passopenrecords.org

This is “Sunshine Week” across the United States – a time to reflect on and discuss the importance of open government and the freedom of information. It is the critical flip side of the Right-to-Know efforts that resulted in a new open records law earlier this year.

The Sunshine Act refers to open meetings, and it is clear that we need to focus on that issue as well as open records. As Teri Henning, General Counsel of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, notes in an editorial excerpted below – What’s wrong with the Sunshine Act? – “the main problem with the Sunshine Act is not really the Act itself. The real problem with the Act . . . is that public officials ignore it.”

It is time now –again – to focus on open meetings, so that we can have truly transparent government in Pennsylvania.

“As a lawyer for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association,” Henning writes, “I am often asked what’s wrong with Pennsylvania’s open meetings law, also called the Sunshine Act. Why is it that public officials all across the state are able to conduct so much public business behind closed doors, and without any repercussions? I talk to hundreds of reporters and editors during the course of a year about closed meetings and ‘secret’ decisions. Last month alone, our Legal Hotline received about 50 telephone calls from reporters with questions about whether agencies were complying with the Sunshine Act.

“As a result of these conversations, it has become clear that the main problem with the Sunshine Act is not really the Act itself. The real problem with the Act — and this probably won’t surprise anyone — is that public officials ignore it. The penalties under the Act are insignificant and very rarely imposed. Worse, the Pennsylvania courts have repeatedly permitted public agencies to ignore the Act’s requirements by holding that agencies can ‘cure’ Sunshine Act violations. This means that they can discuss and decide matters in private, in violation of the Act, and as long as they ‘redo’ their vote in public, their decision can stand. But this misses the whole point of the Sunshine Act.

“The purpose of the Sunshine Act is to allow the public to witness agency decisions and, with limited exceptions, the discussions leading up to those decisions. Allowing agencies to “cure” violations so easily deprives the public of any ability to understand how decisions were reached. And it provides very little incentive for agencies to follow the strict requirements of the Act.

“It has become obvious that the only hope for stopping these practices is to amend the Act to specifically prohibit them, and to strengthen the penalty provisions to create a real disincentive to violating the Act.

“Public officials are making critical decisions and committing your money to projects every day. They decide the salaries and benefits of public employees. They decide how much your local taxes are going to be. They decide when it is necessary to commit millions of dollars to a new high school, and they decide when and how much to pay to settle a lawsuit. Too often, the public is cut out of vital discussions and decisions. It’s time to change that.”