Think government has power over you, that you are helpless? Then you might want to think again. The state's Right-to-Know Law is intended to empower ordinary citizens by presuming that the records of government agencies are public and giving the public the right to inspect and request copies of them. Read More…

When the state's Right-to-Know Law went into effect Jan. 1, 2009, a significant paradigm shifted: presumption of access. Every record of a government agency became presumed public, and the burden of proof to show why a record is not public was shifted to the agencies. Prior to that law, it was the opposite, said Melissa Melewsky, media law council for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.
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Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, a potential candidate for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor, says he's hit a brick wall trying to obtain an itemized, detailed budget of the lieutenant governor's office. On Wednesday, he filed a formal request under the state's Right to Know Act, saying he's been stonewalled for two weeks. Read More…

A woman seeking to review the doctoral dissertation of the Fox Chapel Area School District superintendent will have to wait before learning if the document falls within Pennsylvania's Right to Know law.
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The confidential report that led to former Fairview Twp. Police Chief Scott Hockenberry’s firing did not have to be publicly released under the state's Right to Know Law. That was township Solicitor David Jones’ advice to supervisors last November when they decided to terminate him. That remains his stance today. But supervisors last week voted 3-2 to go against that advice and release the report prepared by special counsel Anne Zerbe of York. Read More…

The Commonwealth Court has upheld the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas order directing the City of Wilkes-Barre to pay 10 percent of the costs the Citizens’ Voice newspaper incurred litigating a RTK request. Although Judge Pellegrini included language that may soften the impact, the ruling still stands as a rare example of the Commonwealth Court upholding an award of attorney’s fees for acts of bad faith under the RTKL. Read More…

The Coatesville Area School District is conducting a legal review of two Right-to-Know requests to determine whether the contract terms of the district’s solicitor and the district’s financial reports are public record. Read More…

The Times Leader has filed an appeal with the state’s Office of Open Records after the Public Utility Commission denied the newspaper’s request to release an anonymous letter used as the basis of an investigation into PPL. Read More…

The Commonnwealth Court has decided that agencies cannot rely on small staff size when denying a request as "unreasonably burdensome" under Section 506(a) of the Right to Know law. Read More…

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled the City of Wilkes-Barre must pay a portion of The Citizens' Voice's legal fees related to a battle for the records of its now-suspended towing contractor. Read More…

HARRISBURG — A bill scheduled for a vote in the state House today has advocates of open government concerned about restricted public access to 911 call information. Read More…

BEAVER, Pa. (AP) - Beaver County hasn't provided documents to a local newspaper on the initial five bidders for a nursing home, despite a ruling from the state's Office of Open Records. Read More…

Judge Terrence R. Nealon of the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas issued a decision on September 17, 2013, in Mid Valley School Dist. v. Warshawer, No. 13 CV 1528, which held: (1) The disclosure requirements of the Right-to-Know Law (“RTKL”) superseded discovery restrictions contained in a private contractual agreement between a school district and a contractor; (2) Elementary school construction is a non-ancillary governmental function of the school district, and to the extent that the district delegates that statutory responsibility to contractors or subcontractors, any records that directly relate to the services rendered in connection with the construction are discoverable; (3) Attorney’s fees are not appropriate where a party raises issues of first impression. Read More…

Advocates for Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law said Friday's ruling against the state's largest teachers' union to keep public school employees' addresses private was a victory for public access. Read More…

On August 20, 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down the long-awaited decision in Bowling v. OOR/PEMA, No. 20 MAP 2011. The decision comes almost two years since it was argued on September 13, 2011. Read More…

In an opinion by Judge Cohn Jubelirer, the Commonwealth Court announced that when an agency fails to make any response to a Right-to-Know request resulting in a “deemed denial” under 65 P.S. §67.901, no waiver occurs and the agency will still be permitted to raise exemptions before the OOR. Read More…

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled partly in the Tribune-Review's favor in an open records case involving the spending of millions of dollars in Homeland Security grants. In a 4-2 decision, the justices ruled that appellate courts can decide records requests on appeal from the state's Office of Open Records. The ruling means that courts don't have to defer to what the office says when a party appeals a decision.
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HARRISBURG - A Bucks County school board member has dropped a right-to-know request seeking payroll data on 80,000 state employees. Pennsbury board member Simon Campbell, who has filed about 125 right-to-know law requests in recent years, was seeking information about state employee donations to political action committees (PACs).
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An appeals court has ruled that documents possessed by the state’s secretary of education in his role as a Pennsylvania State University trustee are records that fall under the state’s public records law. Read More…

HARRISBURG (AP) — The state Department of Transportation has built a website that compares competing plans to spend billions of dollars on highways and bridges in new transportation money under proposals being considered by the Legislature, but agency officials have refused to release similar information to the public, which will pay for the chosen projects. Read More…

The Commonwealth Court has examined the scope of an agency’s duty to make inquiries to individuals in possession of the agency’s public records. Read More…

Access to public information should be as routine as breathing. Government officials merely are custodians of data, almost of all of which should be open. But some state lawmakers plan to introduce a change to the state Open Records Law that would provide agencies with an end-run around access. Read More…

Access to public information should be as routine as breathing. Government officials merely are custodians of data, almost all of which should be open. But some state lawmakers plan to introduce a change to the state Open Records Law that would provide agencies with an end-run around access. Read More…

We support a bill before the state House of Representatives that would put state-related universities — including Penn State — more fully under the Right-To-Law law, and we oppose any amendments that would take the teeth out of this measure. Read More…

Environmentalists want to know how the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority will incorporate green infrastructure into a federally mandated plan for eliminating sewage overflows during heavy rains, but Alcosan says its plan isn't finished. On Wednesday, about 20 activists delivered a letter to Alcosan's offices, asking for details under the state's Right to Know Law. Read More…

HARRISBURG - A flashpoint is emerging over a proposed rewrite of the state open records law concerning how to deal with record requests that governments consider "unduly burdensome." Read More…

Spring is a time of renewal. Some renewals are dramatic, while others are merely incremental. Consider, for example, the Penn State Board of Trustees. The Board deserves acknowledgement for approving an initial set of governance reforms at its May meeting. Read More…

HARRISBURG — State lawmakers will soon return to the Pennsylvania Capitol with the state budget as the top order of business, accompanied by three marquee issues: liquor system privatization, public pension changes and transportation infrastructure funding.
But a set of amendments to the state Right-to-Know Law and changes to the makeup of the Penn State Board of Trustees will get pushed back to the fall, said State Government Chairman Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster. Read More…

From the day the first drill bit broke the surface of Pennsylvania in search of natural gas from the deep Marcellus Shale formation, the industry's impact on water quality clearly has been the overriding environmental concern. Yet the state Department of Environmental Protection has been far from transparent in its fundamental role of ensuring that water supplies are as clear as the public's right to know about drilling's impact. Read More…

More and more, it appears that Pennsylvania’s charter schools want to have it both ways. They want generous servings of public dollars while, at the same time, avoiding the accountability that comes with being the recipients of taxpayer beneficence. Read More…

When Pennsylvania's latest open records law went into effect in 2009, the state moved forward by making more information about governmental operations accessible to the public. Since then, the law has produced some improvements but it hasn't always made good on its promise, and now is a good time to take a hard look and tweak the law for the better. Read More…

State environmental regulators determined that oil and gas development damaged the water supplies for at least 161 Pennsylvania homes, farms, churches and businesses between 2008 and the fall of 2012, according to a cache of nearly 1,000 letters and enforcement orders written by Department of Environmental Protection officials and obtained by The Sunday Times. Read More…

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's 180 charter schools routinely ignore the state's Right-To-Know Law even though as publicly funded institutions they are bound to comply with it, the chief of the state's Office of Open Records told a Senate committee on Monday. Read More…

SHAMOKIN - The state's Office of Open Records has ruled that the city must make public the individual cost of health insurance for its elected officials. Read More…

HARRISBURG -- Less information could be available to the public about private contractors doing government work, as well as about volunteer fire departments, under changes being considered in the state Senate to Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law. Read More…

The latest developments in the ongoing — and unnecessary — dispute surrounding Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer's ill-advised attempt to hide from the public his appeal of a Charter Board ruling against him, as well as the ruling itself, suggest that this sorry chapter in Reading's history might soon be at an end. Read More…

Terry Mutchler, the lawyer who runs Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records, is brassy, smart and laugh-out-loud funny. So naturally, she has to be silenced. And language tucked away in a generally helpful revision to Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law would do just that by barring Mutchler – and her eventual successors – from speaking publicly about cases pending before the office. Read More…

HARRISBURG — Taxpayer-funded charter schools are a “cancer” on the state's open records law because they routinely ignore citizens' requests for records, the state's open records director said on Monday. Read More…

By early this fall, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is hoping to see his legislation that makes revisions to the state’s Right to Know Law emerge out of the Senate. Pileggi, R-Delaware County, told the Senate State Government Committee at a hearing today that the law enacted five years ago has proven to be a success and the Office of Open Records it established, a national model. Read More…

George Orwell would still be shaking his head if he could witness today's hearing in Harrisburg on proposed changes to Pennsylvania's Open Records law. Read More…

Some Pennsylvania lawmakers are trying to prohibit the executive director of the state Office of Open Records from speaking publicly about active cases - essentially gagging an office designed to promote open government. Read More…

Luzerne County Manager Robert Lawton has changed an open-records policy, and the county now will provide electronic copies of emails on discs. The county refused to provide electronic copies of emails under a prior policy and only would provide copies of emails on paper. Read More…

It's been five years since Pennsylvania government stepped out of the shadows by rewriting its open records law to give citizens much more access to how governments operate and spend public money. Many people, including me, believe the new Right-to-Know Law has worked pretty well. Read More…

If nothing else, the deluge of open records appeals in this state shows Pennsylvania citizens want easy access to government documents. But don’t just take our word for it. Take it from Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state Office of Open Records. Read More…

The state's Office of Open Records handled an 89-percent increase in the number of appeals since 2009 when the revised Right-to-Know Law went into effect. There are to ways to look at that number. Maybe it's just evidence that the long-overdue Right-to-Know Law changes are working. Or, boy, there are sure are a lot of public issues that the public is having to work very hard to shine a light on. Read More…

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records could soon become the victim of its own success. The taxpayer-funded agency was created by the Pennsylvania Legislature four years ago to handle Right to Know Law requests. In four years, its workload has increased 89 percent with 2,188 appeals filed in 2012 compared to 1,159 appeals in 2009. Read More…

It has been only a little more than four years since Pennsylvania finally got a Right-to-Know Law that was worthy of the name, so any time the Legislature wants to alter the statute, it sends up a red flag. So it was with the 22-page bill introduced last month by state Sen. Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, the majority floor leader. The measure would permit public agencies to impose fees under certain circumstances and allow governments to block requests that they deem to be unduly burdensome. It also would exempt volunteer fire and rescue companies from having to comply with the law and limit the information that could be requested by prison inmates.
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If you were ever shot down asking a pretty girl for her phone number, you're not alone. Trust me, they don't spill their digits to everyone who asks. I bet few people would confuse state bureaucrats for beauty queens, but it's not easy getting their phone numbers, either. A state court recently said Pennsylvania government offices don't have to provide the public with all of the phone numbers and email addresses assigned to their employees. Read More…

The Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition is sponsoring a public discussion at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Squirrel Hill branch, 5801 Forbes Ave., on obtaining government records related to gas drilling operations in the state. Coalition executive director Kim de Bourbon said part of the organization’s mission is to inform the public about what records and information they are entitled to under the law. Read More…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that it's legal for a state to limit use of its Freedom of Information Act to its own residents. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A new proposal to make changes to Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law would include limits on access by inmates and authorize the Office of Open Records to review documents in private to see if they should be released. Read More…

It has been a busy week for Right to Know issues in both appellate decisions and legislative matters. On Monday, the House State Government Committee took up Rep. Kerry Benninghoff’s (R-Centre) Right to Know bill, HB 61, naming state-related institutions such as Penn State as “agencies” under the Right to Know Law. Sen. Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) also filed his long-awaited Right to Know amendment package on Tuesday, and the bill’s actual text became publicly available on Friday. Read More…

Four Right to Know Law decisions were issued in state courts this week, dealing with access to the governor's calendar; the right to privacy in home addresses; email addresses and cell phone numbers; and access to legal invoices. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The names of people whose lawyers are funded by the state Senate can be made public without violating attorney-client confidentiality, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, although under some circumstances their identities should remain secret. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Government-issued employee telephone and cellphone numbers are not public information under Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law, but officials' home addresses and middle names are, a seven-judge panel ruled Wednesday. Read More…

HARRISBURG – The House State Government Committee approved a bill Monday afternoon to end the right-to-know exceptions for Pennsylvania’s four so-called “state-related” universities – Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincoln. The bill moves to the full House for a vote that could come as soon as Wednesday. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania appeals court Tuesday sided with The Associated Press in a battle over public access to Gov. Tom Corbett's calendar entries and emails, saying his legal team failed to justify the redaction of certain information. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania appeals court Tuesday sided with The Associated Press in a battle over public access to Gov. Tom Corbett's calendar entries and emails, saying his legal team failed to justify the redaction of certain information. Read More…

Cumberland County Court has overturned the Office of Open Records and ruled that the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors is neither a “Commonwealth agency” nor a “local agency” and therefore not subject to the Right to Know Law. Read More…

Legislation that broadens the state’s Right to Know Law requirements on Penn State, Pitt, Temple and Lincoln universities won the House State Government Committee’s approval. Read More…

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A proposal to fully include Penn State and the other three "state-related" universities under the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law passed an early test in a committee vote Monday, although Democrats were split on the issue. Read More…

Five years after the Pennsylvania law's overhaul, getting government records at the municipal, county and state levels is still often difficult. Read More…

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. (AP) - A 13-year-old girl has won an open records battle with Chambersburg Area School District, where officials questioned whether she was old enough to file a Right-to-Know Law request. Read More…

Cumberland County's Officer of Open Records, Joanne Burkhart, says Right to Know requests have "grown exponentially" in the last two years since businesses began using the process as a research tool. Read More…

A teen won her Pennsylvania Office of Open Records appeal with Chambersburg Area School District on Monday. Read More…

In February, York County administrator Chuck Noll responded to a Delaware resident's open records request for a log of all 911 calls for five addresses over specific time periods.
Noll denied the initial request, saying that information associated with specific addresses was not public. He also wrote a list of five items in call responses that are public. That list didn't include information about geographic locations. Read More…

Range Resources has appealed the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records denial of the gas drilling company’s request for Cecil Township to turn over records. Range believes the records would prove supervisors violated the state Sunshine Act by holding unadvertised meetings and making decisions behind closed doors. Read More…

Issues surrounding electronic records and procedure continue to occupy the courts four years into the Right to Know Law (RTKL). Read More…

HARRISBURG - A major bill to overhaul the state open records law is nearing introduction as the number of appeals of record access decisions made by state and local governments is skyrocketing. Read More…

The First Amendment protects our free speech from government control, punishment or interference — but when public officials speak freely through private e-mail accounts or mobile phones, are they free to ignore freedom of information laws? Read More…

A conflict lawyer will handle the Right-To-Know appeal filed against the Bristol Borough School District by borough Councilman Tony Devine. Read More…

Before revisions of its Open Records law, Pennsylvania was 48th among the nation's 50 states in transparency. A few years into the new law, the state is now "about 25th," according to Charles Brown, a senior attorney for the Office of Open Records who spoke to the Lycoming/Sullivan Counties Boroughs Association last week.
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Three recent public disclosure cases demonstrate the value of the state's Open Records Law, and of doggedness in the pursuit of public information. Read More…

Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney exclaimed in the early days of the last presidential campaign. No, they’re not, Washington County Common Pleas President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca said, more or less, in her ruling last week that a legal agreement could not remain sealed between three energy companies and a Mt. Pleasant Township family that claimed nearby gas drilling activities had compromised their health and the value of their property. Read More…

House Bill 1041 was introduced by Representative Joe Hackett (R-Delaware) on March 20, 2013. The bill would prohibit the release of 911 “identifying information,” unless a court determines that disclosure is in the public interest. The term is defined to include name, telephone number, address and location. Read More…

Members of the Lycoming/Sullivan Counties Borough Association were briefed on Pennsylvania's right-to-know law at their meeting Wednesday evening. Charles Brown, senior attorney with the Office of Open Records, told the group how the law, signed in 2008, has "fundamentally changed the way citizens access public records." Read More…

A reinstated Scranton police detective was paid $175,000 to settle a federal lawsuit that charged the city with violating his right to keep his employment records private and ruining his upstanding reputation. Read More…

WILKES-BARRE — The Citizens' Voice won an open records battle with Luzerne County on Tuesday when a judge ruled the county must provide the newspaper with digital copies of emails, instead of making it spend thousands of dollars to obtain paper copies.
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There was a time when most government records in Pennsylvania were cloaked in secrecy and presumed off-limits to the public. The state had one of the worst open-records laws in the country. The landscape has improved dramatically since the current Right-to-Know Law took effect in 2009. Today, the public has much more access to information. All documents and data produced in the course of public business are now presumed to be open for public inspection if they are not covered by one of 30 specific exemptions in the law. But there is still work to be done. Read More…

HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records (“OOR”) has faced an 89 percent increase in the number of appeals filed with it since 2009 under the Right-to-Know Law, Executive Director Terry Mutchler said Thursday when releasing Pennsylvania’s 2012 statistics. Read More…

The amount paid toward health insurance coverage for elected officials and municipal employees is public information and should not be withheld because of the "HIPAA" law. That is the opinion of Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, and Kim McNally de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition (PaFOIC), who were consulted about the city of Shamokin's stance in rejecting Right-to-Know requests for those records. Read More…

SHAMOKIN — A $1,220 bill was sent from City Hall to Northumberland County commissioners seeking payment of legal costs stemming from Vinny Clausi's request for health care insurance information for Shamokin's elected officials. The requests under the state's Right-to-Know Law were made via e-mail, mail and fax by Clausi through the commissioners office. With that, City Clerk Steve Bartos said the bill belongs to the county instead of Clausi alone. Read More…

It’s Sunshine Week in Pennsylvania – a time to look at government’s track record on transparency and the information it shares with the taxpayers who make the engines of government run. Though the state has come a long way during the last few years, starting with a reboot of the Open Records law in 2008 and a new "PennWatch" website that makes it easier to track down contract and salary information for public employees, the sun still has a hard time shining on Pennsylvania government. Read More…

This week, March 10-16, is Sunshine Week. This is not about solar power or alternative energy or even a celebration of the fact that we saw sustained temperatures in the 50s this past weekend in the Lebanon Valley. No, in this case, Sunshine Week refers to government openness and specifically, the public's right not only to the expectation of such openness but to the reality of it as well.
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Four years ago, Pennsylvania's new "Right to Know Law" went into effect and gave citizens more access to government records of all kinds. Much of the state and local government, however, still operates in the shadows, and many documents that are routinely part of the public record in other states are still off limits here " — or officials act as though they are. Read More…

An advocate for the state sunshine laws considers it "problematic" that West York shredded proposals it received from two area police departments. Read More…

They don't need no stinkin' transparency. The heads of Pennsylvania's four largest taxpayer-funded universities told members of the state Senate they see no reason for their institutions to fall completely under Pennsylvania's open records laws. Read More…

After deactivating the nearly 60 cellphones it provided to employees, Wilkes-Barre will pay stipends to department heads and other personnel for their personal phones. When the city owned the phones, the records and bills were available to the public under the state's Right-to-Know law. Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel at the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said she believed that should still be the case. Read More…

A trial court in Philadelphia has concluded that metadata is subject to public disclosure under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law (RTKL). In that court’s opinion, an agency must honor a request to provide an electronic document in the format in which the document was originally created. Read More…

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Gov. Tom Corbett is fighting the state's Open Records office over access to emails and calendar entries sought by The Associated Press. Read More…

WILKES-BARRE — Luzerne County has appealed an order from the state Office of Open Records to release emails from former interim County Manager Tom Pribula. Read More…

The Commonwealth Court held in a recent decision that the five-business day response period under Section 901 does not begin to run until the open-records officer receives the request. Receipt of the request by any other officer or employee of the agency does not begin the response period. Read More…

COATESVILLE — The city this week said it will need at least 30 days to respond to a Right to Know request for legal documents concerning the recent severance agreement with former police department Sgt. Chris McEvoy. Read More…

Simon Campbell is happy, but worried. Commonwealth Court has said the Bucks County man can have the salary and benefits information he sought for the professors and employees of the 14 universities in the state higher education system with a Right to Know request. Those universities include California, Kutztown, Indiana, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
However, Judge Bonnie Leadbetter is giving the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties 30 days to decide if it will appeal her decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Read More…

One of the state's top legal authorities on the Right to Know Law in Pennsylvania outlines what he sees as the top 10 most significant Right to Know court decisions of 2012 … and five important cases on the docket for 2013. Read More…