Opinion: Stop using technology to skirt law
August 15, 2012 Right to Know Law
OPINION
The [Scranton] Times-Tribune
Every piece of technology purchased by Pennsylvania taxpayers for use by state employees is supposed to serve the public good. Just ask former state Sen. Vincent Fumo and former Reps. John Perzel, H. William DeWeese and Michael Veon, who are in prison partly for using publicly owned technology to serve politics rather than governance.
Telephone records, emails and other communications by public employees and elected officials are public records, with limited exceptions. A key debate before passage of the state's Right to Know Law in 2008 was whether emails should be included. They were, and a series of decisions by the Office of Open Records and the courts emphatically has enforced that such records are public.
So the intent of the Legislature was clear when it passed the law. The objective was to grant access to all forms of official communications relative to governance.
That spirit seems to have been lost, however, as the Corbett administration installs a new governmentwide phone system that includes instant messaging.
In a letter to Gov. Tom Corbett, Terry Mutchler, executive director of the Office of Open Records, told him that during training for the new system employees "were specifically instructed that certain telephone messages and instant messages on this system are not subject to the open records law."
Taxpayers do not provide the state government with technology to avoid accountability. As noted by attorney Melissa Melewsky of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, "It's a completely inappropriate way to use technology to avoid accountability. It invites abuse."
The governor should honor Ms. Mutchler's request to uphold the law by the letter and in spirit, by mandating the creation of traceable records for the conduct of public business and instructing the appropriate officials to stop advising state employees on how to skirt the disclosure law.
The [Scranton] Times-Tribune
Every piece of technology purchased by Pennsylvania taxpayers for use by state employees is supposed to serve the public good. Just ask former state Sen. Vincent Fumo and former Reps. John Perzel, H. William DeWeese and Michael Veon, who are in prison partly for using publicly owned technology to serve politics rather than governance.
Telephone records, emails and other communications by public employees and elected officials are public records, with limited exceptions. A key debate before passage of the state's Right to Know Law in 2008 was whether emails should be included. They were, and a series of decisions by the Office of Open Records and the courts emphatically has enforced that such records are public.
So the intent of the Legislature was clear when it passed the law. The objective was to grant access to all forms of official communications relative to governance.
That spirit seems to have been lost, however, as the Corbett administration installs a new governmentwide phone system that includes instant messaging.
In a letter to Gov. Tom Corbett, Terry Mutchler, executive director of the Office of Open Records, told him that during training for the new system employees "were specifically instructed that certain telephone messages and instant messages on this system are not subject to the open records law."
Taxpayers do not provide the state government with technology to avoid accountability. As noted by attorney Melissa Melewsky of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, "It's a completely inappropriate way to use technology to avoid accountability. It invites abuse."
The governor should honor Ms. Mutchler's request to uphold the law by the letter and in spirit, by mandating the creation of traceable records for the conduct of public business and instructing the appropriate officials to stop advising state employees on how to skirt the disclosure law.
