Slow and steady on Sunshine Reform – Maybe this year
April 30, 2009
OPINION
By Deborah Musselman
Director of Government Affairs
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association
You’ll recall that the Senate Republican leadership announced a set of 10 reform measures that had all, except for one bill, passed the Senate but not the House in the last session. Three of those bills are now awaiting final passage in the Senate, and they’re all geared towards citizen access to government: Senate Bill 105 sets up a website to post state government budgetary information, while Senate Bill 110 establishes disclosure rules for the use of state-owned aircraft.
This week saw movement on Senate Bill 101, a bill that PNA has vigorously supported, to strengthen the penalties for willful violation of the state Sunshine Law, sponsored by Sen. Lloyd Smucker, from Lancaster County. The bill would raise the penalty for willful violation of the Open Meetings Law from $100 – a fine that District Attorneys, we understand, consider not worth prosecuting – to $1,000 for a first violation and $2,000 for subsequent ones.
You’ll recall that a grand jury recommended such an amendment to the law, after Lancaster County commissioners were charged with violating the act in the sale of the county-owned nursing home. Sen. Smucker’s predecessor, Sen. Gib Armstrong, attempted to toughen the act, and his legislation passed the Senate in May, 2007, but never saw action in the state House until the fall of 2008. Predictably, given the election season and the Senate’s decision not to hold lame-duck voting sessions, the bill just "ran out of time," as the saying goes, and had to be reintroduced this year.
The House State Government Committee’s efforts last year did include a little mischief, adding a broad exemption to permit executive sessions for the purpose of discussing security and safety measures – completely open-ended with no checks and balances or criteria to assess whether the exemption was being abused. In his remarks to the State Government Committee on April 28, Sen. Smucker alluded to opposition that surfaced in the House last year when he emphasized that the fines are "a ceiling, not a floor," and that they are for willful violations of the act.
The bill is a good initial reform, but the opposition shows that more is needed -- “oh, these local government officials are volunteers, they don’t mean to break the law!” Well, study the law and make an effort to comply, that’s our view. It’s sad that the counterargument to that complaint is to point out that Senate Bill 101 still permits inadvertent violations to be cured, because in too many cases, the “do-over” renders the notion of public access into a formality without substance or impact.
We’d like to see even more improvements, but we’re encouraged to see the bill moving early in the session, and we’ll be keeping up the pressure to get it done this session, and done right.
By Deborah Musselman
Director of Government Affairs
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association
You’ll recall that the Senate Republican leadership announced a set of 10 reform measures that had all, except for one bill, passed the Senate but not the House in the last session. Three of those bills are now awaiting final passage in the Senate, and they’re all geared towards citizen access to government: Senate Bill 105 sets up a website to post state government budgetary information, while Senate Bill 110 establishes disclosure rules for the use of state-owned aircraft.
This week saw movement on Senate Bill 101, a bill that PNA has vigorously supported, to strengthen the penalties for willful violation of the state Sunshine Law, sponsored by Sen. Lloyd Smucker, from Lancaster County. The bill would raise the penalty for willful violation of the Open Meetings Law from $100 – a fine that District Attorneys, we understand, consider not worth prosecuting – to $1,000 for a first violation and $2,000 for subsequent ones.
You’ll recall that a grand jury recommended such an amendment to the law, after Lancaster County commissioners were charged with violating the act in the sale of the county-owned nursing home. Sen. Smucker’s predecessor, Sen. Gib Armstrong, attempted to toughen the act, and his legislation passed the Senate in May, 2007, but never saw action in the state House until the fall of 2008. Predictably, given the election season and the Senate’s decision not to hold lame-duck voting sessions, the bill just "ran out of time," as the saying goes, and had to be reintroduced this year.
The House State Government Committee’s efforts last year did include a little mischief, adding a broad exemption to permit executive sessions for the purpose of discussing security and safety measures – completely open-ended with no checks and balances or criteria to assess whether the exemption was being abused. In his remarks to the State Government Committee on April 28, Sen. Smucker alluded to opposition that surfaced in the House last year when he emphasized that the fines are "a ceiling, not a floor," and that they are for willful violations of the act.
The bill is a good initial reform, but the opposition shows that more is needed -- “oh, these local government officials are volunteers, they don’t mean to break the law!” Well, study the law and make an effort to comply, that’s our view. It’s sad that the counterargument to that complaint is to point out that Senate Bill 101 still permits inadvertent violations to be cured, because in too many cases, the “do-over” renders the notion of public access into a formality without substance or impact.
We’d like to see even more improvements, but we’re encouraged to see the bill moving early in the session, and we’ll be keeping up the pressure to get it done this session, and done right.
