passopenrecords.org

Some officials need a change of attitude

So recently opined the Reading Eagle, noting that bringing real transparency to state and local governments in Pennsylvania will require not just opening public records but changing official attitudes as well.

The example, as reported initially by the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, involved the refusal by officials of Dauphin County to provide information the amount of money the county had spent on legal fees to defend against a civil suit. Excerpts from the Eagle’s editorial follow:

Before the General Assembly finally passed and Gov. Ed Rendell signed the tougher Right-to-Know Law last month, Barry Kauffman, the executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, sounded a cautionary note.

“We do really have to get Pennsylvania officials and employees out of this medieval notion that they own the records rather than the people of the commonwealth,” he said.

But, if the actions of Dauphin County officials are any indication, proprietary attitudes, as Kauffman said, are going to be difficult to change.

According to a recent article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Louis J. Capozzi Jr., a lawyer, has filed a Right-to-Know lawsuit against Dauphin County because officials there have refused to reveal how much they paid a law firm to defend them against a separate lawsuit Capozzi filed in 2004.

In the earlier lawsuit, Capozzi claimed he was owed more than $100,000 for work he performed when he was a special counsel to Dauphin Manor, the former county nursing home, between 2000 and 2004.

In the lawsuit filed earlier this month, Capozzi also has asked the court to lower the $1-a-page copying fee the county has charged him.

Current law, as well as the law that will be implemented in January, calls for reasonable copying fees consistent with prevailing commercial prices, which are considerably less than $1 a page.

Capozzi said he believes that the legal bills he is seeking will show county officials wasted the taxpayers’ money in defending themselves against his earlier lawsuit.

For their part, the officials said they already have provided Capozzi with numerous documents he has requested at considerable cost to the county.

One of the reasons the Right-to-Know Law was revised was because too often government officials used tactics such as exorbitant copying fees or claims that they had insufficient staff to make copies as ways of making it difficult for the public to gain access to documents.

We understand that releasing the legal bills Capozzi is seeking might prove embarrassing to county officials, but the expenditure of public funds is part of the public record. Even under the weak current law, such records must be made available to whomever asks for them.

The proponents of the tougher Right-to-Know Law fought a long, hard battle, and in the end they succeeded in providing sweeping new rights for the people of Pennsylvania, providing them with access to many more documents than under the current law.

But, as Kauffman has indicated, the fight is not over. Although many government officials will comply with the law, others will resist.

However, one of the revisions of the new law is stiffer penalties for violators, which should be enough to help recalcitrant officials see the wisdom of compliance.