Opinion: First, Obama's transparency directive. Gov. Rendell: You next?
OPINION
By Scott Blanchard
(York) Daily Record/Sunday News Record Tracker
So, Gov. Rendell, did you see what President Obama did the other day? Will you follow his lead in Pennsylvania?
Obama told federal agencies to be more transparent, publish more data, and in fact, set deadlines for them to put as-yet unreleased information online.
I wanted to ask Rendell if he'd do the same in Pennsylvania.
The state's new open records law, in effect since January, says a lot of the right things -- most importantly, that records are open unless an agency can prove why they shouldn't be. But the culture in Pennsylvania -- for so long a state that considered most records private unless you could prove they should be public -- is proving difficult to change.
We know that from our own work in public records -- some agencies get it, but often lawyers work as hard as possible to figure out how they can make a record fit an exemption rather than acknowledging it's public and releasing it.
And you can tell by the more than 1,000 denied requests that have been appealed to the open records office. And you will discover more about it from a right-to-know audit, led by The Associated Press, in which the Daily Record/Sunday News participated. The series of stories begins Sunday.
I asked Rendell's spokesman, Gary Tuma, if Rendell would issue a directive to state agencies similar to Obama's directive to federal agencies. Tuma talked to right-to-know attorneys in the administration, collected their thinking and got back to me with a nine-item list of steps that state agencies are taking toward improving public access. The e-mail began:
"We were aware of this federal directive when it first came out, as well as having it shared with us by Terry Mutchler, and were pleased to see that it was in accord with the initiatives that had been consuming much of our time, in preparing for the new RTKL."
That indicates Pennsylvania was ahead of the federal government, not behind it, in terms of public access. That would probably surprise many open-records advocates in Pennsylvania.
Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, said, "I think some good efforts have been made (we had to start somewhere), but that the governor's office is also getting actively involved supporting agencies that are fighting OOR determinations in court."
And she recalled the state's open records office squaring off against Rendell's administration over the issue of fees that agencies can charge for records. The administration backed down, she said, but the administration's directive that started the flap hasn't been revised, "and I believe some agencies are routinely charging staff time for redaction, search and retrieval, because the governor said they could."
Rendell's office, she said, interprets the right-to-know law as saying that agencies can charge for staff time required to fill a request. "This is ludicrous, of course, because the staff time is already being paid for by the taxpayers, and because providing public records to the public should be considered part of an agency's job," she said.
Tuma's initial response didn't say specifically whether Rendell would give the movement toward transparency some juice by issuing a directive, so I asked again. His response:
"The administration is essentially trying to accomplish the same thing by having the Office of General Counsel and the deputy chiefs of staff who deal with RTKL work closely with all of the executive agencies to make sure that they are following the law and complying correctly."
By Scott Blanchard
(York) Daily Record/Sunday News Record Tracker
So, Gov. Rendell, did you see what President Obama did the other day? Will you follow his lead in Pennsylvania?
Obama told federal agencies to be more transparent, publish more data, and in fact, set deadlines for them to put as-yet unreleased information online.
I wanted to ask Rendell if he'd do the same in Pennsylvania.
The state's new open records law, in effect since January, says a lot of the right things -- most importantly, that records are open unless an agency can prove why they shouldn't be. But the culture in Pennsylvania -- for so long a state that considered most records private unless you could prove they should be public -- is proving difficult to change.
We know that from our own work in public records -- some agencies get it, but often lawyers work as hard as possible to figure out how they can make a record fit an exemption rather than acknowledging it's public and releasing it.
And you can tell by the more than 1,000 denied requests that have been appealed to the open records office. And you will discover more about it from a right-to-know audit, led by The Associated Press, in which the Daily Record/Sunday News participated. The series of stories begins Sunday.
I asked Rendell's spokesman, Gary Tuma, if Rendell would issue a directive to state agencies similar to Obama's directive to federal agencies. Tuma talked to right-to-know attorneys in the administration, collected their thinking and got back to me with a nine-item list of steps that state agencies are taking toward improving public access. The e-mail began:
"We were aware of this federal directive when it first came out, as well as having it shared with us by Terry Mutchler, and were pleased to see that it was in accord with the initiatives that had been consuming much of our time, in preparing for the new RTKL."
That indicates Pennsylvania was ahead of the federal government, not behind it, in terms of public access. That would probably surprise many open-records advocates in Pennsylvania.
Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, said, "I think some good efforts have been made (we had to start somewhere), but that the governor's office is also getting actively involved supporting agencies that are fighting OOR determinations in court."
And she recalled the state's open records office squaring off against Rendell's administration over the issue of fees that agencies can charge for records. The administration backed down, she said, but the administration's directive that started the flap hasn't been revised, "and I believe some agencies are routinely charging staff time for redaction, search and retrieval, because the governor said they could."
Rendell's office, she said, interprets the right-to-know law as saying that agencies can charge for staff time required to fill a request. "This is ludicrous, of course, because the staff time is already being paid for by the taxpayers, and because providing public records to the public should be considered part of an agency's job," she said.
Tuma's initial response didn't say specifically whether Rendell would give the movement toward transparency some juice by issuing a directive, so I asked again. His response:
"The administration is essentially trying to accomplish the same thing by having the Office of General Counsel and the deputy chiefs of staff who deal with RTKL work closely with all of the executive agencies to make sure that they are following the law and complying correctly."