Pa. House passes open records bill in final vote
Dec. 12, 2007
By MARTHA RAFFAELE
Associated Press Writer
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Efforts to overhaul Pennsylvania's open-records law advanced another step Wednesday as the state House of Representatives unanimously passed its version of a bill intended to make a wider assortment of records available to the public.
But more work lies ahead for lawmakers to come up with a measure that Gov. Ed Rendell can sign.
The legislative session is winding down for the Christmas holiday, and the Senate must decide whether to accept a number of mostly minor changes the House made to the Senate's open-records bill, which passed in November. The House passed its version 191-0 without any debate.
Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said Wednesday the Senate has not determined how it will respond to the House's changes.
The House bill would delay full implementation until 2009, locate the office to mediate access disputes in the State Ethics Commission rather than the Department of Community and Economic Development, and ban agencies from charging for research, redaction and copying time.
It would also provide greater access to legislative records, but prevent disclosure of birth dates and phone numbers in public records – a provision opposed by news organizations, and one that the Senate may disagree with.
The Senate will not take up the measure until January at the earliest. It could accept the House's version and send it to Rendell, make additional revisions and send it back to the House, or vote to reject the House version, setting the stage for a House-Senate conference committee to be appointed to resolve disagreements between the two chambers.
Both versions would radically change the 50-year-old Right-to-Know Law, widely regarded as one of the nation's weakest freedom-of-information laws.
Each bill would reverse the law's underlying assumption by declaring that all records of the state's executive branch and local governments are public beyond a list of exceptions – a fundamental change favored by advocates of greater public access to government records and information.
They also would expand the law to include financial records of the legislative and judicial branches, and also Pennsylvania's college loan agency, community colleges and the four state-related universities.
In court disputes over whether a record should be public, the House bill would place the burden of proof on the government agency – instead of the other way around.
Current law presumes that records are not open to the public unless they fall into one of two categories: accounts, vouchers or contracts; or minutes, orders or decisions. It applies to local governments and to the executive branch of state government, but not to the legislative or judicial branches.
Deborah Musselman, a lobbyist with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said she hoped the differences between the two bills could be resolved quickly, even though January is the earliest that a final bill could go to Rendell.
"We think it's preferable to get a good bill than to get it (completed) by Christmas," Musselman said.
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