Results matching “911 time response logs” from Record Tracker

The state Office of Open Records had its 1,000th appeal filed recently.

This was the first year for the new office. It serves those who are fighting state and local agencies for the right to access public documents. The 1,000th appeal was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Most of the appeals filed have been from individuals -- not newspapers or special interest groups, according to the office of open records. About 87 percent were from the general public. That's great news because it shows residents do care about access to public documents. There were some who have suggested that this new office would only serve the media.

Click on the jump to learn more ...

Can you assess first-responder performance without knowing where units came from or where they went? You'll be able to if a county judge rules in the Daily Record/Sunday News' favor on an open-records appeal; you won't be able to if he rules in York County's favor.

York County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Renn will issue a written decision on the matter. He heard arguments from the YDR's lawyer and the county's lawyer on Wednesday.

The state's open records office ruled that 911 time-response logs must include addresses or geographical identifiers; the county appealed to Common Pleas Court.

 The county's key arguments:

•  The right-to-know law doesn't define time-response log, so the definition should come from the state chapter of the National Emergency Number Association, which defines a time-response log as, basically, when a call came in, when a unit went out, when it arrived and when it cleared the scene.
• The release of addresses or geographical identifiers would amount to an invasion of privacy of people who call 911 for emergencies.

Key arguments from Wednesday's hearing, according to York attorney Niles Benn, who represented the newspaper:

• The county did not cite supporting legal authority in its denial of reporter Ted Czech's request, as required by the right-to-know law;
• A follow-up letter from the county cited the exception to the law in which 911 time-response logs are mentioned. But the exception specifically allows public access to time-response logs.
  
• The county did not argue, in its denial letters or to the Office of Open Records, that addresses are protected by federal or state constitutional right to privacy;
• The right-to-know act addresses safety concerns regarding the release of addresses, but did not attach any qualification when it made time-response logs public.
• The new right-to-know law intended to expand public access, not restrict it; excluding addresses from time-response logs would withhold from the public information it could get under the old RTK law.
• If the county is not required to release addresses, it should be required to release cross-streets.

We'll let you know when Judge Renn rules. Meantime, anyone want to weigh in on either side of this case?

Quick update: A York County judge heard arguments today about whether the county must include addresses, or some kind of geographic locator, with its time-response logs. The judge has not produced a decision yet.

Background for this issue is here. It's an important case because time-response logs were specifically made public in the state's new right-to-know law, but York County is challenging the state Office of Open Records' decision about what a time-response log is.

I will post more about the arguments later.

Quick update: The York Daily Record/Sunday News' effort to get 911 time-response logs from York County is headed to court Oct. 21.

Background: The state's new right-to-know law made time-response logs public, so that people could assess the performance of their first-responders. But the law didn't define what a time-response log is.

When the YDR/SN asked for logs from the county, we got a list of times. When we asked for geographical identifiers such as block addresses, the county said no. We appealed to the state's open records office, which agreed with us and told the county to add addresses or some kind of geographic locators to the logs. The county appealed to Common Pleas court.

Later this month, oral arguments will be heard. More here.

Should public employees' addresses be public? The Commonwealth Court is due to decide that in a case involving public school employees' home addresses. It issued a preliminary injunction stopping the release of addresses, saying that people's right to privacy is protected by the state constitution.

The state's open records office has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the injunction, according to this editorial in The Legal Intelligencer. It patiently explains why the Commonwealth Court would be wrong to extend constitutional protection of privacy to public employees' addresses, and should instead apply the Right-to-Know law's personal security exemption, which says information can be withheld if it "would be reasonably likely to result in a substantial and demonstrable risk of physical harm to or the personal security of an individual."

The editorial says, among other points, that if addresses are constitutionally protected, "school districts would face constitutional claims for distributing school directories to their students. A person might be able to state a prima facie tort case for publication of private facts if his neighbor tells someone where he lives. Deeds might not be publicly recorded, and property tax assessment records might no longer be publicly available."

 You might recall that York County is citing privacy concerns in denying the York Daily Record/Sunday News' request for 911 response logs, saying that release of such information could endanger crime victims. The county will release only a set of times, which it admits makes it impossible to evaluate first-responder performance.

 That position is counter to what the legislature intended in the new RTK law, which made the 911 logs public and assumed (but did not specify in the law itself) that either addresses or some type of geographical identifier would be part of the logs.

The privacy issue, according to the newspaper's managing editor, Randy Parker, would not play out as envisioned by the county. "Nothing in our analysis would expose a victim of a sexual crime," he said. But an evaluation of response times, he said, "may be able to help identify response times to domestic violence. I think a lot of people would like to know if police respond to domestic violence calls as quickly as they respond to accidents or other crimes."

The open records office agreed with the newspaper, but the county wants the Common Pleas court to decide. Stay tuned.

The York Daily Record/Sunday News and York County are headed to court over the newspaper's request for what the state deems a public record: 911 time-response logs. Rick Lee has a story in today's paper.

The state's new right-to-know law made time-response logs public, but it did not define what a time-response log is. That's what the court hearing is about: The state's open records office agreed with the Daily Record/Sunday News that addresses or geographical identifiers had to be part of time-response logs; the county, in its appeal to Common Pleas Court, acknowledges that information would allow people to assess emergency time response, but says releasing addresses would violate the privacy of people who call 911.

You can read Rick's story for more details and to see how the county and newspaper defend their positions. But the case itself raises several points about the new open records law:

• The law is set up so that whoever loses an appeal to the state OOR can take a requester to court. An institution such as a newspaper can pay a lawyer to represent it. But what about a resident in a township who is denied a record? 
• The law did not define certain types of records, such as 911 time-response logs, even as it explicitly made those logs available to the public. That opened the door for agencies like York County to provide their own definitions -- and in York County's case, its definition does not match what the lawmaker who wrote the bill wanted. (Lancaster County, for example, does provide cross-streets with its 911 time-response logs).
  
• The new right-to-know law flipped the definition of a public record from a document that only met certain criteria to all documents unless they meet certain criteria to be kept private. But it apparently did not usher in a new era of openness in state or local government. Through July 7, the open records office had received 584 appeals of denied records. That's 81 a month since the law went into effect, or more than two a day. And that's only the denials that have been appealed.
  

Should these issues be addressed, and if so, how?

You might recall that we were waiting to hear from the county for its next move on 911 time response logs (see previous blog entry).

Well, county solicitor Michael Flannelly said today the county will be appealing the open records' office decision on our appeal.

A few weeks ago we wrote that we had asked York County for 911 time-response logs, and that the county had decided that logs were simply a list of times, without addresses or geographical locations of where units were headed -- thus making the information useless.

We appealed to the state's new Office of Open Records. Reporter Ted Czech, in his appeal, made the point that the legislature's intent in making time-response logs public was to allow people to assess first-responders' performance. Without addresses or at least a cross-street, Czech wrote, it's impossible to do that.

The open records office agreed (read the decision here under "Reading Room"), and made a couple of key points: One, that if a record is not specifically defined in the new open records law, the open records office has the authority to define it; and two, that the "legislative intent to expressly include time response logs as public information is to allow the public the ability to assess the efficiency of the emergency responders. ... The county has offered no support in the Act that permits them to withhold an address within a time response log, which they admit that they possess."

Daily Record/Sunday News staffer Ted Czech reports in today's paper that although the state's new open records law (read it here) makes it possible for residents to get 911 time-response logs -- and thus assess the performance of their emergency responders -- York County's definition of a time-response log makes it impossible to do that.

 The county decided it would not include addresses, or even geographical locations, in its time-response logs. (We've appealed the county's decision to the state's open records office.)

 Czech's discovery of that fact, and the response to it, has prompted some fascinating reaction from county officials, others quoted in the story and people who have read his story:

 1. A reader commented that perhaps the county won't release the addresses over concern for patient privacy, cites the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act, and suggests we invest in a scanner if we want to know the addresses.
   
    First, we have scanners (as do many others in York County). But you can't compile a database from listening to scanner calls that would allow you to assess response times over a particular geographic area, or during a particular time frame, etc. The county does, as part of its function, and residents have a right to that information.