At right: Judy Sherry goes over paperwork with her sons, Parker and Daniel Jr. -- Photo By Pete Bannan

By Sam Strike
Main Line Suburban Life

On any given day Kim de Bourbon is manning the discussion boards on the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition Web site, answering questions like “What recourse is available if a county or the state refuses to respond to a request?” or “Do community colleges and state-owned universities have to answer requests for number of faculty and salaries?”

de Bourbon provides guidance to citizens on a gamut of open-records, open-meeting and open-government issues as executive director of the not-for-profit Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition.

The former newspaper editor was one of the founding directors of the organization, which launched fully in 2007.

Pennsylvania was one of the last states in the country not to have such an organization — ironic, she said, because up until Jan. 1, 2009, it had one of the worst open-records laws.

And while the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) helps its member newspapers with Right to Know issues, “What was missing was a citizens’ group,” de Bourbon said.

The goal is “to do for the average citizen what PNA does for its members,” she said, adding that the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition does not have any paid staff members.

While the group’s legal help is limited, of open government on the discussion boards.

In some municipalities in Pennsylvania, especially sparsely populated ones, de Bourbon said that it can be difficult for citizens to get access to meeting minutes or agendas.

But on the Main Line, in places such as Radnor Township, the public’s expectation of local agencies providing documents far exceeds that of providing a mere meeting agenda.

Take Radnor resident Christina Perrone, who has obtained records such as itemized statements from township credit cards, bids for township employee health-benefits contracts and most recently records relating to vacation, sick and compensatory pay carried over years by township employees.

The Right to Know law is “one of the only ways to get the truth out,” Perrone said. But “it requires diligence, hard work and follow-through.”

That can mean hours of sorting, sifting and mathematics.

But the records themselves can only provide so much information. Context and reasoning often also have to be filled in by willing agency employees and subject experts.

Although the open-records law is an important tool in a representative democracy, “All of it is irrelevant unless you have citizens willing to stand up and do something,” she said.

One citizen who is engaged in a legal tussle for documents is Radnor Township resident Judy Sherry.

It was just before the Fourth of July last year when Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert C. Wright Jr. issued a 30-page opinion and order that found strongly in the Newtown Square resident’s favor.

Sherry had been seeking documents from the Radnor Township School District.

Wright stated that the district’s denial of an in-house compilation of collected administrative-related data from other area school districts — one of Sherry’s two requested documents — was not based on a “reasonable interpretation of law” and that the district “willfully or with wanton disregard deprived the requestor of access to a public record.”

However, because there was a “good argument” that the second of Sherry’s requested documents — an administrative-compensation report crafted by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association — was not subject to disclosure and the school district’s “objection was not raised in bad faith,” Wright reduced the awarded attorney fees by one-third of what was requested.

The judge also made a number of emotional, rights-related statements, like: “The idea of being stingy when it comes to recognizing a citizen’s rights is repugnant to our system of government. Indeed it turns a right to a privilege, which may be granted or denied at the whim of those in positions of power.”

Attorney fees, orders to turn over documents and a proverbial smack on the hand — it was almost too good to believe for Sherry.

But the judge would later vacate his order and subsequently step down from the bench from what people said are serious health problems.

So goes the roller coaster of one Right to Know petition through the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas.

Sherry’s petition has since been reassigned to James F. Proud, who held a meeting two weeks ago with Radnor Township School District special counsel Michael I. Levin and Sherry and her attorney sons, Parker and Daniel Jr.

“It was clear he had read through a good deal if not all of the file and seemed to have a good understanding of what was going on,” Parker Sherry, the lead attorney, said. But “ultimately, I’m not exactly sure where we’ll go from here.”

Proud could issue an opinion and order at any time. Or the record could be reopened.

What is likely not to happen is either side walking away from this protracted process, which began in May 2007 when Sherry filed her first and only Right to Know request from the school district for documents related to the 2007-2009 administrative agreement. The agreement details the salary and benefits of certain administrators in the school district.

When asked if he had reviewed the case and would stay the course, newly elected Radnor School Board president Steven K. Gerber said he would not comment on active litigation.

As for the Sherrys, who at one point made a settlement offer, “We are going to see it through to the very end, and if that includes appellate court, so be it,” said Daniel Sherry Jr.

“Giving up would send a very damaging message to people seeking Right to Know requests,” he said.

After all, how many average citizens would have a pair of lawyers working partly pro bono on their behalf for a few documents behind an administrators’ compensation agreement that is set to expire at the end of this year?

So, Judy Sherry is asked, if the agreement is long made, why continue to pursue the documents?

“For me, it has to do with the process involved here, in coming up with an agreement,” she said. “I wanted to see if the board really did its due diligence.”

As her son has said in public meetings of the school board, they want the board to do what every student is tasked with doing in school — to “show their work.”

“My expectation is that if we can prevail, documents used to form a decision will be made available so that the public can actually understand how the decision has been made,” she said.

As a former school-board member herself, Sherry admits she has a unique perspective on the process and the administrators’ agreement itself.

When she first came on the board in 2001, the previous administrative agreement had been crafted and was ready for approval, she said.

But she voted against it, saying it was structured with a “golden parachute” at its end that encouraged long-term administrators to retire.

“Often times, board members say, ‘trust us, we did extensive analysis,’” said Sherry. But “that’s not how our governing democracy works.”

So, Parker Sherry was asked, why don’t the Sherrys resubmit their requests under the new Right to Know law?

He said that while Wright, the original judge, vacated his order, he did not vacate his long and strong opinion or his findings of fact. To them, those determinations stand.

“To just withdraw from that now in the position we’re in wouldn’t make sense,” he said.

What Sherry requested in 2007 was:

1. “The extensive analysis fundamental to recommending approval of the Administrators Agreement referenced by Radnor Township School Board President Kathy Fisher at the April 10, 2007 public school-board meeting and later by RTSD Board Member Eric Zajac. The RTSD Board Members relied on this analysis as an essential component when making their decision on the Radnor Township School District Administrators Agreement.”

2. “The Pennsylvania School Boards Association Comparative Analysis of Administrative Salaries referenced at the May 10, 2007 Radnor Township School Board meeting, which was a foundation document used to justify increasing salaries of four administrators.”
After the new open-records law went into effect this year, Suburban Life submitted a request for the same documents, rephrasing it as follows:

1. Any and all documents and data produced for consideration by the Radnor Township School District and its Board of School Directors for its Administrative Compensation Plan 2007-09 approved at the April 10, 2007 meeting of the Board of School Directors.

2. The data produced by both the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (as part of a larger, district-funded salary study and position description work product) and by in-house administrators — sometimes referred to as a “comparative analysis of administrative salaries” — that was produced for consideration by the Radnor Township School District and its Board of School Directors and referenced at the May 8, 2007 Board of School Directors meeting during the discussion on proposed adjustments to four administrators’ salaries.

On Tuesday the Radnor Township School District told Suburban Life that it never received the Right to Know request, which was mailed on Jan. 2 via the U.S. Postal Service.

**This is the second of a two-part series on the new Right to Know law and how it affects Main Line residents.**