State legislators push open-record reform bills
Officials say law must give public greater oversight while protecting privacy
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Add This
Article RatingImages
State Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fayette speaks during a rally at the Capital Rotunda for a stronger Open Records Law in the state. Rep. Mahoney is one of the main sponsors of House Bill 443 which would create the Open Access Law. (Matthew Harris/Special to the Sentinel)
Pennsylvania will soon have a strong open records law that will let citizens hold their government accountable, said a bipartisan coalition of state legislators and public-access advocates gathered Monday at the Capitol in Harrisburg.
Legislators are considering two bills in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives that would grant the public greater access to government records. Each bill would force the government, including agencies like PennDOT, to release information to the public unless they can prove it falls into a specifically crafted exemption under law — a change from current law that mandates those requesting the information prove why it should be public.
Safety data compiled by PennDOT about the state’s bridges, for instance, would be presumed public if the legislation passes.
Flipping the presumption of access would be a big step toward making the state government more open about its actions, said Jamie Blaine, a former newspaper publisher and open-records advocate who edits the Web site www.passopenrecords.org. He said Pennsylvania restricts access to information almost more than any other state, but now it is closer than ever before to open-records reform.
“We believe that openness distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government,” Blaine said.
Right-to-know legislation could begin moving forward as early as Wednesday, when the House State Government Committee plans to send an open-records bill to the House floor, according to the chair of the committee, Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia.
“The information belongs to the people,” said Josephs, who added that records such as those dealing with casino developers should be open to public inspection.
Other legislators promised similarly swift action, including Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. He introduced one of the open-records bills, Senate Bill 1, because he said “a strong open records law is a cornerstone of government reform.”
Giving greater access to government records has been one of the tenants of Pennsylvania government reform since the pay-raise flap of 2005 helped spur the election of 55 new officials in 2006. A special bipartisan House committee created in the wake of the surge of public protest to examine reform measures recommended flipping the presumption of access this summer.
One of the members of that commission, local state Rep. Glen Grell, R-87, said opening government records to public inspection will help erase suspicion of malfeasance by elected officials.
“We’re the guardians of $27 billion,” Grell said, “and the public deserves to know what we’re doing with it.”
Grell and other at the press conference agreed the law should not reveal such information as Social Security numbers, which could be used as part of an identify-theft scheme.
The right-to-know law should also exempt 911 calls, Grell said, to prevent them from being exploited.
