PA Becomes a Model
Mar 7th, 2008 by JamieB
Stop me if this sounds familiar, but an editorial in the March 4th edition of the Nashua, New Hampshire, Telegraph, discusses that state’s efforts to get a better right-to-know bill passed. In New Hampshire they appear to combine our state’s Right-to-Know (which covers open records) and Sunshine (which covers open meetings) laws . . . but that makes sense, as they are really two sides of the same coin of government transparency – a currency that seems as rare in New England as here in Penn’s Woods.
“On Wednesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a bill that would make changes to the New Hampshire Right-to-Know Law, the state law that is intended to ensure the actions and records of state and municipal governments are open to the public.
“While the bill isn’t perfect by any means, it does represent a considerable improvement over attempts the past two years to clarify how the law applies to computerized records and the use of e-mail, online chat, text messaging and other forms of electronic communication to conduct government business.”
The Telegraph editorial then goes on to discuss the efforts of media and reform advocates to stop the use of something called “sequential emails,” which would have allowed government officials to communicate with each other in private and thus circumvent that state’s open meetings law.
Those efforts, after failing early on, ultimately succeeded: “This time around, the bill makes clear that communication outside a meeting – including ‘sequential communications among members of a public body’ – shouldn’t be used to circumvent the intent of the law.”
Inventive, these public servants.
The Telegraph then takes on the absence in New Hampshire “of any administrative appeal or enforcement capabilities on the part of state government.
“As a result, the only avenue available to individuals who believe a public body has violated the provisions of the law is to file a complaint in Superior Court on their own dime. While there is a chance that they might be able to recover attorney’s fees should they win the case, the likelihood of that happening under the law’s restrictive language is pretty remote.”
And for a model, it looks to none other than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:
“Coincidentally, the latest state to deal with that issue is Pennsylvania, where the governor signed a bill last month overhauling that state’s open records law.
“In addition to shifting the burden of proving whether a document should be public or private from citizens to the government, the bill also creates an Office of Open Records to mediate disputes.”
And finally, the newspaper bemoans the state’s low ranking and failing grades in open records competitions, a complaint heard far too often for far too long around these parts as well:
“The fact that New Hampshire is one of the states without an administrative appeal process is among the reasons why it earned an F (only 41 points on a scale of 1 to 100) in a report compiled by the Better Government Association and the National Freedom of Information Coalition last year.”
I look forward to Pennsylvania’s next report card. Time will tell whether our new law, which goes into effect January 1, 2009, will put us on the Dean’s List, but it seems clear that we have moved head of the Granite State and many others in the last month.