City is fighting newspaper's request for schedules of mayor and top officials

By Tim Darragh | OF THE [Allentown] MORNING CALL
Allentown is suing The Morning Call, reporter Jarrett Renshaw and the state Office of Open Records, claiming the agency improperly ruled on Renshaw's request under the year-old Right-to-Know Law for the official e-mails and schedules of Mayor Ed Pawlowski and other administration officials.
City solicitor Jerry A. Snyder filed the complaint Thursday in Lehigh County Court after the agency issued a decision partly in the city's favor. In that Jan. 15 ruling, the agency agreed to review its initial decisions on Renshaw's request, but denied Allentown's demands for a new hearing or the recusal of the hearing officer.
The case goes back to Oct. 30, when Renshaw filed a formal request for electronic copies of work-related e-mails and schedules from Pawlowski, Managing Director Ken Bennington and Department of Community and Economic Development Director Joyce Marin.
City officials said they would have to black out, or redact, nonpublic information from some of the records, which they said could only be done on paper records.
Eventually, the city said the record would run 3,592 pages and require prepayment for making copies -- which, at 25 cents per page, would cost $898.
Renshaw appealed to the open records office, which ruled the city failed to prove it had to redact the records. It also did not order prepayment by Renshaw and said the city would need to provide an affidavit to support its claim that it cannot redact the records electronically.
Allentown then asked the office to reconsider the decision in a new hearing, saying confidential information could be revealed if it had to show why e-mails need to be redacted.
In addition, the city asked the office to bar the original hearing officer, Lucinda Glinn, from this and future cases involving The Morning Call.
The city said Glinn formerly worked for the law firm of Nauman Smith in Harrisburg, which has an ''extensive'' Right-to-Know Law and media law practice.
The office agreed to reconsider its decision, called a ''final determination,'' but denied the new hearing and Glinn's recusal, leading to the city's lawsuit.
Assistant city solicitor Fran Fruhwirth said this marks the first time the city has sued to overturn an open records office final determination.
Terry Mutchler, executive director of the open records office, said around 20 percent of the agency's 1,159 final determinations have been appealed to court.
Rulings from county courts, she said, are only binding in that county. Eventually, as cases go to higher courts, government officials and citizens will have a better idea of the reach of the rewritten Right-to-Know Law.
''Now really what everybody is waiting for is substantive direction from the court and the Commonwealth Court specifically,'' Mutchler said.
It will take years of court rulings before Pennsylvania has a substantial body of case law on the reformed Right-to-Know Law, Mutchler said. The reformed law, which took effect in January 2009, presumes that government records are public information, the main difference from its predecessor.