passopenrecords.org

Thank you.
I’ve been working in Pennsylvania newsrooms my whole career, 28 years now, and I’m pleased to get a chance to see your effort now and have input.
Speaker O’Brien and Rep. Benninghoff visited our editorial board last week and talked about an inclusive process, with a priority to make improvements.
I’m happy to participate.

I’m here as an editor but I think I can speak to you today as a reader also, and what a reader wants.
I’m close to readers — I write a column and a blog, answer my own phone, respond quickly to e-mails and speak to any group that asks.
I listen to readers.

And what they want — I say strongly — is to be informed. They want to know what is happening in their world — their community — and where their money is going. They want to know if their safety is threatened. They are interested — this is very clear to me.

Why do we have to improve Pennsylvania’s open records law? To help our readers — your constituents — be better informed. There’s no question about it.

Let me give you some examples, at a very local level, of why this matters:

1) Say there’s an accident this afternoon in Centre County or wherever. Or say there’s an assault tonight.
People want to know about these, and if we don’t report anything they wonder and contact me or someone at the paper.
It’s very important to get the word out.
Yet now, we’re not really sure if we’ll find out about these from police. Many times we do, but other times police don’t release information that people want and need to know. Or they don’t release it in a timely manner.
Let me say that state police have been outstanding in getting the word out about the ongoing armed robberies in Centre and neighboring counties — a masked gunman is up to nine hits and at least one miss. But word of other cases has been more difficult to obtain information, and at times basic access to anywhere near crime scenes is restricted.
One of the key cases the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association refers to in its open records push is an attack on a woman who was running along Front Street. News of that attack wasn’t released until an arrest was made, meaning anyone walking or running in the park had no idea for days.
This can happen anywhere, unfortunately, now.

2) At the district judge level, where preliminary hearings are conducted and crimes are detailed against suspects, there’s a constant struggle for information.
Some district judges do not know the existing law and resist giving out public records. There are discussions and arguments.
Most recently, a district judge in Centre County wouldn’t release documents detailing the case against a prominent person. After several hours, after our requests, he finally did.
This is where a presumption that records are open is important, and there must be penalties for not releasing public records.
This must be improved to let residents know more about what’s going on in their communities.

3) At the local government level, records showing spending of taxpayer money must be easily available.
Why does this matter?
In State College, the school district engages citizens to advise it on different matters. The citizens who met on the high school building plan — which exceeded $100 million until it recently was rejected — met in private for months with no minutes or records of meetings.
Citizens wondered what they thought, as fellow citizens. But they couldn’t find out.
This should change in this process.
In many small municipalities, there’s no understanding that records — basic financial budget documents, for example — should be public. If the presumption changes along with potential penalties, that would change .

4) At the college level — You might have heard that Penn State is playing Coastal Carolina in next year’s season opener. You know what Coastal will get for that visit? $450,000, a figure that came from Coastal Carolina. You can’t get that from Penn State.
I realize the Joe Paterno salary case has gotten a lot of attention, but do you realize you can call Ohio State or Michigan or virtually any college and find out what the coach is making, along with other basic information, on the phone? You can’t get that from Penn State.
This is just one area that could be opened up to taxpayers — to fans who pay the freight — if records are made more open.

Why does all of this matter?
Simply, it matters to make our readers — your constituents — more informed.
We’re not seeing inside investigator details or anything compromising law enforcement work. But we are seeking the information that people need to know what’s going on in their communities and evaluate public safety.

Rep. Benninghoff is a former coroner and can speak on what challenges that presents to open records. I encourage you — in your conversations — to share your experiences of time in local government and law enforcement and how the process could get more open.

Improving the open records law could be a great story — for us and you. Thank you for your work.