passopenrecords.org

• It’s unanimous in the House as it was in the Senate. House members voted 199-0 to pass open records legislation just five days after GOP members halted debate amid concerns that expanding access to government records would aid identity thieves, put domestic violence victims and senior citizens at risk and cripple the state’s real-estate industry.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) has planned a full Senate vote on the bill today. If the bill passes the Senate, it then goes to the governor to be signed into law.

• In for what looked like a protracted debate, the legislature suddenly came together yesterday. The bill ran into opposition in the House last week from Republicans who said it would reveal too much about people’s calls to 911 centers, prevent real-estate companies from using public records for their businesses and potentially increase cases of identity theft.

A Democratic-sponsored amendment addressed those issues, and partisans on both sides praised the final result. Passage on the House floor was greeted with a chorus of cheers.

“I didn’t want to muscle this thing through, I wanted to make it bipartisan and bicameral,” said House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Greene).

House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R-Jefferson) said the amended bill “goes a long way in putting a proper balance between the public’s right to know and the public’s expectation of personal privacy protection.”

• That sort of collegial agreement had not always characterized the legislative discussions. The last time a vote was scheduled, tempers flared. DeWeese accused the GOP of trying to torpedo the bill. “You are trying to drive into the heart of open records,” he said, addressing the Republicans, “The delaying tactics of the minority leader and the minority leadership team and the minority party are certainly suspect for debate.”

That prompted this angry response from Smith: “He is threatening me time after time if I dare to vote to non-concur, I am somehow voting against open records! And that’s just not the case, Mr. Speaker!”

• The bill fundamentally changes open records access in Pennsylvania. [Said] DeWeese : “I think our commonwealth will go to the forefront of the 50 states for a very aggressive . . . open records law.”

“The presumption of openness is now flipped,” DeWeese said. “For the first time in history, the Legislature would be incorporated” into the law. “The public will know how their tax dollars are being spent.”

• But questions remain, and groups that have pushed for a new open-records bill stopped short last night of claiming victory because of a last-minute exemption that House members added. That exemption would exclude from public view records involving people under 17. It was not clear whether that exclusion would apply to police records.

“Isn’t that all the Columbine shooting victims, any kid that’s huffing and involved in car accidents, plus all their passengers?” asked Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lobbyist Deb Musselman. “That appears to us, at first glance, to really be at odds with what’s public now.”

Other exemptions would include some 911 emergency recordings, medical records, Social Security numbers, and constituent letters to lawmakers.

Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania, said the bill still had serious flaws.

Among them, he said, is that the legislature would not fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of Open Records. Instead, the House and Senate would get to decide for themselves whether they were in compliance with the law.

• The bill’s prospects look good in the Senate, which had previously passed a somewhat different version, 50-0. Pileggi agreed in concept with the changes and will ask the Senate to approve the overhaul of the open records law, said his spokesman, Erik Arneson.

• The law would not take effect until Jan. 1. It will, however, apply to historical records, which had been a huge issue in the House.