Senate Bill 411 (sponsored by Sen. Dominic Pileggi), legislation which would amend the Right-to-Know Law, was approved by the Senate State Government Committee (chaired by Sen. Mike Folmer) today.
This bill will make a number of improvements to the law. This cosponsorship memo, circulated by Sen. Pileggi, includes a good summary.
SB 411 was amended to include, essentially, the contents of Senate Bill 412 (sponsored by Sen. John Blake), which will make much more information from Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities — Temple (as a Temple grad, I always list the Owls first), Penn State, Pitt, and Lincoln — easily accessible online. A technical amendment was also adopted.
This is the first step in the legislative process for SB 411, so there’s a long road ahead. It’s almost certain that additional amendments will be considered in the future.
Open Records in Pennsylvania 
Fantastic amendment on home addresses. Bob makes a request on Monday for 80,000 addresses of all state employees. Susan does one on Tuesday. Mary does one on Wednesday. Frank on Thursday. Aunty Mabel on Friday. One request a day comes in every day for 50 days. By the 51st day every state employee is pleading to be taken off the government’s notification list, saying “Jeez, I’m in the phone book. Can ya stop sending me these notices?”. Meanwhile Simon is arrested under suspicion of being Aunty Mabel. On the way to jail he pleads …”Look, I just signed me and the kids up for the Township swimming pool and nobody sends me a darned notice when some Union boss wants the Township swimmers’ home addresses. Public employees must be pretty special people huh?” Grandpa Joe in the meantime, looks at the amendment language and files a request of SERS who only have their notify their 200 employees not their 220,000 members. Grandpa then files a RTKL request as the proxy requester for inmate Campbell and swears its not for commercial use. Now feeling florid, the politicians get mad because they don’t talk to people who use the law before crafting willy wonka ideas that make no sense.
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