The Morning Call

In court filings this week, PPL Electric Utilities Corp. argued the public does not have the right to know about an anonymous tip that came during an October 2011 snowstorm in which some Lehigh Valley residents were left waiting for power to be restored while a PPL crew was diverted to an outage that was not next in line.

PPL and the state Public Utility Commission have appealed to Commonwealth Court a decision last fall by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which said the two newspapers requesting the information —The Morning Call and The Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre — had a right to it. In response, a media coalition, including the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, formed in February to challenge the appeal.

The coalition argued in a filing last month that the PUC should release the anonymous-tip letter and other documents it relied upon last year to reach a settlement with PPL over irregularities in power restoration during the storm.

"The public access interest here is substantial and compelling," wrote coalition attorneys Craig J. Staudenmaier and Joshua D. Bonn.

The coalition argued that the PUC Code requires disclosure of documents relied upon by the PUC to reach settlements with public utilities and that those requirements trump any exceptions under the state's Right-To-Know Law.

In its response filed Wednesday, PPL said the newspapers' requests were not made under the PUC Code, but under the Right-to-Know Law, which exempts the release of pre-decisional deliberations. Even if the request had been made under the PUC Code, the response asserts, it should have been denied, because the code specifies that the PUC need only release documents it "relied upon in reaching its determination."

The response continues, "In short, the respondents/news entities' theory would require countless numbers of PUC documents to be publicly disclosed and made part of the record. Clearly, the General Assembly did not intend such an absurd result."

The PUC has argued that releasing the requested documents would make it difficult for it to reach settlements in the future with other utilities.

The PUC did investigate the anonymous PPL tip and found that a PPL crew had been improperly diverted in the 2011 storm. PPL agreed to pay a $60,000 fine to settle the matter and promised to retrain personnel and implement safeguards that would prevent similar incidents in the future.

The settlement did not say where the crew was diverted, why it was diverted, or who ordered fixing an outage that was not next on the priority list. But it did say that about 1,300 PPL customers were left without power four hours longer than necessary as a result.

PPL has said it regrets the mistake and that a misunderstanding led a lower-level supervisor to make the wrong assignment for a repair crew. The company says it has taken steps to prevent similar problems from happening.