This past summer, the OOR conducted a survey of 917 Agency Open Records Officers (AOROS) across the Commonwealth and followed up with longer one-on-one interviews with 30 AOROs.
The survey report is now available: OOR 2024 Survey Report
The survey and interviews included questions about the following:
- Hours worked, frequency of attorney consultation on requests
- Opinions regarding legislation on “vexatious” and commercial requesters
- Concerns about the Right-to-Know Law
The OOR’s two summer interns of 2024, Ethan Lown and Kaitlyn Ponessa, spearheaded this project.
Open Records in Pennsylvania 
Reading through the report I think one of the biggest issues with the law appears to be out of state for profit requesters.
I think many other issues could be resolved with the state providing some funding for the records officer position.
The biggest thing I take from this report is that many records officers haven’t received training, or don’t understand the intent of the law. There was many talking about the intent of requester which are just presumptions based on their perspective rather than likely facts. Others want anonymous requestors banned, which is already a thing.
From my personal experience with a few agencies a lot of requests wouldn’t need to be made if they provided the documents to the public through a webpage. A local school district provides all documents for their public meetings to the public on their website before the meetings happen, this means I only have had to make a couple of requests to them in the last year. On the flip side the county and local township/boroughs don’t provide anything to the public related to the meetings. So to get the information that is in front of the council members we have to do a records request which some agencies automatically do a 30 day extension, even if that information is still ‘right in front of them’. The point being that if you provide the information that the public wants they won’t have a reason to request it.
I think improvements to the sunshine act could help greatly in reducing records requests from newspapers and local citizens. Force an agency to provide the records that are going to be discussed at a meeting to the public before the meeting. It would also be completely in-line with the intent of both laws. How is the public to comment on a subject matter at a public meeting if they aren’t informed about what is going on.
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