednesday, PNA urged both the Senate and House to accept the secretive fast-track plan and pass SB 1 that very day with no chance for their newspapers to report, or their readers to understand, the final proposal.