Senate approves open records law
HARRISBURG – Finding out how much your local school board spent on legal fees or how much your state lawmaker charged taxpayers’ for meals should be easier under a bill sent to Gov. Ed Rendell’s desk on Tuesday. The state Senate unanimously approved overhauling the state’s 51-year-old open records law, which governs public access to spending information and other records held by all levels of government in Pennsylvania.
Chuck Ardo, a Rendell spokesman, said the governor plans to sign the bill into law later this week.
Lawmakers have been debating for about a year how far to expand access to government records. The legislation was slowed by disputes over issues such as whether lawmakers’ e-mail messages should be available and whether dates of birth and addresses should be erased from public records to guard against identity theft.
But the House and Senate agreed on a bill late Monday that would prevent the release of information if government agencies determined it would risk the health or safety of people along with the addresses and dates of birth of anyone under 17.
Sen. Richard Kasunic, D-Dunbar, said in a prepared statement that adoption of the bill would let the sunshine in on government records.
“While I view this legislation as just a first step, it will certainly make government at all levels more open and accessible,” Kasunic said.
Sen. Chuck McIlhinney, R-Bucks County, said an enhanced open records law would not eliminate disputes over access to government records, but should expand access to records.
That’s because the new open records law would presume that most records are public. And government officials would have the burden of proving a record should be off-limits. Current law requires the people requesting information to prove what they are seeking meets the narrow definition of a public record.
A new Office of Open Records will be opened to hear disputes over requests for records denied by municipalities, school boards, county officials and the executive branch of state government.
People seeking information from the Legislature and the judicial branch would have to appeal rejected requests for information to the state Commonwealth Court.
“I’m not going to say people are not going to have to end up in a court case (to get records),” McIlhinney said. “But at least you have the law on your side when you go into court.”
The Legislature became more interested in lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding government documents partly because of public outrage generated by the July 2005 legislative pay raise fiasco and a scandal surrounding bonuses paid to legislative staffers in 2006.
“I think after the events of the previous years that everybody realized it was time to do this,” said Sen. Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson, R-Bucks.
He said the biggest change will be the presumption that all records are open unless government officials can prove otherwise.
“I think that changes the whole outlook on things,” Tomlinson said.
But Barry Kauffman, executive director of capitol watchdog Common Cause Pennsylvania, said if the bill becomes law, the culture will not change overnight.
Government employees at all levels will need training and some may resist the changes, he said.
“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.
Another thing Kauffman will be watching closely is who the governor picks as the head of the new Office of Open Records.
“We just hope that whoever this new executive director of this new agency is will take a tough approach and will protect people of the commonwealth,” he said.
Despite some concerns about whether that office can be independent and worries that the law still allows government agencies to impose nuisance fees for records, Kauffman said lawmakers deserve some credit.
“The bill does, in fact, provide some sweeping new rights for citizens providing them access to many, many more government records than they used to have access to,” he said.