July 2009 Archives

Thanks to Kim de Bourbon of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition for clarifying my confusion about the nature of this ruling and offering important commentary on it. Click on 'comments' on the post below.

And, Marc Levy of The Associated Press has this report:

 A state appellate court judge has ordered a temporary halt to releasing school district employees' home addresses listed on records requests made under Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law.

The order issued Tuesday by Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Rochelle Friedman was made in response to a petition brought late last week by the state's largest teachers' union.

Friedman was expected to schedule a hearing on the Pennsylvania State Education Association's request to permanently end the release of school employees' home addresses.

When Daily Record/Sunday News correspondent Teresa McMinn asked various townships and boroughs about how they kept meeting minutes for a story that appeared in last Sunday's paper, probably the most, shall we say, creative response came from Hanover borough manager Bruce Rebert.

Among McMinn's e-mailed questions was, "Do you audio or video record your public meetings." On a print-out of the e-mail, Rebert wrote:

"No. Why -- no one has ever requested or suggested same in my 35 yrs. Can you think of anything more boring?! We do post our minutes online to torture the unsuspecting (yes, it simplifies info. requests too.)"

Funny. He's probably right -- watching a video of a municipality's meeting can't be invigorating. But, on a serious note, the point of doing it would be to have it on record in case someone needs it, or to fact-check something that happened at the meeting, or to help a municipal staffer produce the official meeting minutes.

A Commonwealth Court judge ruled Tuesday that addresses of public school employees are not public record and can not be released "until further order of this court." The state open records office's Web site describes the ruling as a "temporary court order" and has a link to the court's decision.

I'm having trouble finding the case from which this appeal arose but will see if I can track it down. (UPDATE: See Kim de Bourbon's comment on this post; plus read AP story here.) On the court order, the Pennsylvania State Education Association is the petitioner and the state, the Department of Community and Economic Development and the open records office are the respondents.

Terry Mutchler, head of the open records office, released a statement that said, "The Office of Open Records will certainly honor Judge Friedman's ruling while we consider our legal strategy. Our mission is to apply this law fairly and evenly. While I, too, have expressed concerns about the release of home addresses of all public employees, not just teachers, the Legislature made abundantly clear that the only addresses protected from release are those of a judge, law enforcement officer or a minor. We look forward to further guidance from the Commonwealth Court when it issues its full opinion on the release of home addresses."

If you scroll down the page and look to the right side, you'll come across a new feature on Record Tracker: A blogroll of blogs we read and recommend.

We'll add to the list soon. Meanwhile, if you know of any good open-records and right-to-know blogs out there, send us a link either in the comments to this post or to sblanchard@ydr.com.

It can't be possible that North Codorus Township is the only municipality that's in a bit of a spat with its residents over meeting minutes, but, as we reported in Sunday's paper, the issue there keeps on going. Previously, residents questioned whether they had access to tapes of meetings, then complained that the tapes were destroyed after the official minutes were made.

This time, the issue is how much information you'll find in the minutes should you want to take a look. A resident wanted in-depth information, and the township responded by saying meeting minutes would be kept to a minimum.

Any decision that restricts someone's right to find out what its government is doing is a step backward (although, logically, there has to be some distillation of what goes on at meetings, particularly if a long-winded orator arises and regales the assembled with a marathon of words).

But at least supervisor Dennis Luckenbaugh appears to be on the side of transparency. He said he and new township manager Mark Derr are working toward being more open with information. Those who favor public access should be glad to hear that.

... to the top of this page. You'll see the words "Submit a Tip." If you click the link, you'll see a form you can fill out recommending a story we should cover, or a rumor we should check out, or a story idea you're curious about and want us to pursue.

You're invited to use the form. Please fill it out as completely as possible. If you want to remain anonymous, indicate that. We'll review and consider every idea, and we'll be in touch to let you know whether we can pursue the story idea or chase down the rumor or do the investigating.
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Not like you couldn't see this coming, but the state's new open records office is letting people know what's at stake if its budget is slashed -- as, apparently, is likely given the state's budget deficit.

Every agency can (and I'm sure will) protest budget cuts and even ask for more money. But the open records office makes the point that it's just starting out, just beginning to set the tone for what was expected to be a new era of openness in Pennsylvania government. Going backward, the office says, could be devastating, particularly to its ability to hear appeals in a timely manner.

I e-mailed back and forth with Brad Jacobs, the county's register of wills/clerk of orphans' court.

 He said most of the calls his office gets are simply, Do you have an estate on file, or, Is my marriage license on file in York County. "So for that reason we started with this basic information for the public," he said in an e-mail.

 If you want to see records, you'd then contact his office.

 He said he's not sure whether more information will eventually be made available online.

York County's register of wills and clerk of orphans' court has made some public records available online.

For example, you can search marriage licenses from 1949 to the present, or estate records from 1994 to the present. On both sites, you have to log in, but you can do so as a guest without having to set up a password.

The sites also make it possible to conduct some business online. For example, you can file a marriage license application online.

Right now I'm having trouble figuring out how to see actual information about, say, an estate filing, as opposed to simply a list of names and case numbers. But I'll get with Register of Wills/Clerk of Orphans' Court Brad Jacobs and get some more info and post it here.

This could really become a running series, particularly if Friend of Record Tracker Eric Wise keeps helping us with a sharp eye.

For a long time, Virginia Tech officials could not find the mental health counseling records of mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho. Turns out the records were at the home of the counseling center's former director (and apparently had been long before the shooting).

Note this from the Roanoke Times' story: "(Gov. Tim) Kaine said this morning that Cho's campus counseling records will be added to a public records archive the university has assembled under terms of the legal settlement with victims' families."

I wanted to pass along a couple of sites that look good if you're interested in open records, politics and other state business.

 One is School Board Transparency, run by Fred Baldwin, a self-described "recovering school board president" from the Carlisle district.

He started the blog, he says, to focus on transparency in school board-union negotiations. But he touches on other school-related issues too. There's a lot of good stuff on there, including an honor roll of districts that post good financial info on their web sites. He linked to Record Tracker recently, and I'm glad he did, because now I have his blog in my Google reader. 

And I have to say, I love this quote from his explanation about why he's doing the blog:

" 'Transparency' is not just a tactic, and it's more than compliance with 'open records' laws.   Most of us understand it as an ethical imperative for public officials."

 Amen.

 Another interesting site is BlogNetNews for Pennsylvania, which looks like a compilation of blog posts on political issues from around the state. Seems like a great place to keep up with what people are doing and saying around the Commonwealth when it comes to politics and state business.You can also put BNN in your Google reader or other newsfeed.

And while I'm talking about following blogs in readers, you can follow this blog too -- scroll down and look on the right-hand side for the little orange icon with the words "Subscribe to this blog's feed." If you have a Google reader or other newsfeed set up, just click on the hyperlink and Record Tracker posts will be delivered to you automatically.

Thanks to Eric Wise, a reader who's interested in open records issues, for spotting this one:

A resident and a member of the borough council of Hatboro, just outside Philadelphia, want to see a study that examined the borough replacing its electric supplier.

According to a story the Montgomery News, the borough had denied a right-to-know request -- saying in part that it can't find the document. The two requesters have appealed to the state's open records office, which is trying to get the document from whoever has it. But neither the open records office nor the borough has the power to demand the document be produced. The requesters would have to go to court to try to get it.

That sounds a lot like what happened when a York Township resident tried to see a supervisor's e-mails that related to public business. The open records office ruled they were public. But the e-mails were on the supervisor's work e-mail, and the open records office admitted it couldn't force a private company to produce e-mails from its system -- even if they were about public business being conducted by an elected official.

If you're keeping track of loopholes in the new RTK law that limit public access to public documents, put those two on your scorecard.

I posted something a few days ago linking to a story that reported how tough it is to track federal stimulus money. But propublica.org is at least taking a run at it.

Check out their tools for tracking the stimulus. Their links and information can help you find projects, companies who have contracts for projects and other useful stuff.

Needless to say: If you find something interesting, let us know. We're looking out for stimulus-related stories, too, but the more eyes, the better.

Perhaps you missed this nugget in the deluge of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings ... or perhaps you weren't watching or reading at all ... but anyway, the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press picked out of a transcript that Sotomayor isn't opposed to cameras in the courtroom and would join the discussion among Supreme Court justices about whether to permit cameras there.

More here.

... as I did in an entry below, I just read something interesting about a different open records office decision on school budgets.

 John Micek of the Allentown Morning Call's bureau in Harrisburg, in an interesting story checking in on the state of Pennsylvania's Office of Open Records, quotes the office's director, Terry Mutchler, saying she wished the office could have a do-over on a decision that allowed a school district to white-out dollar figures from a proposed school district budget.

 Yet in the South Eastern case, the office appears to have contradicted itself, ruling that draft budgets are public records.

 I may be missing something (let me know if I am). But we'll look into this and get back to you in this space.

I just read reporter Nickie Dobo's story about a York County resident who asked to see a copy of the working budget for South Eastern School District.

No, the district said, we won't give you that. It's only a draft, and it would be a "disservice to the to the community and to the district" to release it.

A disservice to the community? How exactly? I'm thinking the whole point of a resident wanting to see a working budget is to see how the district is creating its budget, and that it's not all that helpful to only be able to see the finished product.

Anyway, you see that kind of reasoning sometimes when agencies deny records -- what amounts to an agency telling a person that they can't handle the document they're requesting, or wouldn't understand it, or something similar. South Eastern's business manager, for example, said the public shouldn't see the document because "it's not accurate."

I assume that by "accurate" she meant "final." But even if she meant that there were mistakes in the draft budget, again, what harm can come from  this kind of public oversight?  There seems to be an assumption that the requester, upon being told that it is a draft budget subject to change, would not understand and would assume the budget was final.

I'd love to have a discussion here on why it seems that some agencies believe people can't be trusted to look at what their government is doing.

 The state's Office of Open Records granted the requester's appeal in this case. The district is considering whether to appeal. This is one to watch.

Good piece from the Cincinnati Enquirer about how difficult (impossible?) it is to figure out where all the federal stimulus money is ending up.

Highlight: Feds are spending $18 million to re-work their Recovery.gov web site, prompting this from Ohio congressman John Boehner: "'This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. They've spent stimulus money to create this web site, it doesn't work very well, and now they want $18 million more to track how this wasted money is being wasted.'"

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?

Court records involving lawsuits or other civil matters can be some of the most interesting public records you can look at. Someone who's suing someone else, or making some kind of claim, lays out their case -- and when they do, they often lay it out as completely and (they hope) convincingly as they can.

That looks like what the York City school board is doing in its court filing declaring that an elected seat is vacant on its board (scroll to 'Reading Room'). The filing goes into some detail -- including 18 'findings of fact' -- as it shows the public, through the court filing, why it voted to removed Hiawatha Powell from the board.

Powell refutes the school boards claims and he has appealed its decision, so the matter is yet to be decided for good. You can also read his appeal.

Meanwhile, through the school board's document, you get a glimpse behind the scenes from the board's perspective, while understanding that Powell has the right to contest any and all 'findings of fact' that the board uses to support its action.

And, importantly, it all happens in public view -- because both the board and an individual board member have to be accountable to the people who elected them and whose tax dollars pay for what they do. You can look at the board's filing and assess its reasoning for yourself.

The Daily Record/Sunday News' story on the matter is on our Education page.

A free showing of the documentary film “Secrecy” is planned for 7 p.m. July 15 at the Midtown Cinema (215 Reily St. in Harrisburg).

The film was directed by Harvard professors Peter Galison and Robb Moss and looks at whether government secrecy makes the country safer. The showing is sponsored by the South Central PA Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Listen to the directors discuss the film at the 2008 South By Southwest Film Festival at the jump.

USA Today spent eight months examining the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation.

A computer simulation predicts the path of toxic chemicals released by thousands of industrial companies located near schools.

Type in the name of your school and its location to find what the model predicts for your school population. Read more at the jump.

FBI special agents had 20 formal interviews and at least five casual conversations with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ("High Value Detainee #1") after his capture by U.S. troops in 2003.

That's according to secret FBI reports released via Freedom of Information Act requests by the nonprofit National Security Archive at GWU and posted online last week. Read more on the jump.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's impending resignation prompted MSNBC investigative reporter Bill Dedman to note that the public is still waiting on Alaska's government to produce e-mails from Palin's time in office before the November 2008 election.

Reading Dedman's story, I don't get the impression that either the state or Palin is fighting the release of the e-mails. (You could, however, interpret the state's initial cost estimate of $15 million -- that's $15 million -- to produce the records as a way of trying to keep them private. The latest estimate, Dedman reports, is somewhat less, at $5,000-$10,000).

But the state says it's just taking a lot of time to search for the e-mails and then have them looked at by lawyers to see if there's anything that legitimately needs to be withheld. (With due respect to the Alaska folks -- and obviously I haven't done original reporting on this -- you never know if the 'it's taking us time' claim is a delay tactic in hopes the requesters will forget they asked for this stuff.)

Meanwhile, since we've praised President Obama for his stand that the Freedom of Information Act actually means that government should err on the side of releasing records, it's only fair to point out that he's made some decisions lately that cut directly against his stand for public access.

Among them is the Obama administration's recent decision to withhold White House visitor records. Naturally, there is a legal argument for why they're doing this (agencies can always develop a legal strategy to withhold public records). In this case, Obama says the records are covered by a different law than FOIA, and as such don't have to be released.

But the point is, Obama is not holding himself to his own standard on government transparency. Why?

Interesting read:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Congressional travel bills are up almost tenfold since 1995, and 50 percent since Democrats became the majority party in Congress two years ago. Lawmakers spent $13 million on overseas travel in 2008, according to the newspaper, which analyzed 60,000 records.

In keeping with our mission here to point you in the direction of doing your own research and seeing where it takes you, I'll point out this website, which has compiled Congressional travel records in a way that allows you to search by member of Congress, staffer, destination, expense and other categories.