Right-to-Know Law

Testimony on Senate Bill 411

/ Liz Wagenseller / Leave a comment

This morning, the House State Government Committee, chaired by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, held a public hearing on Senate Bill 411, which would amend the Right-to-Know Law.

I was honored to present testimony to the committee:

Others who testified or provided written testimony to the committee include:

  • ACLU of Pennsylvania
  • Bloomsburg University Foundation
  • Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access
  • Common Cause Pennsylvania
  • County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania
  • East Stroudsburg University Foundation
  • Foundation for IUP
  • Lincoln University Parents Association
  • Lock Haven University Foundation
  • Pennsylvania Bar Association
  • Pennsylvania Foundations Association
  • Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association
  • Pennsylvania Prison Society
  • Pennsylvania School Boards Association
  • Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors
  • Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs
  • Pennsylvania State Education Association
  • Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
  • Simon Campbell, Citizen Requester
  • State-Related Universities (Temple, Pitt, Penn State, and Lincoln)
  • Thomson Reuters
  • West Chester University Foundation

10 Examples of Records the RTKL Provided Access to in 2015

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Here’s a sampling of the types of records which the Right-to-Know Law provided access to in 2015:

  1. Information regarding airport perimeter security breaches at Philadelphia International Airport and Northeast Philadelphia Airport.
  2. The amount spent on school district solicitor bills and other legal expenses over the course of a fiscal year at numerous school districts.
  3. A redacted copy of the Pennsylvania State Police After Action Report / Improvement Plan issued following the September 2014 shooting at the Blooming Grove barracks.
  4. De-identified information about the waiting lists for service at Norristown State Hospital, Torrance State Hospital, and other regional forensic psychiatric center facilities.
  5. Training records for a police officer charged (and later acquitted) in a fatal shooting.
  6. Emails related to discussions about where school crossing guards should be assigned after a girl was killed trying to cross at a busy intersection.
  7. The amount paid to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a woman who claimed her son was wrongly killed by a state trooper and, separately, the amounts paid to defend and settle a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former public defender.
  8. Information revealing that about 10 percent of school employees in a particular district were related to the district’s top officials.
  9. Emails indicating that local officials were using official email accounts for communication related to local elections.
  10. A log of reports of health complaints tracked by the Department of Health in areas of the state seeing natural gas development.

The complete Office of Open Records 2015 Annual Report is available on our website (along with previous years).

PNA Sunshine Week Presentation

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Earlier today, I took part in a Sunshine Week panel discussion hosted by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (PNA).

The panel also included Melissa Melewsky, Media Law Counsel for PNA, Scott Coburn, General Counsel for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, and Terry Mutchler, my predecessor as Executive Director of the Office of Open Records and now an attorney at Pepper Hamilton.

It was an excellent discussion, and PCN was on hand to record it for future broadcast.

Here’s the presentation I used at the event:

PNA – Sunshine Week (PDF)
PNA – Sunshine Week (PPTX)

Sunshine Week Panel – March 15 in Harrisburg

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On Tuesday, March 15, I’m taking part in a Sunshine Week panel organized by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association to discuss “the state of open government in Pennsylvania.”

The event starts at 11:30 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m. at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School, 3800 Vartan Way, Harrisburg, PA.

The panel also features Scott Coburn, General Counsel for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, Melissa Melewsky, Media Law Counsel for PNA, and Terry Mutchler, an attorney with Pepper Hamilton and the former Executive Director of the Office of Open Records. Our moderator will be Teri Henning, President of PNA.

One CLE credit is available for attorneys.

More information is available at PNA’s website. Please join us if you can!

A Few Words About OOR Hearings

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On Monday, the Office of Open Records held a hearing in Pittsburgh on a case that involves video footage recorded by a camera in a holding cell at a local police department.

The RTKL authorizes the OOR’s Appeals Officers to “if necessary, hold hearings on a regional basis” (Section 1310(a)(5)). Although the OOR has historically held relatively few such hearings (and this was the first to be held outside of Harrisburg), I believe hearings will need to be more common in the months and years ahead.

As case law involving the Right-to-Know Law continues to develop, both through the OOR’s Final Determinations and court decisions, hearings provide a real opportunity to dig into the facts of cases that are more nuanced and complicated.

Requesters: Keep a Copy of Your Request

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When you submit a request under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, it’s very important that you keep a copy of the request. (An electronic copy is fine.)

This is important because if you’re denied access to records and decide to file an appeal with the Office of Open Records, you’ll need to provide four things:

  • A copy of the Right-to-Know request;
  • A copy of the Agency’s response (unless the request was “deemed denied,” meaning the Agency didn’t respond at all);
  • A written statement explaining the grounds on which the requester asserts that the record is a public record; and
  • A written statement addressing any grounds stated by the agency for denying the request.

If the case is appealed beyond the OOR (to a Court of Common Pleas or to Commonwealth Court), the OOR is required to provide a certified copy of the full record, which must include all four of those items.

By the way, the best way to file an appeal with the OOR is to use our Appeal Form, which can be downloaded in PDF or Word format. We’ve designed the form to be as simple and user-friendly as possible.

Speaking to the County Commissioners Association

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This morning in Hershey, I spoke to members of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania about the Right-to-Know Law and the Sunshine Act as part of the organization’s Newly Elected Officials Workshop and Fall Conference.

It was a great event, and I enjoyed talking to so many county commissioners. As a reporter at the Lebanon Daily News in the mid-1990s, I often covered meetings of the Lebanon County commissioners. I have great respect for the work done at the county level in Pennsylvania.

Here’s the presentation I used as part of this morning’s speech:

County Commissioners Association – 23 Nov 2015 (PDF)
County Commissioners Association – 23 Nov 2015 (PPTX)

Pennsylvania Ranks 4th in Public Access to Info

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Earlier this week, the Center for Public Integrity published the results of its 2015 State Integrity Investigation. Each state was ranked in a variety of categories ranging from Political Financing and Electoral Oversight to Procurement and Internal Auditing.

As Executive Director of the Office of Open Records, the category that most interested me was Public Access to Information.

And for Public Access to Information, Pennsylvania ranked 4th in the country.

That’s good news, and I’m proud of that ranking. When you examine the study in detail, it’s evident there are areas which can be improved — but the fact that Pennsylvania is ranked 4th for Public Access to Information is worth celebrating.

With a total of 68 points, Pennsylvania was only ranked behind Iowa (73), Utah (70), and Hawaii (70). (By letter grade, Iowa, Utah, and Hawaii were each given a C- for Public Access to Information; Pennsylvania was given a D+.)

Under the general category of Public Access for Information, states were evaluated on 13 issues. Here’s how Pennsylvania was scored:

  • In law, citizens have a right of access to government information through a defined mechanism. YES
  • In law, citizens have a right of access to private sector information through a defined mechanism. YES
  • In law, there is an entity/ies to monitor the application of access to information laws. MODERATE
  • In law, citizens have a right of appeal if access to government information is denied. YES
  • In law, there is an open data law, requiring the government to publish data online in an open format. NO
  • In practice, branches of government, state agencies and government officials do not claim to be exempt from access to information laws. 100
  • In practice, private sector information related to government information is not claimed to be exempt from access to information laws. 100
  • In practice, the calendars of both the governor and legislators are available to the public. 50
  • In practice, citizens receive responses to access to information requests within a reasonable time period and at no cost. 50
  • In practice, access to information requests are fully answered and/or detailed reasons for denying information are provided. 100
  • In practice, citizens can resolve appeals to access to information requests within a reasonable time period and at no cost. 100
  • In practice, the entity/ies to monitor the application of access to information laws independently initiates investigations and imposes penalties on offenders. 25
  • In practice, government responses to FOI requests are made available in open data format. 0

As you can see, of the 13 issues analyzed, Pennsylvania scored “yes” or “100” on a majority — seven — of them. That’s great, but of course it also means there’s some room for improvement in the other six.

The only two categories where Pennsylvania scored “no” or “0” were both related to open data. OpenDataPhilly is doing good work in this area, as is the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center. At the state level, both Hawaii and Utah got good marks for their open data efforts.

The Center for Public Integrity’s page for Pennsylvania goes into a good level of detail explaining each of the grades. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, it’s well worth spending some time reading through their work.