passopenrecords.org

. . . For Open Records Law

Much attention has focused on the difference Pennsylvania’s new open records statute will make in the conduct of state politics, but local governments will have to make adjustments as well.

“The complexities of the newly revised law raises numerous issues for virtually every governmental entity in the commonwealth,” said Guy P. Beneventano, solicitor for Latimore Township in Dauphin County. “Matters of regulation and compliance and interaction with corporations and the general public seeking information will become a focal point in the coming months.”

Craig Staudenmaier, an attorney at the Harrisburg-based firm Nauman Smith Shissler & Hall, which also employs Mr. Beneventano, said the degree to which localities need to change their procedures will vary depending on how populous their jurisdictions are. Some county and municipal governments in more sparsely populated areas of the state can expect the statute, signed by Gov. Ed Rendell last week, to lead to considerable new expenditures on compliance, with fresh administrative positions being created in some cases. Larger locales like Philadelphia and surrounding boroughs and townships should already be set up to handle requests as they come in, Mr. Staudenmaier said.

Under the law, each municipality will be required to appoint an open-records officer to handle requests, although many employ staffers who could assume such a role.

John McBlain, solicitor for Delaware County, said that he expects the county clerk, who also serves as a right-to-know officer, to face an increased workload as more residents take advantage of the new statute.

“I think the biggest impact will be the publicity it’s gotten,” he said.

“There are so many different exceptions,” Mr. McBlain said. “We’re still trying to digest that.”

As a taxpaying citizen, and more importantly, as a newspaper editor, I have always believed that any business by public agencies – after all, it’s our money that they’re spending – should be conducted in an open forum without restraint.

I really could care less whether it’s negotiations with teachers, discussion about allegations against someone paid with public money, the settlement figure of a lawsuit, or any other decisions involving taxes.

I believe it makes good sense, don’t you? The only money that government owns is what you end up paying it, and as such, taxpayers should be entitled to watch or be a part of the process of how every nickel is spent.

Unfortunately, it may never get to that point. You may not know in every case how or how much of your tax dollars are being spent or why public employees have been suspended or fired.

But the Pennsylvania legislature last week took a major step in widening access to public records by its citizens with adoption of a new open records law, which on your behalf, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association has lobbied for since 2006.

But the impact of the law will be determined not only by the press, but by residents throughout the state.. . .this is more than a press law. This is your law. How effective it is will depend in large part on your active participation in asking for information that you believe should be public.

Jim Raykie, Editor
The Sharon Herald

In its comprehensive article on the new open records law last week, the Patriot-News of Harrisburg listed some of the major exemptions under SB 1 as passed by both houses of the legislature and signed by Governor Rendell:

• Records that likely would result in physical harm or jeopardize someone’s security.

• Records that would jeopardize computer security.

• Social Security numbers, personal financial information, phone numbers, personal e-mail addresses, spouses’ names, marital status and beneficiary or dependent information. Home addresses can be disclosed for adults, unless they are law enforcement officers or judges.

• Psychiatric or psychological history or disability records. n Performance ratings or reviews of public employees.

• Unpublished lecture notes, manuscripts and articles, and creative works in progress by community college or state university faculty, staff or students.

• Academic transcripts of students and an individual applying to the state for professional licenses. n Test questions and answers for schools and colleges.

• Records relating to noncriminal investigations, including the complaints, investigative materials and notes, and confidential sources. n DNA and RNA records.

• Autopsy records.

• Correspondence between lawmaker and constituents.

Last week the Patriot-News in Harrisburg published some “scenarios” intended to help readers understand some of the implications of the new open records law:

How could it affect you? Here’s a look at several scenarios in which a business or resident might have a problem that can be solved using public records and how the new law would address that issue.

THE SCENARIO: You just moved to town and need to find a good day care center. You tour several, and they all look good.
THE PROBLEM: You contact the state Department of Public Welfare and ask to see inspection reports for your top choices.
THE NEW LAW: There shouldn’t be a battle. The new law generally provides that any agency record is a public record unless it fits an exemption category. “It’s going to go a long way toward releasing a lot of records they hold,” said Harrisburg lawyer Craig Staudenmaier, who specializes in public-record cases.

THE SCENARIO: You are concerned about a restaurant’s cleanliness.
THE PROBLEM: You want to look at the official report from the state or local agency that handles inspections but don’t want to ask the restaurant owner.
THE NEW LAW: The law should provide easier access to health-related government inspections of restaurants. Counties and cities conduct regular inspections, but some have resisted making results available to the public. Under the law, it is presumed these records will be open to anyone who wants to see them, said Craig Staudenmaier.

THE SCENARIO: You want to get information about state contracts from the Net.
THE PROBLEM: You need the information as soon as possible.
THE NEW LAW: If it works as intended, you won’t have to make a request in writing but can view the information on the Net, said Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Businesses can then print copies of the information.

THE SCENARIO: A disabled family member dies in a fire. You overhear police officers talking about how she waited for 911 to answer and was put on hold trying to report the fire.
THE PROBLEM: You want to see a record of when the call came in and how long it took before crews were dispatched.
THE NEW LAW: You can contact the 911 center and ask for a time-response log. This will provide the time the call came in, when the dispatcher notified local emergency crews to respond, and when crews arrived at the scene. You can ask the center for a recording of the 911 call, but the new law doesn’t guarantee that it will be provided. If the center or a court determines public interest outweighs privacy concerns, the recording can be released.

THE SCENARIO: Your daughter attends Penn State and you are frustrated with rising tuition.
THE PROBLEM: You want to see if salaries of top university officials are what you would consider to be high.
THE NEW LAW: Penn State, as well as Pitt, Temple and Lincoln universities, will have to post on their Web site for at least seven years a list of their 25 highest-paid employees, officers and directors.

THE SCENARIO: You are a member of an anti-smoking group that wants convenience stores to stop selling tobacco to children. You come up with a marketing campaign: You will publicly announce which stores sell smokes to kids.
THE PROBLEM: You contact the state Department of Health and ask for a list of stores that the state has cited for violations. You want the information as soon as possible.
THE NEW LAW: The agency would have five business days to respond to your written request. It can get a 30-day extension to do research. If someone files an appeal and the case goes to court, it might take five years to obtain a record, said Harrisburg attorney Craig Staudenmaier, who specializes in public-record cases.

THE SCENARIO: You hear about a company that might build a development near your house.
THE PROBLEM: You know your municipality has building permits that are public records, but a permit has not been issued. You want to get a jump on understanding how this project could affect you, so you ask to see the applications for permits in your neighborhood.
THE NEW LAW: You might be able to see a completed application that is pending before a local government, said Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Under the old law, some municipalities didn’t consider a document to be public until it had been approved by a local governing body, such as the township supervisors board or borough council. “There is an administration procedure, and now the burden is no longer on you. The agency has to show why it would be exempt under a list of 30 exceptions. If they can’t prove their case, you win,” Melewsky said.

THE SCENARIO: You learn that a zoning change could affect the open field across the street from your house because a developer wants to put in a shopping center. The elected officials commissioned an engineering study that concluded that the zoning change would not harm the community.
THE PROBLEM: You want to see the study but are told there are not enough copies. Your choices: You can read the study in the office and take notes or pay $1 a page to have it photocopied, even though it costs much less at a copying business. The study runs 67 pages.
THE NEW LAW: Photocopying fees for commonwealth agencies, boroughs and townships will be set by the Office of Open Records. The courts and the Legislature will set their own copying fees. In each case, the fees must be “based on prevailing fees for comparable duplication services provided by local business entities.”

THE SCENARIO: You are concerned about the cleanliness of your favorite restaurant.
THE PROBLEM: You don’t want to ask the restaurant owner, afraid you might offend her. You want to look at the official restaurant report from the state or local government that handles health inspections.
THE NEW LAW: It should provide easier access to health-related government inspections of restaurants. Some counties and cities, for example, conduct regular inspections. But some have resisted making full results available to the public. Under the new law, it is presumed these records will be open to anyone who wants to see them, said Craig Staudenmaier, a lawyer who specializes in right-to-know issues.

THE SCENARIO: You own a company that makes widgets and so does your competitor. You both apply for state loans and grants and job credits to support expansion and job creation efforts.
THE PROBLEM: Your competitor gets the help and you don’t.
THE NEW LAW: As under the old law, all documents reflecting the decision, such as contract agreements and letters awarding the contract, are public records. Unlike the old law, all company applicants, even those who don’t receive economic development funds, would be viewed as subject to records rules, according to Teri Henning, general counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, said department lawyers are reviewing the impact of the law.

The concept is simple – it’s our government and our records.

There will continue to be, as there should, safeguards against release of records that might disclose medical or other personal information that doesn’t belong in the public realm.

But the public will be able, as it also should, to find out more about what government is doing and how it is spending our tax dollars, whether it’s at the level of the state, or at our local borough, township or county.

Transparency is a check on governmental misuse of power, and a basis on which people can have greater confidence that their will is being served. This is, in short, an indispensable step toward affirming a government of the people, by the people and for the people actually exists.

It’s not perfect, but it’s good. Those are the words of Governor Ed Rendell who signed a bill Thursday to make things easier for the public to get a hold of government records.

It’s a change in attitude, that’s how state lawmakers describe the open records bill that was signed by the governor Thursday afternoon.

Want to know how much your township’s road crew workers earn? How about what your school board members ate on the taxpayer’s dime at that recent convention?

While some state and local agencies readily obliged requests from constituents and the media, others did not. Some didn’t supply requested records because of ignorance of the 1957 Open Records Law; others did it out of spite.

An overhauled state Open Records Law signed into law Thursday by Gov. Ed Rendell will go into effect Jan. 1, making it easier for citizens to get those answers and for agencies to understand what records they must turn over.

This is a great moment for open government in a state that is not known for its customer friendliness. The new law will dramatically alter who holds the power when it comes to gaining access to state and local government records.

The next time somebody wants to know the salary of Penn State University’s famed football coach Joe Paterno, it may not require a trip to court.

Yet even with the new rules, Pennsylvanians will have relatively little right to see records that might show them how their largest public campus spends its state money. The same is true of Pennsylvania’s three other state-related campuses – the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University – which, along with Penn State, share more than $600 million in annual operating subsidies from the state.

“We lobbied aggressively. We said the state-related schools should be treated the same if they want those large amounts of state funds,” said Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania. “It’s a battle that we lost.”

Still, despite the outcome regarding state-related campuses, he said it’s hard to equate the transparency achieved under the new records law as a glass half empty. “At least we’re dealing with a glass now, instead of a 50-year-old mug.”

This is not a media issue. Rather, the media have led the way for positive change that will enhance the opportunities for all Pennsylvanians.

“I can’t imagine an issue with a broader scope,” said Deborah Musselman, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s director of government affairs.

That effort is a work in progress.

Right now, we can celebrate greater access to the records of those in government.

Pennsylvania’s new open-records law is being hailed as a brilliant beacon that will far outshine the old law. That won’t be difficult considering the state hasn’t changed the “bulb” for 50 years.

The real test comes next year when the law takes effect and the first appeals are filed for government records. Access and expediency will determine its superiority or mediocrity.

But there are reasons for reservations.

For all the talk about “sunshine,” plenty of clouds linger.

Gov.Rendell signed the new Open Records bill into law. Pennsylvania now has entered the 20th century in this regard.

On February 14, 2008, Governor Rendell signed Act 3 of 2008 into law, which is a complete overhaul of the Right to Know Law. Although some provisions take effect immediately (those establishing an Open Records Office) and others take effect on July 1, 2008 (requiring state-related institutions to make certain financial information public and requiring the on-line posting of state contract information), the bulk of the new law takes effect on January 1, 2009. You can find the new law here.

Teri Henning, general counsel of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, who led the yearlong charge for an overhaul of the state’s open records law, has put together a good Question-and-Answer document on open records. Excerpts follow. Read Teri’s entire paper here.

What are the biggest differences between the old law and the new law?

The new law fundamentally changes the structure of Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law. It begins with the presumption that state and local agency records are open for public inspection and copying and places the burden on a government agency denying access.

For the first time since the Right to Know Law was passed in 1957, it will include the
General Assembly and will give citizens the ability to appeal open records disputes to an administrative agency, the Office of Open Records, without the need to file a court action.

The new law guarantees access to public records in the possession of government contractors performing “governmental functions” on behalf of an agency, establishes an online, searchable database for state contract information, and requires state-affiliated universities to make certain financial information public.

The law also shortens agency response times and increases the civil penalties that can be awarded against an agency acting in bad faith.

Generally speaking, what records can I get under the new Right to Know Law?

The Right to Know Law guarantees your right to obtain public records from state and local agencies in Pennsylvania. It also guarantees your right to obtain legislative records from the Pennsylvania General Assembly and financial records from Pennsylvania’s judicial system.

The law does not apply to record requests to federal agencies. If you are interested in obtaining federal agency records, you must make your request under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For more information on making a FOIA request, including a letter generator, see http://rcfp.org/foia/.

What are some examples of records that will be available under the new law?

• Community colleges are now covered agencies. As a result, their records are presumptively public;

• The PIAA (Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association) is now expressly covered;

• The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and its related entities are now expressly covered;

• Grant applications are public records (and not just the contracts reflecting funded grants);

• Records reflecting a public employee’s demotion or discharge are public;

• The General Assembly is now included as an “agency,” and the law expressly identifies a number of legislative records that are public, including financial records, manuals and written policies, and financial audit reports;

• Records that are presented to a quorum of an agency for deliberation at a public meeting (e.g., board packets), are public, with limited exceptions;

• 911 time response logs are public.

• The law provides for the creation of an online searchable database for state contract information.

• State-affiliated universities are now required to publicly disclose certain financial information, including the salaries of all officers and directors and salaries of the highest paid employees.

Many other records will be available as well, since the new law begins with the presumption that all state and local agency records are publicly available. As a result, you should be able to access any record that is not exempt under the law.

What agencies are covered by the new Right to Know Law?

The law covers Commonwealth agencies, local agencies, judicial agencies, and legislative agencies.

What records can I get from legislative agencies?

Legislative records are presumed open; burden is on agency. The new law begins with the presumption that all legislative records are publicly available – both for viewing and copying. The burden of proving that a legislative record is non-public (or that an exemption applies) is on the legislative agency denying access.

The presumption of access does not apply to legislative records that are: 1) protected by a privilege (e.g., attorney-client, doctor-patient); 2) exempt from disclosure under federal or state law; or 3) exempt under Section 708 of the Right to Know Law. Section 708 of the Law lists 30 categories of records that are exempt from disclosure.

The new law can be found here.

A smattering of what some folks are saying in the wake of the new open records law.

“I just believe it brings us out of the Dark Ages. We are finally not a secret government. We’re not hiding anything. All the accounts are open.” Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Uniontown).

“We’re viewing the glass as a little more than half full. We’re still concerned about weak penalties.” . . . [But the law] “will certainly place us among the top half of states – maybe higher.” Barry Kauffman (executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania).

“[A] huge victory for openness and accountability in state government.” Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Allegheny).

“I want the public to understand the basics of the law, and I want those who provide information to gain a comfort level so they can provide it in the most efficient way possible.” Sen. Mike Brubaker (R-Lancaster).

“Municipal government has always been straightforward.” Lester Houck (secretary-treasurer, Salisbury Township Board of Supervisors and of the county and state supervisors associations).

“The distinction that needs to be made with the new law is that the exemptions only outline what agencies may legally withhold. Agencies may use the ‘discretion’ provision if the public right to know outweighs other concerns and release of the information doesn’t violate any other laws or statutes.” Kim de Bourbon (executive director, Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition).

“There’ll be no appeals. We’re going to pay the bill and move on.” Rep. Bill Adolph (R-Delaware, board chair, Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency) on a Commonwealth Court ruling ordering PHEAA to pay almost $50,000 in attorney fees).

“They do not want independent oversight of their business, whether it’s by the ethics commission or by the citizens.” Tim Potts (co-founder, Democracy Rising Pennsylvania) on the Legislature’s self-regulation under the new law.

“What this proves is when House and Senate, Democrat and Republican, get together and put their heads together instead of banging their heads against one another, anything is possible. We hope this bodes well for other major pieces of legislation.” Sen. Mike O’Pake (D-Berks).

“You follow the money and you’ll come to the truth,” Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Uniontown).

Reminders of why we needed open records reform and fought so long and hard to get it . . .

• Judge Doris Smith-Ribner put an exclamation point on the extraordinary hubris of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency when she ordered it to pay $48,000 in legal fees for three news organizations that had to sue PHEAA for access to clearly public records.

Judge Smith-Ribner, of Commonwealth Court, acknowledged the obvious when she ruled that PHEAA knowingly and willfully violated the state’s Right-to-Know Law by refusing, for 20 months, to release financial information about its operation.

The Associated Press, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg and WTAE-TV of Pittsburgh had sought records of PHEAA’s spending on luxury junkets for its administrators, staff and board members. Of PHEAA’s 20 board members, 16 are state legislators.

• PHEAA, for me, is the poster child for why we need a strong open records law in Pennsylvania.

With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Rendell ended the days of financial and other government records being shrouded in a cloud of smoke and turned the spotlight on the doings of government agencies and elected officials.

Signing S.B. 1 into law is just half the battle. It is up to the people of Pennsylvania to take advantage of this new open-door policy, responsibly. What good is it to have information available if no one accesses it — or accesses it for the wrong reasons?

The purpose of having a strong open records law is to ensure that your trusted elected officials are worthy of your trust; that state agencies are using funds to make things better for you, not for themselves; that bills are crafted and passed because they are what’s best for the Commonwealth, not a lobbying firm.

Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith (D-West Chester)

• Four months, $100 worth of long-distance phone calls, meetings with an attorney and, finally, the intervention of then-House Speaker John Perzel’s office.

That’s what it took for Maya Patch to obtain copies of her local sewer authority’s spending records a few years ago.

“I wanted to see the books. I wanted to know about monies being spent, and I got a runaround. They said, ‘I’m not sure if you can look at that,’ or ‘We’ll give it to you next time,’” said Mrs. Patch, 70, of Carroll Township, Washington County.

“When somebody is evading you like that, you figure they’re hiding something. People have a right to know what’s going on,” she said.

On Thursday, Gov. Ed Rendell signed a law, long in the works, to make government records more accessible.

“There is a new attitude and a new approach” to providing records to the public, said House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Waynesburg. The law will be fully implemented in January.

“It’s going to be a total culture change for employees. They’re going from, ‘Well, it’s not open unless it fits into these narrow categories’ to ‘Everything is open unless it meets these few exceptions,’” said Craig Staudenmaier, a Harrisburg attorney specializing in public records cases.

“If we had opened these records up before, we wouldn’t have 90 percent of the problems we have,” said state Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-South Union), a freshman credited with pushing the reform measure.

We continue with reactions from around the state – and beyond – to the new open records law and the process that got us here. Send us your reaction and/or report.

• From our friends Leslie Graves, who hosts WikiFoIA, the sunshine blog across the nation.

I’m terribly deficient at covering what is now the year-long fight to improve public access to government documents in Pennsylvania, partly because the volume of news stories and blog posts from that one state has been so high.

Due to the doggedness of the state’s media and key grassroots activists, today, Gov. Rendell is signing SB 1.

The best feature of SB1 is that it shifts the burden of proof. Before SB1 becomes law, the burden of proof was on a requestor to establish that the record he wanted was public. Now, the burden of proof will be on a government agency to establish that a requested record is exempt. Otherwise, the assumption will be that it is public and must be provided.

Since we’ve been following the wonderful Pass Open Records, we know that getting to today has been a circuitous route with many obstacles.

Congratulations!

• Pottstown Mercury

“We set out to replace an old, antiquated law with a law that everybody can work with that reverses the presumption, and we met that goal,” said Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lobbyist Deb Musselman.

Open-records reform is a positive change for Pennsylvania, but honestly folks, something this obvious should not have taken so long.

• Allentown Morning Call

The era of telling citizens ”NO” is coming to an end. Pennsylvania is finally replacing its justly maligned and antiquated open records law with an updated version.

This will contribute to a slow process of rebuilding public trust in state government. That trust was seriously frayed in recent years, especially with the General Assembly’s attempt to fatten its paychecks surreptitiously one night in the summer of 2005.

Now, it’s up to you to convince the bureaucrat behind the counter, on the telephone or answering the e-mail why the information you want should be made public. Next January, for the first time in modern Pennsylvania history, that will change. Under an overhaul of the state’s Sputnik-era Right-to-Know Law, the information collected by your state and local governments suddenly will be presumed to be public, not secret. Next year it will be up to that person behind the counter, on the phone or responding via e-mail to demonstrate why you can’t have the information you want. What will be available? Everything outside 29 exceptions meant to protect society against harm and individuals against violations of their privacy. The structure of a natural gas utility or a vital computer system remains off limits, as do Social Security numbers, medical records and the answers to standardized tests. Most notably, though, you’ll have first-time access to records of the state Legislature, which until now has exempted itself from such scrutiny, making it hard to get such basic information as payroll.

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Congratulations and thank you, state legislators.

Members of the House and Senate by unanimous votes have done what citizens across the commonwealth, and news outlets in particular, have been advocating for a very long time.

They adopted a modern open records law. . . .

The new law takes giant steps beyond its antiquated predecessor, enacted 51 years ago and barely revised since. The most fundamental change it makes is switching the presumption of law so that, rather than forcing people who are seeking government records to prove why they should have them, it assumes at the start that most records are open. Additionally, it broadens the affected agencies to include state-related universities, including Pitt and Penn State, and the Legislature itself, a collective that lately has proved deserving of the most careful scrutiny.

Yet a good law on the books won’t mean anything if it is not effectively used to permit Pennsylvanians to see the important operations of their municipal, county, state and school district offices.

• Centre Daily Times

Government is founded on the consent of those governed. This is essential, otherwise you have despotism — or tyranny. And how can anyone give consent without knowledge of what is being consented to?

As we stated previously, this is not a perfect measure. But it does accomplish the much-needed “flip of presumption” — all government records will be considered open unless specifically excepted by the law. That principle would seem to be self-evident in a self-governing society. Not in the Harrisburg oligarchy, however.

And locally, after a disturbing misstep, the State College Area school board has taken a welcome stride toward the light of open government.

Last month, the board — evenly divided, in the wake of Barney Grimes’ resignation, between holdovers and new members demanding “change” — agreed to closed-door meetings during the replacement process and to keeping the names of applicants for the now-open seat private. They didn’t want to “embarrass” anyone by making their names public or turn qualified applicants, apparently allergic to light, away.

Wrong. Wrong. In every way, wrong. Those consenting to be governed, whether by state or school district, have the absolute right — and fundamental need — to know who is being considered to represent them and how the selection is being made. That’s why we have elections, not appointments.

In a positive move this week, the board decided to open to the public heretofore closed citizen advisory committee meetings, and it deserves to be commended for doing so.

The process of government — even the deliberations of volunteer “advisers” — must be open. A closed government, no matter how benevolent, is still a despot.

Now that the long trek is over and Pennsylvania has a new open records law – or will have after January 1, 2009 – the original intent of this blog is coming to a close. We have not decided what 00 if anything – to do with it in the future, and we welcome your input. For the next few weeks, I will post reactions to the la, thoughts about the future, and stories about open records issues across the Commonwealth.

The new is by no means perfect, but it is levels of magnitude better than the one we have had for more than 50 years. The critical difference – from which all else flows – is the “flip of presumption – that now makes public records public property unless there is a clear and specific reason to withhold them. The corollary of that changes is that it is now the government agency – not the citizen for whom it works – that has the burden of proving why a document should not be released to the public.

Here is what Angela Couloumbis of The Philadelphia Inquirer reported some as saying about the change. Please add your voice to theirs.

“There is nothing in the bill that is unusually open or exotic – but it does call for good, solid, mainstream, ordinary transparency,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit organization that tracks open-records laws around the country.

“Is it a perfect bill?” asked Gov. Ed Rendell rhetorically. “No. Is it a good bill? Absolutely. Is it a step on the road to reform? Without a doubt.”

“It is a turning point in the relationship between citizens and their government,” said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), the law’s prime sponsor. “For the first time in over 50 years, we have a modern, responsive open-records law in Pennsylvania and one that should substantially change the dynamic between citizens and their government.”

But said Larry Frankel, legislative director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the exemption given to autopsy records “is one aspect of the law that really concerns us. We’ve learned that good investigative reporters have been able to use such reports as key elements in their investigations of wrongful convictions.”

Still, “it’s a great step forward, and it brings us into the more progressive community of states,” said Michael Baughman, a partner with Pepper Hamilton and an expert in media law.

And said Robert Richards, a Penn State professor of journalism and law and the founding co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State, “You can always go back in and amend it. What is momentous is that the [legislature] passed it. I never thought I would see any type of open-records legislation in my career here.”

Thanks to all of you for making this blog a vital place. As Howard Greenstein, who was instrumental in putting this on line in the first place, wrote on his blog,

“Congratulations all around. I hope this blog serves as an example of how to create dialog around an issue using Social Media.”

Let’s keep the conversation going.