Like poking around in lists and databases? Here’s a page for you

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

In the black bar atop this blog are tabs for specialty pages. We just added one called “Search for data.”

Click it and you’ll see a lineup of searchable databases we’ve published, as well as links to other public-records information such as deeds and restaurant inspections.

We’ll continue to publish searchable databases, usually accompanying stories, and we’ll keep collecting them all here as a resource.

Do you know of any data you’d like to see us get and publish? Let us know and we’ll work on it.

Posted in Online records, Pennsylvania public record, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

State salary study doesn’t single out Pa. — except for prompt response to records requests

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

Sunshine Review‘s study of state government salaries looked at the most populous areas in several population-heavy states, including Pennsylvania.

One interesting thing it found: Pennsylvania was the state with the “quickest response rate” to right-to-know requests. Eighteen local governments fulfilled every request, the group said. That’s good to hear, given state and local agencies’ frequent reluctance to part with information.

Sunshine Review’s report doesn’t spotlight Pennsylvania for any other reason. It didn’t have the highest or lowest salaries (or salary range) in the survey. No Pennsylvania state employees were among the 10 highest paid local government officials between 2008-2011.

In Pennsylvania, 50 employees earned more than $150,000 — sixth lowest among the eight states in the survey (California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Wisconsin were the others).

More on the survey:

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Super PACs a big story, but York County money isn’t flowing to them so far

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

Super PACs are one of the stories of this year’s political campaign season, with court rulings that allow corporations to contribute as individuals would and allow the groups to spend as much money as they want.

I was curious about whether any York countians, or York County businesses, had contributed to super PACs so far. So I checked contributions to 28 of them — all the ones on this opensecrets.org who’s who list, as well as all of the groups that had raised more than $1 million according to opensecrets.org.

One York County person showed up as a contributor: physician Nicholas Pandelidis of Spring Garden Township. In August, he gave $2,500 to the Club for Growth Action, which says its mission is to “beat big-government politicians.” Pandelidis is a frequent voice on the YDR’s opinion page and letters to the editor.

Opensecrets.org’s website reported Club for Growth had raised $5.6 million, fourth most among super PACs. It had spent more than $4 million “against” Democrats — $2.6 million against Joe Sestak, who lost a bid for the U.S. Senate to Republican Pat Toomey.

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A note about our teacher salary database

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

Sometimes, stories that have been on our site for a while show up in the “most popular” listing, which shows stories with the highest number of clicks in the preceding 12 hours.

Our teacher salary database, published as part of an in-depth look at teacher salaries in October 2010, was atop “most popular” for a while last week. Don’t know why. But it prompted a couple of people to e-mail us that there was incorrect (outdated) information in the database.

That’s true. The introductory text notes that the salaries are for the 2009-2010 school year. That’s the most recent available right now from Pennsylvania’s education department. They said the updated database will be available in the spring. We’ll update it at that time.

But it’s important to note that the information will always be a year behind (unless we can get PDE to release it in a more timely fashion).

The people who wrote to us (and others) would argue that we shouldn’t publish outdated information. (In fact, many would argue that we shouldn’t publish it at all.)

No doubt there’s a point past which information becomes too outdated to be useful, except in comparison with more recent years. But in the case of teacher salaries, we believe it’s good to have public access to that information, even if it is a year behind.

People who look at the data have to understand its limitations. That’s why we wrote several paragraphs of introductory text as a guide to how to view the numbers. If there’s anything we missed or anything you’d like to know — or, of course, if you disagree with us on this — let us know.

Also, check out this post on education reporter Angie Mason’s blog about a poll that says it showed most Americans think teachers are underpaid.

Posted in Pennsylvania Right to Know, Transparency | Leave a comment

Open records setback: Court rules birth dates can be withheld

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

You might have seen that the state Commonwealth Court last week ruled that the state government can withhold dates of birth from public records requests.

The court believed expert witnesses who said releasing state workers’ birth dates, along with their names, put them at significant risk for identity theft.

I’m not qualified to judge those experts’ testimony or conjecture. (Although, as some noted in this case, many people voluntarily list their birthdates on sites like Facebook.) But the court’s decision is a blow to government accountability, transparency and potentially personal safety.

For one example, many news organizations over the years have published investigative stories about school districts hiring teachers with criminal records. One of the key ways to verify that there are teachers in classrooms who have criminal records is to match birth dates with the employee list (obtained from the district or state) and court records.

What do you think? Is keeping birth dates private worth the tradeoff?

Posted in Commonwealth Court, Pennsylvania Right to Know | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Petition seeks to get federal government to get its records online

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Scott Blanchard

This online petition appears on a part of the official White House website called “We the People/Your Voice in our Government.”

It asks that the federal government get all its records online.

If a petition gets a certain number of signatures (in this case 25,000), the White House says, it will “respond” to the petition. No real idea what that means … but if you think it’s a good idea that the federal government scan its information and get it online, you might want to sign on.

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Open records office chief states her case for funding, staffing

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Scott Blanchard

I blogged about Terry Mutchler’s visit to the YDR’s newsroom to meet with its editorial board, and our editorial page followed that visit with an opinion that the state should fully fund the open records office.

Here’s video of Mutchler, the open records office’s director, stating her case about why the office needs more money/staffing, and how the Penn State/Sandusky scandal could affect the office’s future:

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Re Pennsylvania Superior Court: Tell me if this sounds like good customer service

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Scott Blanchard

Sometime after 3 p.m. today our court reporter, Rick Lee, tweeted that the state Superior Court had denied Zachary Witman a new trial. Rick had to duck back into a trial he was covering, so in the office, we started reporting the story.

Among other things, we called Superior Court to ask them to fax us a copy of the decision. The court only puts selected decisions on their website, and this one wasn’t up.

That’s bad enough — a barrier to access for anyone in the state who wants to read a Superior Court decision. But then came the real problem: Their fax machine wouldn’t connect to ours. They tried two different numbers several times (give them credit for that).

And then they said: We’re not trying any more. We’re doing this as a courtesy, anyway, and you should come and pick it up.

We said: Can you scan it as a PDF and e-mail it to us? No, they said, we’re not going to do that. Why don’t you send someone to Harrisburg to get the paperwork? Why don’t we? Because it’s 4:30, and we couldn’t get to Harrisburg in time.

So, they said, call someone in Harrisburg and have them get it for you. Sure, let us consult our rolodex of Harrisburg residents who are waiting for us to call so they can run to the courthouse and pick up paperwork for us.

So, instead of taking, what, five minutes to scan a document, attach it to an e-mail, type “news@ydr.com” and hit send, the Superior Court upheld whatever principle it was trying to uphold by sticking to its policy that essentially keeps public documents away from the public.

That’s going the extra mile to serve the people of Pennsylvania, isn’t it?

And as a P.S. (and unsolicited advice): If the Superior Court wanted to serve the public better, it would do one of two things: 1. Put its decisions online; or, less efficient but better than what the court does now, 2. have media and other interested parties sign up to be included on a mass e-mail for Superior Court decisions.

Posted in Court records, Judicial records | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mutchler on money, mandates and the future of Pa.’s open records office

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Scott Blanchard

Terry Mutchler, head of the state’s open records office, stopped by the YDR’s newsroom this afternoon to talk to the editorial board. Her main message: The office is at a crossroads.

It’s facing a budget cut, she says, and it can’t keep doing the work its doing with the number of staffers it has. What she wants legislators to hear is that it’s time to either fully fund the office — which amounts to giving it an additional $300,000 than what is currently proposed — or decide what functions the office should drop.

Key points in her argument for the 10-person office to be funded at $1.4 million:

  • It does customer service, training (mandated by the law), rules on appeals, and goes to court for hearings.
  • Five lawyers have handled almost 4,000 appeals. If Penn State and three other state-related universities come under the RTK law, which many anticipate, that could add hundreds more cases.
  • The office has had more than 200 cases in Common Pleas, Commonwealth and state Supreme courts.
  • 95 percent of appeals are from citizens, and in three years, the office has received about 40,000 calls from citizens asking questions about the law.
  • Connecticut’s right to know office has 22 staffers, a $2 million budget and 800 appeals this year. Pennsylvania’s RTK office has handled close to 2,000 appeals this year.

Mutchler thinks the office’s top function, even if its budget is cut, has to be ruling on appeals. If you’re going to say Pennsylvania is going to be transparent and shed its culture of secrecy, she said, “you have to have an independent agency to test that.”

The state, she said, could end up with a better open records law than it had before 2009 but with an office that can’t back it up. “If you don’t put gas in the car, you’re not going anywhere.”

She talked a lot about other RTK issues, and I’ll post more from her talk tomorrow.

Posted in Pennsylvania Right to Know | Leave a comment

Questions about Pennsylvania’s open records law? See this:

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Scott Blanchard
Terry Mutchler, head of Pa. open records office, is meeting w/our edit. board 1:30 today. Question for her? Tweet me. #opengov #transparency
December 6, 2011 11:03 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
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