Sunshine or rain? Our form lets you put legislators to the test
In commemoration of Sunshine Week, a nationwide media effort to bring attention to the need for open records and open meetings in government, we can think of no better laboratory in which to experiment than the Pennsylvania Legislature. You hear it all the time: We say it’s tough, if not impossible, to get information about how your state representative or senator spends your tax money, since they’re exempt from the state’s open records law. They say that plenty of detail is available and it’s as easy as punch to obtain the information, and we’re just trying to make them look bad.
So that you can find out who’s telling the truth – and just how responsive your state government is – we invite you to fill out, clip and mail the form letter at the bottom of this column. It’s nearly an exact duplicate of the ones that we use when we’re requesting information from government agencies. (Remember, too, that you don’t have to work for a newspaper to ask for such information; it’s your right as a citizen.)
At the top of the form, we’ve listed the names and mailing addresses of the state House and state Senate chief clerks, who are the custodians of such records. Mail the form to the appropriate chief clerk, after writing in the name of the elected official you’re interesting in, and after circling which spending items you’d like to know more about. We’ve listed several of them in order to make it easy for you.
We’ve also preselected a time frame – October, November and December of 2005 – because experience tells us that requesting more recent expenditures could result in a, “Those records are yet processed” excuse. But feel free to scratch out ours and use your own time frame if you want
At the bottom of this page, we’ve also packaged our area state representatives’ and senators’ mailing addresses for their district and Harrisburg offices, and their telephone numbers. We encourage you to supply them with a copy of your information request, so they will be aware of your inquiry and can be positioned to expedite your request.
These people work for you and spend your money.
Test them and let us know how you fare. Here’s how: