Pileggi's proposed RTK law amendments drop pay-just-to-look idea
February 04, 2011 | Filed in: Right to Know
Law | Open
records
By TOM JOYCE
[York] Daily Record/Sunday News
York, PA - Sen. Dominic Pileggi, as he promised last year, has reintroduced a bill adding amendments to Pennsylvania's two-year-old Right to Know Law.
But he's removed one element that proved controversial in a similar bill that he introduced last session but which never came up for a vote — an amendment that would have charged people up to half of what it would have cost to make copies of the records in question just to look at them.
"That provision, which was intended to address some cases that had municipalities concerned, drew a lot of attention and a lot of criticism," said Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson.
Arneson said Pileggi introduced that amendment in the first place to get dialogue started on an element of the Right to Know law that had become a problem for some municipalities, especially smaller ones with limited staff. Sometimes people request access to volumes and volumes of records that take a lot of man-hours to compile. And if they don't get copies made, the municipality doesn't recoup any of the costs of those man-hours.
Open records advocates argued that charging members of the public to look at records would be inherently wrong, since those records actually belong to the public.
Arneson said that's still an outstanding issue, which Pileggi hopes to address at a public hearing on his proposed legislation that should take place in the near future.
Another issue that Pileggi hopes to address stems from private companies requesting vast amounts of tax information from local agencies. Those companies protested when public agencies talked about charging them a higher fee than individuals have to pay.
Arneson said some of the measures Pileggi proposed in his latest legislation came directly from the Office of Open Records. And all of them are an attempt to deal with logistical concerns that have come up since the Right to Know law first passed in 2008.
Arneson said it's an attempt to balance the public's right to those records with some practical difficulties that public agencies are facing.
"There were some gray areas that were emerging," Arneson said.
Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, said she still needs to review the bill. She's pleased that Pileggi has withdrawn the proposal to charge people for looking at records.
But she said she's still concerned about a provision that would make certain tax forms, such as the W2, exempt from disclosure as personal financial information.
"As a public employee you work for the public, so the public is entitled to know the money you make," de Bourbon said. "I think that's something a lot of public employees don't understand."
Deborah Musselman, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Newspapers Association, said she's also in the process of reviewing Pileggi's proposal.
The PNA had objected to elements of Pileggi's last bill, particularly the fee for viewing records, and still has a problem with restricting access to W2 forms.
Still, Musselman acknowledges that some tweaking of a law as far-reaching as the original Right to Know Act is probably inevitable.
"I don't think anything's ever set in stone," Musselman said. "We pass a law and we can change a law."
Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state Office of Open Records, confirmed that he office had requested some of the changes outlined in Pileggi's amendments, including extended deadlines for complying with open records requests.
Her office, which is charged with enforcing the state's open records law, has a staff of eight people. In the last year alone, Mutchler said, her office has dealt with more than 1,700 appeals of Right to Know requests, as well as 10,000 telephone and e-mail inquiries about provisions of the law.
And local agencies, she said, are bearing an even greater burden in complying with the law than the state is.
But she still maintains that the law, which Pileggi sponsored in the first place, is necessary. And just as the law assumes that records are open unless public agencies can prove they meet one of 30 exemptions, she assumes the state should err on the side of making records public.
She compares it to going into a bank, requesting $100 from your account, and being asked what you want it for. If it's your money, that's your business. Similarly, public records are owned by the public.
"It's a Right to Know law, not a Need to Know law," Mutchler said.
Proposed RTK law amendments
Provisions of Sen. Dominic Pileggi's bill include:
[York] Daily Record/Sunday News
York, PA - Sen. Dominic Pileggi, as he promised last year, has reintroduced a bill adding amendments to Pennsylvania's two-year-old Right to Know Law.
But he's removed one element that proved controversial in a similar bill that he introduced last session but which never came up for a vote — an amendment that would have charged people up to half of what it would have cost to make copies of the records in question just to look at them.
"That provision, which was intended to address some cases that had municipalities concerned, drew a lot of attention and a lot of criticism," said Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson.
Arneson said Pileggi introduced that amendment in the first place to get dialogue started on an element of the Right to Know law that had become a problem for some municipalities, especially smaller ones with limited staff. Sometimes people request access to volumes and volumes of records that take a lot of man-hours to compile. And if they don't get copies made, the municipality doesn't recoup any of the costs of those man-hours.
Open records advocates argued that charging members of the public to look at records would be inherently wrong, since those records actually belong to the public.
Arneson said that's still an outstanding issue, which Pileggi hopes to address at a public hearing on his proposed legislation that should take place in the near future.
Another issue that Pileggi hopes to address stems from private companies requesting vast amounts of tax information from local agencies. Those companies protested when public agencies talked about charging them a higher fee than individuals have to pay.
Arneson said some of the measures Pileggi proposed in his latest legislation came directly from the Office of Open Records. And all of them are an attempt to deal with logistical concerns that have come up since the Right to Know law first passed in 2008.
Arneson said it's an attempt to balance the public's right to those records with some practical difficulties that public agencies are facing.
"There were some gray areas that were emerging," Arneson said.
Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, said she still needs to review the bill. She's pleased that Pileggi has withdrawn the proposal to charge people for looking at records.
But she said she's still concerned about a provision that would make certain tax forms, such as the W2, exempt from disclosure as personal financial information.
"As a public employee you work for the public, so the public is entitled to know the money you make," de Bourbon said. "I think that's something a lot of public employees don't understand."
Deborah Musselman, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Newspapers Association, said she's also in the process of reviewing Pileggi's proposal.
The PNA had objected to elements of Pileggi's last bill, particularly the fee for viewing records, and still has a problem with restricting access to W2 forms.
Still, Musselman acknowledges that some tweaking of a law as far-reaching as the original Right to Know Act is probably inevitable.
"I don't think anything's ever set in stone," Musselman said. "We pass a law and we can change a law."
Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state Office of Open Records, confirmed that he office had requested some of the changes outlined in Pileggi's amendments, including extended deadlines for complying with open records requests.
Her office, which is charged with enforcing the state's open records law, has a staff of eight people. In the last year alone, Mutchler said, her office has dealt with more than 1,700 appeals of Right to Know requests, as well as 10,000 telephone and e-mail inquiries about provisions of the law.
And local agencies, she said, are bearing an even greater burden in complying with the law than the state is.
But she still maintains that the law, which Pileggi sponsored in the first place, is necessary. And just as the law assumes that records are open unless public agencies can prove they meet one of 30 exemptions, she assumes the state should err on the side of making records public.
She compares it to going into a bank, requesting $100 from your account, and being asked what you want it for. If it's your money, that's your business. Similarly, public records are owned by the public.
"It's a Right to Know law, not a Need to Know law," Mutchler said.
Proposed RTK law amendments
Provisions of Sen. Dominic Pileggi's bill include:
- Allowing requests to be made to a head of an agency, in addition to an agency's Right to Know officer.
- Adding an exception for an agency's bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, credits card numbers or passwords. Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson said the state already assumes those aren't open records, but Pileggi wants to make it official.
- Extending the time frame for an appeals process from 30 days to 45 days, thus giving the Office of Open Records more flexibility to deal with them.
- Clarifying that if a public record exists in a specific computer file format, the agency must provide the record in that format upon request.