August 2009 Archives

York Township and its commissioners have lots of reasons why you shouldn't be able to see their e-mails, even though public officials' e-mails are open records under the state's right-to-know law, according to the state's Office of Open Records. Here's a list, drawn from two cases in the past few months:

 1. E-mails on a commissioner's personal computer are not public.

 2. Correspondence between a commissioner and resident are not public.

The state's Office of Open Records has told Carroll Township it must prove why plans for a proposed development should be kept from the public.

The township denied a request from Carroll Citizens for Sensible Growth for a traffic impact study, stormwater management plan and architectural design standards for the proposed Village at South Mountain, a housing/commercial development across from Logan Park, near the Route 74 intersection with Route 15. The township says the documents will be used in "predecisional deliberations" and invoked a right-to-know law exception.

CCSG appealed to the OOR, which wrote to the township Aug. 21 and noted that the new right-to-know law makes documents public unless an agency can prove they should be private. "Kindly explain any and all factual and legal basis for withholding these records under the 'internal predecisional deliberation' exception," the open records office wrote.

The township has until Monday to respond. After that, the OOR will rule on the appeal.

The denial, appeal and OOR's letter are all here.

A recent story in the Dillsburg Banner quoted Carroll Township manager Dianne Price as saying that the township didn't want to keep the plan's details from the public, but agreed to it as part of the settlement of an ongoing conflict about the proposed development.

The Project on Government Oversight says it has updated its resources page for the Freedom of Information Act. Among the additions is a report by the Congressional Research Service that includes the history of the act, and how the Bush and Obama administrations have interpreted it.

Obama started his administration with a strong endorsement of open records and government accountability, but has since made some decisions that run counter to that approach. We've blogged about them here.

On Sunday, we published a story that tracked school district taxes over time.

Here's a database to search your school district or to compare tax rates. If you are a homeowner, it's worth noting that simply looking at the rates isn't the best predictor of your bill.

For example, any homeowner can sign up for the Homestead Tax Relief program, which gives you a break on the bill. In York City, it knocks off about $500. In other districts it's about $100.

Also, tax bills are based on your property's assessment. To figure out your tax bill take your assessment times the rate and then divide that number by 1,000.

Ryan Singel of Wired reports that a federal court spokesman says that RECAP, a Firefox plug-in that says it will help create free federal court documents (whereas you have to pay 8 cents a copy now on PACER), could make sealed court records viewable.

But one of the guys who wrote the code for the plug-in says that won't happen, because lawyers use a different program when they upload documents, and RECAP doesn't work with that program.

Read more at the link above.

Ever Google yourself to see what comes up? I just lost a little bit of time this afternoon on www.123people.com, a  site that scans for your internet presence and delivers a well-organized search-result page with lists from blogs, social networks, YouTube, web links, amazon.com, images, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and a link to "premium public records" searches. (And that might be the point of the site -- to get you to bite on the premium search.)

The site itself might be worth a shot if you're trying to find someone on the web, or find background on someone; I'm not necessarily endorsing paying for a public records search.

And it can be interesting to find out what's out there about you (and other people with your name), all pulled together on one page. Of course, these searches are never dead-on specific (even when I put in my zip code). For example, when I searched my name, images that came back included a guy in Australia who took a picture of his abs, and a couple of women. No pictures of me showed up. That's probably just as well.

The group Project on Government Oversight* says New Hampshire is the best of the 50 states at posting federal stimulus information on the state web site, mainly because New Hampshire is posting scanned copies of the actual contracts involved.

The groups says Pennsylvania does not list specific stimulus contract information, nor does it post copies of contracts on the state web site. Very few states do, according to the group's research.

We blogged here about some of the things you can find on Pennsylvania's state contract web site, and you can see what, to me, could be characterized as a copy of a contract. Then again, I've never worked for the state or for a company that contracts with the state, so maybe the document I'm looking at is something else.

The POGO group did say that it compiled its information "based on whether a taxpayer with basic web navigation skills and a basic understanding of (the stimulus act) can easily access (stimulus-act)-supported state contracts." It's possible they didn't find Pennsylvania's state contract site.

*I had the name of the group wrong in the original version of this post.

Looking up tax revenue records can reveal some pretty interesting things. Reporter Nickie Dobo has a story in today's paper looking at how school district taxes have risen over the years, and how taxpayers who are already battling a tough economy are getting pinched by the growing tax bills.

As part of reporting that story, she checked in with the county's recorder of deeds and discovered something about the real estate crash that I don't think we'd written before: Revenue from real estate transfer taxes has basically fallen off a cliff for most school districts. (Every time a home is sold, the school district gets a small percentage of the price.)

The transfer tax only amounts to about 1 percent of school districts' budgets. But still, it's a few hundred thousand dollars they need to replace -- and a few hundred thousand is, well, a few hundred thousand.

This story is also the first time, at least in a while, that we've looked at property tax numbers over time. (Usually we do an annual story rounding up taxes and comparing the previous year to the current year). We're working on putting together a searchable spreadsheet of all of the numbers we used in today's story; check back here this week and we'll let you know when it's up.

Check out the story. We think it's a pretty good look at taxes over time, but there's no way we can cover every school-tax-related angle in one story ... so let us know if there's something you want us to look at and we'll give it a shot.

I heard that a couple people were convinced that lightning had struck something on or near Beaver Street in York during yesterday's thunderstorms. The city's fire department didn't know of any strikes there, but a Met-Ed spokesman said lightning hit a substation on Park Avenue around 1 p.m. Power went out for about 3,300 customers.

More thunderstorms are expected today, so there should be another light show in the sky. If you like watching lightning (as I do), you might also like to check out lightning strike data on the web. There are a couple of pay sites that you can find if you Google "lightning strike data," but here are a couple that are free:
 

I put some new stuff on the blog I hope you'll like -- at the least, to stay up on open records issues; at best, to drop me a line, comment on what I'm linking to or connect with me on Twitter or the social bookmarking site Delicious.

 Check the far right side of the blog, underneath the orange "subscribe" icon.
There you'll find, in order:

•  My Delicious bookmarks. I've set that up so everything I tag with "public records" shows up there. So a quick glance will show you what I've found on the web about public records. If you're on Delicious, feel free to add me to your network and we can share links.

• The latest from my Twitter feed. I mostly use Twitter to link to stories I think people will find interesting (you won't see too many "Just finished my morning coffee" tweets from me). Again, if you're on Twitter, please follow me; it's a great way to stay connected and we can swap what we spy on the web, ideas & comments on news and other issues; and so on.

• FOIA stories that I've linked to via Publish2, a collaborative journalism site. I'll keep that updated with interesting FOIA developments.

Let me know what you think.
 I look forward to staying in touch.

I got back to work Wednesday afternoon after a vacation, and settled in to catch up on the news.

One of the first things on my plate was writing a story about Stanley Silver, the Democratic nominee for the open York City School Board seat. The other paper had already written about it twice while I was away.

Before I call people up for a story I like to get some background on them so I can have an intelligent conversation and not waste their time. I am looking, mainly, for biographical information.

So, I ran Silver's name through google. The google search showed a link to a state PDF file that said Silver lost his law license for six months in 2008. It is the fourth hit on google for "Stanley Silver." It took all of one minute to do this.

I double-checked the spelling of his name against a York Dispatch story. There, commenters on the story were saying he had something in his past. (Yes, I read news story comments, so feel free to leave news tips or send them to ndobo@ydr.com.)

Anyone can check a lawyer's history online. Go here. It's run by the state disciplinary review board.

We're looking for your public-records story ideas, and here's a great way to let us know about something you'd like us to look into. (The form below* is accessible via the link "Submit a tip" at the top of this page).

Whether you have some documents you'd like us to take a look at, or heard a rumor you want us to check out, or have an idea for an investigation you'd like to see us take on, we encourage you 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.

*created by www.publish2.com.

A service that notifies people of the arrest, transfer or escape of county jail inmates will be online in York County Thursday, according to the county district attorney's office.

Law enforcement and other officials will officially announce Thursday that York County will be part of the Pennsylvania Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification. It notifies crime victims, their families and members of the community with a phone call or e-mail with updates on county jail inmates.

Check the York Daily Record/Sunday News' web site Thursday for details.

... because you might be able to get those docs for free. Some people at Princeton University have unveiled a Firefox extension that aims to create a public repository of free federal/bankruptcy court records.* It's called RECAP -- which is PACER spelled backwards. PACER is the online court document retrieval service that charges 8 cents a page, with a ceiling of $2.40. (The records would be free if you were at the courthouse in person.)

The Princeton people say lawyers use PACER the most, but I know journalists use it regularly too. Not sure how many others use it, but if the RECAP project works, the result will be greater public access to public records -- and they'll be free. That's really how it's supposed to work.

The project already has a repository of free records. But it says that collection will grow because of how the extension works. If you're signed in to PACER, and you download (and pay for) documents in a case, those docs will be automatically uploaded to RECAP's free public collection. If you search for a case and the docs are in the free collection, you'll see a blue 'R' icon, which allows you to get those documents for free. Theoretically, everyone contributes, everyone benefits.

Some people are already flagging potential problems, such as, could documents be altered somehow on their way to the free collection. So it might be best to proceed with caution, at least at first. But this project is a promising development in public access to public records.

*thanks to @opengovva on twitter for the tip about RECAP.

You might have to be a bit geeky (or really, really into following the money) to get immersed in state contracts ... but you can if you want, through the state's online listing of those contracts. It's linked to on the "do it yourself" part of Full Disclosure, our open records web site. (There's tons more there, too, like restaurant inspections, nursing home inspections, how municipalities spend their liquid fuel tax ... all kind of stuff.)

Anyway, on the state contract site, you can find out things like T. W. Consultants, Inc. has an agreement with PennDOT to inspect a whole bunch of York County projects for about $2.5 million. Or that the state prison in Smithfield paid $7,202.25 for 495 cases of frozen meatballs.

Ahh, fun stuff. If you poke around in there and find anything interesting, let me know.

Should courts be allowed to operate in private whenever they want? A defendant in a Georgia drug case wants the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Georgia Supreme Court's decision that it's OK for Georgia judges to bar the public from jury selection at will, without having to show special cause.

I'm summarizing a story by Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, which filed a brief urging the U.S. high court to review the decision.

The RCFP notes that the First and Sixth amendments to the U.S. Constitution create the presumption of public access to jury selection.

This country's judicial system was set up so that cases would be played out in the open, not behind closed doors (absent special cause), because only if the process is subject to scrutiny can we have the chance to make sure it's being done fairly. This is a case to keep an eye on.

York Township is charging one of its own for information he has requested on an issue he wants to bring before the board. Some township commissioners have complained about what they deem to be excessive public records requests that take a lot of time and money to fulfill.

I'm really not sure what to make of this. Help me out. Is this turnabout is fair play? Or simply playing by the rules? Or ...

Not incidentally, York Township has followed through on its plan to list people who request records, what they've requested, how much the township says it costs to fill the request, how much the requester paid and so on. It's available on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet* on the township's Web site.

Couple of things I noticed:

• About three-quarters of the 106 requests took 3 hours or less to fulfill (most of those were 2 hours or less)
• the township says it has spent almost $28,000 filling RTK requests and has been paid less than $600
• the highest costs are for legal fees; the township has paid Stock & Leader $13,230.40 in connection with right-to-know request. That's almost half the total cost.

Take a look. What else do you see of interest in the spreadsheet? Note that in the column labeled 'time to fill,' the letters stand for employees' names except the following, according to township manager Elizabeth Heathcote: S&L is Stock & Leader; BIG is Business Information Group, a computer technical group that retrieved e-mails from backup tapes; and Insight, a computer parts & supplies outfit.

*If you don't have Microsoft Excel, I have the numbers in an OpenOffice spreadsheet and will e-mail them to you; just let me know. If you don't have OpenOffice, it's a free, useful download that offers pretty much everything Microsoft Word and Excel offer. You can get it at www.openoffice.org.

This post -- 'Eleven public records for fun features,' -- is directed at journalists, since it's from the  Society of Professional Journalists' FOIFYI blog. But they're really ideas for anyone who has the curiosity and time to look into. These are records that tell you things about your community, which can be some of the most fascinating stuff to look through.

ProPublica.org has this report, the result of a Freedom of Information Act request to see the proposal/contract between the federal government and a software company that would produce the recovery.org web site, the place where you're supposed to be able to track all the stimulus spending.

It begins:

"Back in July, a software company named Smartronix landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration's ongoing effort to bring transparency to stimulus spending, we were told.
 
 But it seems the drive for transparency doesn't cover the contract itself.

 After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the General Services Administration released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless."

Continuing on a recent theme here: The state's new right to know law, which took effect about 8 months ago and brought Pennsylvania out of the Dark Ages of open records policies, is a target of individuals, groups and even legislators who appear to be uncomfortable with allowing people access to public information they may need or want.

 Read this piece from the Pocono Record, noting some current cases in its area.

 I know some people in York County have appealed denials of open records, and I'll bring you up to date on those within the next post or two. Meanwhile, if you're seeking public records, been denied, or know of challenges to the new law, please let me know by commenting here or e-mailing sblanchard@ydr.com

Teri Henning, general counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, says in this Johnstown Tribune-Democrat story that legislators and special-interest groups are at work trying to weaken the state's eight-month-old Right to Know Law.

An excerpt:

"At this time, the authority of that (Open Records) office is in play," Henning said Thursday at a gathering of newspaper editors in Harrisburg.

... Lawmakers and interest groups are pushing for limitations to the law.

... "Several bills have been introduced recently that are designed to weaken the Open Records Law," Henning said.

"They're busy on every front right now."

Here at Record Tracker and at our companion site, the Full Disclosure web page on the Daily Record/Sunday News' site, we're always big on people poking around in public records to see what they come up with, or getting access to records to get specific information they're after.

To that end, here's a good page to bookmark. The Society of Professional Journalists put this together list of sites that can help you in general public records searches to statistics on cities to death records.

A reminder that we've posted some ways you can find stuff online, for example, restaurant inspections, how to check the status of a court case and dog kennel inspections.

Thought this was an interesting story out of Springfield, Mo. The newspaper is investigating why a state agency kept secret, for four weeks, reports of elevated e-coli levels in a major recreational lake in southwest Missouri. It asked for videos showing people entering and leaving the governor's floor, to see if particular department personnel had visited the governor.

But police say releasing the video would compromise the security of the governor's floor and entrances, and denied the request.

ProPublica.org continues to do some of the most extensive work I've seen as far as tracking federal stimulus money.

Tuesday, the nonprofit investigative journalism outfit released a site where you can see county-by-county outlays of federal stimulus money.

Some of what it reports about York County:

• Pennsylvania has received $165 per capita in federal stimulus money, but that figure is $84 in York County;
• York County has received $35.5 million in stimulus money. Most ($13.9 million) is from the transportation department; $10.4 from the education department; and $7.6 million from the agriculture department.
• The lowest amount listed, about $42,000, came from the Small Business Administration.

The site also includes a list of specific projects that have received money. For example:

A state health inspector showed up at Hershaull Park in East Hopewell Township last month, and what she found, according to her report, was enough for her to shut the place down.

We've linked to the state's restaurant inspections site on the do-it-yourself public records page of our Full Disclosure site, and we run regular stories on restaurant inspections on our business section's Web page.

But the news about Hershaull Park points out that it's not just restaurants that have to pass inspection. If you're headed to a community event at a park where food will be served, you can check the state's site before you go to see if your park shows up.

 The agriculture department has set up the site so you can, for example, narrow a search to entities that are 'out of compliance' and have 'park' in the name and are in York County. Right now, that will show you that Hershaull Park, as well as Spring Valley Park in Fawn Grove, have violations. (Spring Valley did not have to close).

 The site gives you a history of inspections, and you can click on a link to see the full inspection report. If you use the site, be sure to scroll down to "general inspector comments." That is where, for example, Sally Panzar wrote that Hershaull Park would have to close immediately and couldn't re-open until all the problems were fixed.

You can, of course, search by restaurant name, county and/or ZIP code. Happy searching, and I hope you don't find anything that ruins your appetite.

This story from the New York Times reveals that the federal government sat on a bunch of "research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers - in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress."

A cluster of murders in York County over the weekend prompted me to look more closely at where homicides are occurring in the county.

The map we're using to keep a record of county homicides shows that of the eight* so far this year, four have occurred in York City and four elsewhere -- two in York Township and one each in Dallastown and Springettsbury Township. (*UPDATE, Oct. 1: Following Kenneth Ramos' murder on Sept. 26, it's now nine murders, five in the city and four elsewhere).

Last year, 18 murders, 12 occurred in the city, two in Spring Garden Township and one each in Dover Township, Lower Windsor Township, Shrewsbury Township and York Township.

In 2007, 10 of 12 murders occurred in the city, one in West Manheim Township and one in Springettsbury.

In and of themselves the numbers don't necessarily indicate a trend. But clearly, so far in 2009, the geography of York County homicides is different than in either of the previous two years. Why is that? There likely won't be a definitive reason. But thinking about that question could lead to a deeper examination of whether there are any common threads to where and/or why people are killing each other in our community.

What thoughts do you have?

The state Supreme Court has changed its tune on records it initially ordered destroyed. From the AP:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court now says it wants to preserve the records of thousands of juveniles who appeared before an allegedly corrupt judge between 2003 and 2008.

The high court had wanted to destroy the records. That would have prevented northeastern Pennsylvania juveniles from pursuing federal claims against the judge and kept secret the extent of his misconduct.

Attorneys asked a federal judge last week to order the preservation of more than 6,000 records as evidence in their lawsuit against former Judge Mark Ciavarella and others in Luzerne County.

The Supreme Court says it no longer objects to the records' preservation.

Prosecutors say Ciavarella took millions of dollars to put juvenile offenders in privately owned detention centers.

This isn't your traditional public-records/original document post, but it does give you a peek inside the workings of the the Pennsylvania state Senate.

You may have seen news stories that an Adams County pastor, Gerry Stoltzfoos (right), had been invited to open the June 23 session of the House with a prayer. But when his words were reviewed beforehand, he was asked to take the word 'Jesus' out -- because the House prefers nondenominational, interfaith prayers.

Stoltzfoos declined, and the story took off. The Senate -- which doesn't have the same policy as the House regarding prayers -- asked him to open the June 29 session, with no special requests.

Here is the full text of his prayer (thanks to Hanover Evening Sun reporter Erin James for providing it):

A victory for public access: The Secret Service originally denied requests for President Obama's list of visitors from the health care industry -- in the middle of the health care reform negotiations -- but reversed course and released the list. The Secret Service's assertion of "executive privilege" ran contrary to Obama's pledge for openness, accountability and transparency.