passopenrecords.org

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Governor Ed Rendell, flanked by Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fayette) to Rendell’s right and Sen. Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) to his left, the prime sponsor of the bill, prepares to sign Senate Bill 1, surrounded by other legislative leaders who supported open records reform.

Governor Rendell signs Senate Bill 1 into law, bringing Pennsylvani’s right to know law into the 21st century.

“Since taking office in 2003, I’ve worked very hard to make Pennsylvania open for business,” Gov. Rendell said. “With the signing of this bill, now it’s also open for inspection.”

“Pennsylvania had one of the worst open records laws because it allowed too many records to be classified, essentially, as closed, unless the person asking could prove that those documents should be public,” Rendell said. “With the new law, it’s now the state agency’s burden to show why information should be protected.

“Pennsylvania’s business is the people’s business, except when certain information holds the real potential to harm the public good or a person’s privacy.”

Gov. Ed Rendell will sign Senate Bill 1 today at 2 p.m. in the Governor’s Reception Room.

Below is the press release issued late yesterday by the Pennsyvania Newspaper Association in response to the bill’s passage by both houses of the legislature:

The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) recognizes the significant achievement of the State Legislature this week in passing Senate Bill 1, which overhauls the state’s open records law, and expects swift enactment into law.

According to PNA President Tim Williams, “In 2006 we rolled out an ambitious legislative initiative, titled ‘Brighter Pennsylvania.’ Our goal was to improve Pennsylvania’s open records law, which is widely regarded as one of the worst in the country, and expand citizens’ access to government. Senate Bill 1 accomplishes a number of our goals.”

As part of the initiative, the PNA identified the following items as “must-haves” for open records reform: 1) An acknowledgment that records belong to the public; 2) An improved definition of “public record” and a presumption of access; 3) The burden of proof on an agency denying access; 4) A broader definition of “agency;” 5) An Office of Access to make it easier for citizens to appeal denials; and 6) Meaningful penalties.

Senate Bill 1 contains all of these.

As explained by Williams, “The bill 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 places the burden on an 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.”

“It took a tremendous amount of hard work, negotiation, and compromise to get this bill to the Governor,” said Deborah Musselman, PNA’s director of government affairs. “Senate Bill 1 was originally introduced by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Del) on March 29, 2007 and has gone through multiple, significant amendments since that time.”

Musselman emphasized that the legislation has the potential to impact all Pennsylvanians. “I can’t imagine an issue with a broader scope, since government can and often does try to address virtually any kind of problem or challenge that individuals or groups may face.”

“We were afforded a significant opportunity to work with key legislators and staff experts to craft this legislation,” continued Musselman. “While the bill is not perfect it increases transparency in government finances, in particular, and establishes a process we believe will improve citizens’ access to their government. We will continue to monitor several concerns that we have regarding exemptions, but certainly recognize the hard work and effort by so many on this legislation.”

“PNA specifically recognizes the leadership of Sen. Pileggi on Senate Bill 1 and praises his commitment to fairness and government accountability,” said Williams.

PNA Chairman John A. Kirkpatrick, publisher of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, said he is pleased that the new Right to Know bill represents the first major reform measure passed by the General Assembly. “We are proud that Pennsylvania legislators, in making this the first piece of reform legislation to become law, recognize the importance of a meaningful right of access to government for all citizens. We commend the lawmakers for having placed the public’s right to know at the top of their list of priorities this session.”

In a comment posted earlier today, Left of Centre refers to Adam Smeltz’s discussion in the Centre Daily Times of “the weakness of [SB 1] with respect to Penn State and the Commonwealth’s other state-related universities.”

Here is the link to the column. Smeltz writes in part:

New open-records provisions that state lawmakers adopted Tuesday will compel Penn State to share more of its inner workings with the public.

Still, the disclosure requirements are not as sweeping as some bills proposed last year.

Those earlier proposals — which could have forced the sharing of university contract agreements and donor records, among other documents — stirred the public ire of Penn State President Graham Spanier last June.

The version passed by the General Assembly on Tuesday takes a less demanding tone — and more targeted approach — toward Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh and Temple and Lincoln universities.

The bill requires the state-related universities to fulfill these requirements:

• Share with the state, and with the public, all information that would be included in a federal Form 990 – a document completed by most nonprofit organizations and filed with the IRS, which includes an accounting of top-line revenue, contributions, expenses, and changes in net assets.

• Disclose the salaries of all officers and directors, and the salaries of the 25 highest-paid employees who are not officers or directors.

Reporting under the open-records law can exclude information about individual donors.

State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff (R-Bellefonte) said he preferred earlier proposals that would have made available more information from the universities.

The current bill puts the state-related universities in a category apart from most state departments, which are required to disclose all individual compensation data, and “I think (Pennsylvanians) want a universal, consistent law that should be applied fairly among any government body or agency that receives public tax dollars,” Benninghoff said.

But he supported the legislation as a product of compromise and a step toward transparency.

State Rep. Scott Conklin (D-Rush) said, while he understands the Penn State arguments, “I like everything open.”

Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate passed Senate Bill 1 once again and sent it on to Gov. Rendell, whose spokesman said he would sign it into law.

Last May we published the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s six minimum requirements for meaningful open records reform. While there are some significant holes in the bill that is going to the governor’s office, it does pretty well on the “minimum six.”

1. An acknowledgment that records belong to the public. The law does this, and that is a sea change in Pennsylvania.

2. An improved definition of “public record” and a presumption of access. The “flip of presumption” has been the heart of the matter. Now records are presumed to be public, unless specifically exempted.

3. Burden of proof on agency. The corollary of flipping the presumption has been to place the burden of proof on the agency to show that a record is exempt from access under the law. While the list of exemptions is long – and there are some overbroad provisions that invite abuse – citizens should no longer have to prove their right or need to get access to public records.

4. Broader definition of “agency.” The definition of “agency” must include the General Assembly, state-related universities and any organization or entity that performs a public function and relies substantially on taxpayers’ money. While the legislature is treated differently from the general public under the new law, it is included, and the presumption of openness applies.

5. Administrative appeal/Office of Access. Pennsylvania must create an Office of Access to hear appeals and furnish guidelines, non-binding opinions and other appropriate information about the laws to both agencies and citizens. SB 1 does set up an Office of Open Records, but it puts it in the Department of Community and Economic Development, whose director is chosen by the governor, rather than in the independent Ethics Commission. In addition the legislature’s records are not covered by this office, leaving citizens faced with the prospect of a lawsuit to gain access.

6. Meaningful penalties. Penalties for open records law violations must be enforced and the fines increased to make them meaningful. Agency members who deny access improperly should also be required to participate in training provided by the Office of Access. SB 1 increases penalties . . . but only to $1,500, which, in the words of Barry Kauffman of Common Cause, is “budget dust” for most public agencies.

So that’s the status of the “minimum six” as the bill heads to the governor.

What do you think?

Footnote: Last week a Commonwealth Court ordered the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Authority to pay three news organizations — the Associated Press, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, and the Patriot-News of Harrisburg — $48,000 in legal fees as a result of their dogged pursuit of PHEAA’s over-the-top spending records. That confrontation, with PHEAA claiming its records were not subject to public disclosure – a position they lost all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court – was a driver in the march toward open records reform. As the Carlisle Sentinel points out, “when PHEAA pays fines or restitution, it does so with taxpayer money,” but still, we hope, another message has been sent about agency accountability, government transparency and, ultimately, public trust.

• It’s unanimous in the House as it was in the Senate. House members voted 199-0 to pass open records legislation just five days after GOP members halted debate amid concerns that expanding access to government records would aid identity thieves, put domestic violence victims and senior citizens at risk and cripple the state’s real-estate industry.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) has planned a full Senate vote on the bill today. If the bill passes the Senate, it then goes to the governor to be signed into law.

• In for what looked like a protracted debate, the legislature suddenly came together yesterday. The bill ran into opposition in the House last week from Republicans who said it would reveal too much about people’s calls to 911 centers, prevent real-estate companies from using public records for their businesses and potentially increase cases of identity theft.

A Democratic-sponsored amendment addressed those issues, and partisans on both sides praised the final result. Passage on the House floor was greeted with a chorus of cheers.

“I didn’t want to muscle this thing through, I wanted to make it bipartisan and bicameral,” said House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D-Greene).

House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R-Jefferson) said the amended bill “goes a long way in putting a proper balance between the public’s right to know and the public’s expectation of personal privacy protection.”

• That sort of collegial agreement had not always characterized the legislative discussions. The last time a vote was scheduled, tempers flared. DeWeese accused the GOP of trying to torpedo the bill. “You are trying to drive into the heart of open records,” he said, addressing the Republicans, “The delaying tactics of the minority leader and the minority leadership team and the minority party are certainly suspect for debate.”

That prompted this angry response from Smith: “He is threatening me time after time if I dare to vote to non-concur, I am somehow voting against open records! And that’s just not the case, Mr. Speaker!”

• The bill fundamentally changes open records access in Pennsylvania. [Said] DeWeese : “I think our commonwealth will go to the forefront of the 50 states for a very aggressive . . . open records law.”

“The presumption of openness is now flipped,” DeWeese said. “For the first time in history, the Legislature would be incorporated” into the law. “The public will know how their tax dollars are being spent.”

• But questions remain, and groups that have pushed for a new open-records bill stopped short last night of claiming victory because of a last-minute exemption that House members added. That exemption would exclude from public view records involving people under 17. It was not clear whether that exclusion would apply to police records.

“Isn’t that all the Columbine shooting victims, any kid that’s huffing and involved in car accidents, plus all their passengers?” asked Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lobbyist Deb Musselman. “That appears to us, at first glance, to really be at odds with what’s public now.”

Other exemptions would include some 911 emergency recordings, medical records, Social Security numbers, and constituent letters to lawmakers.

Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause of Pennsylvania, said the bill still had serious flaws.

Among them, he said, is that the legislature would not fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of Open Records. Instead, the House and Senate would get to decide for themselves whether they were in compliance with the law.

• The bill’s prospects look good in the Senate, which had previously passed a somewhat different version, 50-0. Pileggi agreed in concept with the changes and will ask the Senate to approve the overhaul of the open records law, said his spokesman, Erik Arneson.

• The law would not take effect until Jan. 1. It will, however, apply to historical records, which had been a huge issue in the House.

While newspapers around the state have expressed differences of opinion about how good Senate Bill 1 really is – and whether and how it can be improved – they are coalescing around one simple notion: this process has gone on for over a year, and each day it lingers in the legislature, the more potential damage can be done to it.

Some of those voices:

• The Citizens’ Voice in Wilkes Barre: Free access to government documents is an issue that certainly engages the news media more than the public at large. But the new bill, passed by the Senate last week, is as important to the average individual as any pending legislation in Harrisburg.

Why should the public care about open-records legislation? Two reasons.

Number one, open-records laws make it easier for individuals to deal with municipal, county and state officials who are often reluctant, no matter what the law says, to produce legitimately public documents.

Number two, open-records laws allow the news media to perform their important watchdog function. The controversy over the misuse of debit cards by Luzerne County officials and employees that has roiled county government for the last three months came to light only because The Citizens’ Voice county reporter Michael P. Buffer, armed with the open-records law, was able to push county officials for access to records, receipts and reimbursement information.

We urge the state House to pass the new open-records bill this week.

• The Patriot-News in Harrisburg: Senate bill would strengthen Pennsylvanians’ right to know

Pennsylvania stands on the threshold of writing into law the idea that the records of the people’s government belong to you, the people.

. . . [T]he citizens of Pennsylvania for too long have been the victim of one of the least open governmental systems, both at the state and local levels. This bill, in its current form, would go a long way toward changing that for the better.

We urge the House to take the lead of the Senate and get this bill as written to the governor’s desk for his prompt signature. Tweaking it toward “perfection,” as some are urging, would open SB 1 to other changes that could weaken it, and a dispute over language between the House and Senate could throw the bill into limbo and well jeopardize its passage during this session.

It is time the commonwealth takes a major step bringing transparency and openness to your government.

• The Daily Item in Sunbury: It is not easy to monitor government agencies in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth’s feeble Right-to-Know Law dictates that many government documents remain unavailable for public review. Taxpayers have suffered repeatedly because of it.

Change is near.

But the change would be most noticeable in Harrisburg. Local governments have displayed varying degrees of openness. Harrisburg’s politicos have been among the most wary of public scrutiny. That fondness for back-room dealing has fed into public distrust. The senators can take a huge step toward restoring taxpayers’ faith in state government. Residents will trust politicians and bureaucrats when they can see the fruits of their labor. The reforms under consideration would do just that.

• The Sentinel in Carlisle: We’re almost there.

Considering that earlier versions of the bill had such wide-open loopholes as an exception from disclosure for all e-mailed correspondence, we’re gratified to see that the bill has made so much progress. It’s time, however, for this process to reach a conclusion, and we hope the House’s deliberations will lead us to a bill the governor can sign sooner rather than later.

• The Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh: It’s time for a new open records law in Pennsylvania. Not next week. Not next month. Now.

Here are some of the important ways Senate Bill 1 differs from the current law, all reasons for House members to pass this law and send it on for Gov. Ed Rendell’s signature:

– Records of the Legislature, executive and judicial branches, county and municipal agencies would be presumed open. This is the most significant change because it says the public is entitled to records of government and, if access is denied, officials must prove why that’s justified.

– It’s the first time the Legislature would be covered by the state’s open records law, including salary and expense information, audits, staff manuals and written policies, proposed regulations and other data.

– It shortens the response time for agencies to five days, imposes new reporting requirements for state-related universities and covers community colleges, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The bill is not perfect. . . .Despite the bill’s broad approach to openness, it is careful to balance privacy rights. For the House to reject it now would be completely unreasonable.

• The Centre Daily Times in State College: Pennsylvania is on the verge of something remarkable. For the first time in many years, the state open records law, called the Right to Know Law, is close to being significantly improved.

What would a new law mean for the average Pennsylvania resident? It depends. If you care about government spending and accountability, it could mean a lot.

The bill fundamentally changes the structure of Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.
Is the bill perfect? Of course not.

Could the bill be improved? Yes.

But does it advance the interests of Pennsylvania residents? We believe it does.

More tomorrow.

The headline in the Bucks County Courier-Times makes your blood run cold: “Caller put on hold, dies in house fire.”

Christina Kristofic’s story tells of a woman, Brenda Orr, who called 911 the morning of January 29, saying her bed was on fire and she could not get out. She was put on hold for almost a minute.

“We’re concerned about the minute that’s missing,” Doylestown police Chief James Donnelly said this week. “Had we had that minute, I’m not saying for sure that we could have saved her, but we would have been a minute closer.”

But Orr was confined by multiple sclerosis to her bed, where she reportedly smoked cigarettes — which is one possible, but as yet unconfirmed, cause of the fire.

The story has elements of great courage as well as tragic errors, as rescuers battled unbearable heat in a vain effort to save Brenda Orr’s life. They were ultimately turned back by the force of the fire.

There is much the public needs to know about what went wrong that morning in Doylestown. And there is much it should know as well about the bravery of several of its public employees. But here are two things we know now:

• The Doylestown Intelligencer obtained the information it published through a right-to-know request; and

• 911 dispatch associations are trying to restrict public access to information on such calls. It is, they say, a matter of victim privacy — although it is, of course too late to get Brenda Orr’s views on her privacy.

But it is also a matter of public safety and government responsibility, and Bucks County officials have acknowledged that proper procedures were not followed in this case . . . although they will not say precisely what procedures or how they were breached.

As Borough Council President Det Ansinn told the Courier-Times: “We need to understand from the county what happened and what can be done to not have that happen again. We have a tragedy here. And there’s always questions following a tragedy. We want to make sure we do our best as a borough to limit the possibility of a tragedy happening again. . . .

“No comment,” he said, “is not a sufficient response for our first responders and our law enforcement officials. . . . we need to have confidence in this system.”

We all need to have confidence in the system. And that confidence comes from the transparency of open records and the accountability that comes with public scrutiny.

We have been down this road so many times before . . . Remember last year, after the I-35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, when PennDOT refused to release information on the state of Pennsylvania’s bridges because: “There’s a fear that the general public might not understand what those [bridge ranking] numbers mean. It might set off undue concern.”

Well, yes. . . .

“By now it’s pretty clear,” wrote Paul Sunyak of the Herald-Standard of Uniontown on a recent blog post, “that Republicans in the state House aren’t interested in passing an open records bill until they’ve exhausted every stalling tactic in the book. . . .[S]uddenly they want to hear more from 9-1-1 dispatchers, who don’t support letting courts decide if a transcript of a fire, police or ambulance call should be made public.”

“It would be possible to ping-pong a rewrite of the Open Records Law between the chambers virtually forever,” Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), the main sponsor of the pending bill, recently told Capitolwire.

Not just virtually. . . .

It is time to get on with it.

We continue our series on opinions from around Pennsylvania about Senate Bill 1 with excerpts from recent editorials in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Centre Daily Times and Lewistown Sentinel. Please join the conversation.

• Public access is good government

Pass open records law

The latest Senate-backed version of a new open records law for Pennsylvania still contains a few flaws that, in a perfect world, would be debated, challenged and corrected. But since the Legislature is nearing agreement on updating the state’s rusty, 51-year-old Right to Know statute – and given the potential for this discussion to break down between the two houses yet again – we urge the House of Representatives to adopt the Senate bill and send it to Gov. Ed Rendell for his signature.

What’s not up to snuff? A few things.

The Senate bill would place a proposed Office of Open Records — the clearinghouse for interpreting the law and resolving disputes over requests – in the Department of Community and Economic Development, where it might be less impervious to political influence than in an independent agency such as the state Ethics Commission.

Second, there’s still the potential that state, county and municipal records tenders could establish nuisance-type fees, such as unreasonable costs for researching and gathering records, to dissuade people from making inquiries.

Third, the new law would go backward in one respect – removing autopsy records from the public domain.

Despite these obstacles, the proposed bill makes several inroads. The most important is a reversal in the presumption of openness. Officials would be required to show why a record can’t be released, using a specific list of exceptions. Right now the onus is on a resident or news organization to prove that a record is, in fact, public.

The law would allow exemptions for police investigative reports, home and personal cell-phone numbers, medical records and Social Security numbers to protect privacy and to protect against identity theft. Letters to elected officials from constituents also would be shielded.

It’s tempting to say the House and Senate should hold off until they can agree on a bill that would become a paragon of transparency in government, but history is replete with examples of good ideas getting bogged down in political bickering, power plays by legislative leaders and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. You know, all those things that open records and open meeting laws are designed to deter.

It’s time to move ahead. Even with quick action, a new law wouldn’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2009. Most other states have already demonstrated that with stronger laws and some training for municipal officials, wider public access to records is doable.

And it’s good government.

• A big step for Pa.

The open-records bill that could come up for a final vote today in Harrisburg isn’t perfect, but it is a significant improvement over current law. Legislators should send it to Gov. Rendell for his signature.

The title of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, approved in 1957, turned out to be a misnomer. Government documents are presumed to be off-limits to the public; the burden is on an ordinary citizen to prove why such records should be open.

The new legislation places the burden on government officials to explain why some records should be kept secret. That feature of the new bill trumps the legislation’s shortcomings.

The bill would create a new Open Records Office, but - in one of the bill’s most serious drawbacks - the legislature would not come under that office’s jurisdiction. The House and Senate would instead decide for themselves whether they are in compliance.

Both chambers would appoint an “appeals officer” to rule on requests for government documents; those officers would sometimes be under enormous political pressure to side with the legislature.

We wish legislators had the courage to put this decision-making role in the hands of someone outside their direct influence. But the larger point is that this legislation would, for the first time, put the legislature under the scope of the open-records law.

Another shortcoming is that legislators decided to put the new Open Records Office in the Department of Community and Economic Development, part of the governor’s administration.

It should be under the domain of the state Ethics Commission, where it would more likely be free of political interference.

Some proponents of a stronger bill want to go back to the drawing board. But doing that might allow special interests to add more loopholes. The bill before the legislature now is a big step forward for Pennsylvania.

• Another shot of reform

Now that the state Senate has passed its version of an open-records law, the matter goes back to the House, where debate over property-tax cuts stalled this week in a dispute over how many homeowners should benefit.

No one knows when the right-to-know bill will be reconsidered or what its fate will be. But while Senators praise themselves for this sudden spasm of reform — and in fairness, their bill is a vast improvement over the one previously approved by the House — remember this: The process has already taken a year, nothing has changed and even if the Senate bill does become law, it won’t take effect until next January.

But no need to rush reform, right? Almost every senator and representative, thanks to politician-drawn voting districts, has a safe seat, and as long as they appear to be working for open records — issue enough news releases to that effect and it will eventually seep into voters’ collective subconscious — they can always clean up the little details next term or the next or the next.

• New Right to Know Law is a good first step
Being unaware doesn’t make a person innocent, unless they are a child. But what happens when awareness is purposely shut down? What results from a lack of public consciousness when it is put to sleep by people in positions of power and privilege?

With a stronger Right to Know law on the horizon, power will be returned to people, and agencies will be made more accountable for their actions.

“If we can tear the roof off of state government so that people can see in, I think you’ll start to see more reforms come down the pike,” state Rep. Kerry Benninghoff (R-Bellefonte), said in a December press release.

If the House passes the bill next week, as the Senate unanimously did Wednesday, this could be the first step in a domino effect to reduce the separation between those in power and those disenfranchised by a system that doesn’t want the people to know.

Even as the House engaged in partisan bickering of the kind that makes you wonder whether they will get anything done this session, the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition called for passage of Senate Bill 1 without either amendment or further ado.

And that, Deputy House Speaker Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) told the news service, Capitolwire, in an email message was exactly what the Democrats planned to do — “pass SB1, a strong open records bill, without amendment today.”

But a united Republican front managed to block House consideration of the bill until Feb. 12th.

Witnesses described the four hours of fruitless and often ugly debate as partisan bickering at its worst. Even though they found it hard to watch, however, they did not argue that such “conversations” would be better off behind closed doors. It’s clear we need to see the process, warts and all.

While many House members are openly expressing their frustrations with the process and their desire to see this bill enacted before the April primary, there are only two session days scheduled next week, and then the budget hearings break until March 10th.

Meanwhile, at a press conference yesterday morning on the Capitol Rotunda steps, House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R-Punxsutawney) claimed the House Democrats were caucusing on a secret Open Records law amendment that they refused to share with the their Republican colleagues. The Democrats mobilized quickly to deny the charge. The irony should not be lost that the Republicans then went into the legislature and voted as a single body to put off — once again — a vote on the Open Records bill.

On a more positive note, the PaFOIC urged the House “to pass with no further amendments Senate Bill 1, legislation that would greatly expand the public’s right to access government documents.”

“This is a good bill for the citizens of Pennsylvania,” said Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the PaFOIC. “While there is no such thing as a perfect bill, and there are still some provisions that will need revisiting in the future, we feel SB1 overall is an excellent compromise, and represents the long-sought reform that Pennsylvanians have been looking for. It is way past time to get this law on the books.”

Today we continue with our look at different points of view on Senate Bill 1 with excerpts from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lancaster New Era and Democracy Rising Pa. As you will see over the next few days, the debate has not abated with the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 1, and the suggested paths forward are many.

Feel free to join the discussion — that’s what this blog is for.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

No Halfway Measure on Open Records:

Pennsylvanians should have the law on their side when they try to obtain public documents from their local school board or a state agency.

As the Senate wraps up its work, legislators essentially have two choices: Give the public an open-records bill that improves the current law but contains serious loopholes, or create one of the strongest laws for open government in the nation.

The latter is the obvious choice. But doing the right thing in Harrisburg is usually the road less traveled. Voters will soon find out whether lawmakers are on their side.

The new law will contain one all-important principle: All government records are presumed to be open to the public, and the burden will rest on the government to prove otherwise. Current law requires citizens to prove why a government document should be made public.

But legislators are still contemplating provisions that would undercut the effectiveness of the new law. They could place oversight with the state Department of Community and Economic Development, where enforcement would be lacking. An open-records office ought to be under the auspices of the more independent State Ethics Commission, where there’s a better chance of forcing a government agency to comply with requests.

The House version, incredibly, would apply only to government records created as of July 1, 2008. The Senate has the right idea here, its bill pertains to any document, no matter how old.

Also, legislators should reject a House attempt to delete dates of birth from records. That measure would make it nearly impossible to distinguish Sam Smith the burglar from, say, Sam Smith the House minority leader.

If legislators still need reasons to produce a law with teeth, they need look no further than their own rotunda. The state attorney general is conducting a grand jury investigation into whether legislative staffers were paid bonuses for political work. Legislative leaders in both parties have admitted using taxpayer dollars to pay for political polling. And a former legislator has been indicted for allegedly giving a “no-show” job to a relative.

Some of these alleged abuses might have been discouraged if the legislature had to open its books on a regular basis.

From the Lancaster New Era

Pa. pols getting serious about reform

It’s early and nothing is etched in stone, but it appears state lawmakers, after months of debate, are about to carry out real reform in Pennsylvania.

The Senate . . . unanimously passed an invigorated open-records law, a measure that would assure that citizens have broad access to the records of the government agencies that their tax dollars support.

For more than 50 years, Pennsylvanians have lived under one of the weakest open-records law in the nation.

Information that is readily available to citizens in most states — a list of a community’s worst traffic-accident sites, for example — is kept secret in Pennsylvania.

The new measure would assume most government records are open to the public, including most of those of the General Assembly.

But it also contains sensible provisions for privacy for those records that any reasonable person believes should remain confidential — the paperwork of ongoing police investigations, individuals’ personal medical and financial records, and the addresses of domestic violence and stalker victims.

The idea that legislative records, previously closed to the public, would be open to public scrutiny may make a handful of lawmakers nervous. But most know that, unless they have something to hide, there is no reason for worry.

There are no guarantees, of course. . . .The House could stall or kill open-records reform.

But in discussions this past week, leaders of both parties in both Houses seemed genuinely interested in moving Pennsylvania forward.

From Democracy Rising Pa.

Down to the Wire for Open Records
There are two ways of looking at the Senate’s 50-0 vote in favor of Senate Bill 1. It could mean that we are on the verge of having the best open records law in America with Gov. Ed Rendell’s signature only days away. Or that the backroom deal was cut for a mediocre law, and not one Senator had the gumption to stand up for something better. Want to guess?

Time’s up.

If all had gone according to plan this week, SB 1 already would be law. The plan, worked out in secret among legislative leaders, was to have the new version of SB 1 discussed in secret caucus meetings and enacted into law in one day. As Andrea Mulrine, president of the League of Women Voters of PA, observed, “It is the same process that resulted in a disastrous pay raise bill and flawed gambling legislation.”

It’s the usual Capitol fuzzy math: 2 secret meetings = 1 open records law. Once again, citizens would not be allowed to know what was happening until it was too late to say anything about it. Yet the campaign brochures would call it a victory.

Fight Another Day Next Wednesday. Fortunately, Common Cause PA and the League took the lead in arguing for a better SB 1 and bought more time. Both organizations sent letters to legislators throwing penalty flags on holes in the bill that Rendell’s secretary of legislative affairs, Steve Crawford, called “big enough to drive a truck through.” While the letters didn’t stop Senators, they stopped the House. Its members, and we citizens, have until Wednesday to weigh in.

Common Cause issued a critique citing 18 flaws in SB 1. All are easily corrected and, if done, would give PA the best open records law in America. The top 3 are:

• SB 1 puts the General Assembly beyond the reach of the Office of Open Records, which SB 1 creates to enforce the law. In essence, the legislature would make its own rules and enforce them against itself, as it does now. “A citizen’s only recourse to challenge a legislative records denial would be to file suit in the Commonwealth Court, an expensive and time-consuming process,” said Executive Director Barry Kauffman. Common Cause argues that the legislature should be covered by the same independent Office of Open Records that enforces the law for the rest of state and local government.

• SB 1 puts the Office of Open Records in the Department of Community and Economic Development with its director appointed by the governor. This means the office would enforce rules against the same local governments to whom the agency gives hundreds of millions of dollars a year. To avoid this conflict of interest, Common Cause argues that the Office of Open Records should be part of “a truly independent agency like the Ethics Commission,” Kauffman said.

• SB 1’s language about fees for copies of public records makes it possible for agencies to use fees as a weapon against citizen access. “Citizens already own these records and already pay for the staff who manage and protect them,” Kauffman said.

Not Only That… Punishments are puny for those who break the law under SB 1. The maximum fine is $1,500, which is budget dust for state agencies, the legislature, most cities and municipalities and most school districts. The purpose of fines and punishments is to ensure compliance with the law. The purpose of inconsequential fines is to ensure that the law will not be taken seriously when it matters most.

SB 1 should be easy for citizens to enforce without having to endure the cost and delay of court proceedings. It should provide harsher penalties for public officials who repeatedly violate the law, including dismissal from office and criminal penalties.

Piling Irony Upon Irony. If anything is more ironic than an open records law being worked out in secret, it’s the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association endorsing SB 1 and disregarding the problems that Common Cause and the League have exposed.

Last Wednesday, PNA urged both the Senate and House to accept the secretive fast-track plan and pass SB 1 that very day with no chance for their newspapers to report, or their readers to understand, the final proposal.