September 2009 Archives

     What is U.S. Rep. Todd Platts running, a counseling agency or a congressional office?
    After news came out that the Obama administration agreed to release to citizens a list of people who visited the president at the White House -- with some exceptions -- the Daily Record/Sunday News wondered if the York County Republican -- long a champion of clean, open government -- would do the same.
    The answer: No.
    "Every day, constituents contact my office to discuss issues or personal problems they are having with government agencies, many of which include health and financial matters," Rep. Platts wrote in reply. "I have a very real concern that were these interactions public, then my constituents might feel too intimidated, scared, embarrassed or self-conscious to approach my office for help."
    Good grief, no one asked for transcripts or video of the sessions. And it's hard to imagine people come in and spill their guts to their congressman as if he were their therapist.
    The request was for a simple list of visitors so constituents might get a glimpse into who meets with him to lobby him on important issues of the day.
   

Westboro Baptist Church's free speech victory today is hardly the only controversial free-speech decision by a federal court or the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, the fourth circuit appeals court's decision today noted that sometimes, defending free speech means being on the side of some "not very nice people."

 In the Westboro case, the appeals court ruled that when members demonstrated with signs such as "Thank God for dead soldiers" outside the funeral of a Marine with local ties, that speech was protected. A lower court jury had awarded Spring Garden Township resident Albert Snyder a multi-million dollar award, saying Westboro had invaded his privacy and intentionally caused emotional distress.

Here is a sampling of cases, culled from the Cornell University Law School's Supreme Court collection. This is by no means a complete list; I just clicked on a few free-speech decisions to see what I could find.

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 2002: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with an adult entertainment trade association and others that the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996 unconstitutionally limited free speech when it said the prohibition on child pornography should include any visual depiction that "is or appears to be" or "conveys the impression of" a child engaging in sexually explicit conduct.The descriptions were "overbroad," the court said.

Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 1991: A federal appeals court ruled that an Indiana law banning total nudity in public places violated the First Amendment, saying that nude dancing as entertainment is protected expression. (But the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that decision.)

United States v. Eichman, 1990: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law that banned burning the American flag, saying that burning the flag is protected under the First Amendment.

Check Cornell's site for more; the browing is easy and the summaries are good. Also, you can go to this site devoted to the Supreme Court, where you not only can get case summaries, but can listen to the oral arguments. Cool. 

Listening to NPR yesterday, I was blown away by the reporting done by young journalists involving a successful FOIA request. The FOIA'd documents led to an investigative story detailing the hazing and abuse of U.S. sailors in a canine unit at a base in Behrain.

Listen to the NPR version of the story, which summarizes the story so far. An excerpt:

Incidents ranged from spraying down uniformed personnel with hoses to directing sailors to simulate sex acts on videotape. ... The (independent Naval) investigation's findings, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and corroborated by Youth Radio's interviews, show the abuse was widespread in the unit, and in some cases sanctioned and instigated by its leadership.

The story came out of the news organization Youth Radio in Oakland, Calif., which teaches journalism to young people.

Youth Radio broke the story online and, since, the current commander of naval installations in Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia, Rear Admiral David Mercer, has ordered a review of the Navy's investigation. Youth Radio has also reported on another review that's been ordered, this time by the Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy's highest ranking officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The deadline for that report is Oct. 6.

We had a reader ask where he could find municipal meeting listings.

You could go to every municipality, authority, board or school district Web site. Or you can do some one-stop shopping. Check this out.

I've been using this site for years. It's great. You can search key words, newspapers or dates. I've found some good story ideas there, too. Click on "search tips" on the main page under the search button for some pointers.

Normally, I prefer reading things on paper. The Pennsylvania Public Notices Web site is better, in my opinion, for two reasons. First, I have a very hard time reading the tiny type used in printed legal ads. Secondly, it's a time saver because I can filter out legal ads that don't interest me.

There's also a online feature that will e-mail you items of interest. It costs money, so I haven't used it. If you have, leave a comment.

The agency that audits federal defense contracts isn't doing a good enough job, according to another federal agency that reviewed its work. That resonates in York County because of the county's military contractors, including Gichner Shelter Systems of Dallastown, BAE Systems in West Manchester Township and General Dynamics in Red Lion.

The Project on Government Oversight lists General Dynamics as the fourth-largest defense contractor, with $18.5 billion in contracts, and BAE as the sixth-largest at $10.1 billion. The Daily Record/Sunday News has a web page dedicated to BAE news where you can get the latest news on the company's defense contracts and on the vehicles it builds.

 This from The Associated Press:

"Pentagon auditors face serious problems in their ability to oversee contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to congressional investigators, and a key senator says the agency in charge needs to focus more on quality than speed.

The Government Accountability Office reviewed 69 audits and other cost-related assignments by the Defense Contract Audit Agency and found only four complied with government auditing standards."

More here.

The Project on Government Oversight has a fascinating Twitter stream out of today's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on DCAA. Samples (these are separate tweets; they don't represent a single conversation during the hearing):

Lieberman: Should we be creating a totally independent auditing agency, Auditor General, for the govt overall? #DCAA

McCaskill (@clairecmc): What has happened here has been a capital crime #DCAA

Coburn: Are there any safeguards if #DCAA not doing their job? GAO: We don't have any

When Todd Platts, York County's congressman, denied
our open-records request for a list of people who'd visited his office, one of his answers to our questions piqued my curiosity.

We asked that if people couldn't see who visited his office, how would we keep track of which lobbyists were bending his ear? He replied, in part: "Lobbyists must file quarterly reports with the Clerk of the House .... disclosing their contacts with the House and Senate."

Whoa, I thought -- a list of lobbyists who had knocked on Platts' door was already out there; no need to get it from the Congressman himself.

So I went to the Clerk of the House's Web site. Sure enough, you can search online records for lobbyist activity. And you can see what lobbyists represent what clients -- for example, that the York City Sewer Authority registered a lobbyist in January with an interest in funding for sewer/water improvements; and that Wellspan Health registered a lobbyist in March 2008 to focus on, in part, "budget resolution provisions relating to medicare and medicaid funding and discretionary health care funding."

You can also see what their lobbying expenses were for a given time period, and even if they've made contributions to lawmakers.

But -- unless I'm missing it, and I am happy to be proven wrong here -- you can't see which lawmakers they've met with.

It was nice of Platts to point out that you can find out a lot about lobbyists online. Since we know that Platts doesn't accept PAC money, however, we'd really like to know which lobbyists have visited him, and concerning which issues. But, apparently, we can't know that.

People at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University have updated their Banktracker Web site that allows you to check up on your bank's finances.

They calculate a "troubled asset ratio" that can give you an idea of how stressed a particular bank is. There's a thorough "methodology" page that's pretty much a must-read if you're going to get anything out of the site.

 You can find your bank by name, or you can search by state, and the site returns results based on where the bank is headquartered. For example, York Traditions Bank comes up under banks based in York. Its "troubled asset ratio" in June was 7.5; the national median was 13. Generally, according to the site, the higher the ratio number, the more stressed the bank.

Bring your open-records questions, because the state's open records office will answer them in training sessions next week and the week after. Specifics:

Sept. 21, two sessions, 10 a.m.-noon and 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 North Street, Harrisburg
 
Sept. 29, two sessions, 10 a.m.-noon and 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 North Street, Harrisburg

"Understanding how the Sunshine Law works is a powerful tool to exercise your rights as a citizen or a public official in the Commonwealth," said Terry Mutchler, executive director of the open records office. "Those who attend these trainings will be able to have a hands-on, practical knowledge of these important open-government laws."

The sessions are free but seating is limited so registration is required. Go here for a registration form.

I noticed google is making an effort to engage government Web sites to become more user-friendly.

Interesting.

There is a way to use google to only search government sites. It's www.google.com/unclesam. It's a quick and easy way of filtering out stuff you don't want.

Is there such a thing as too much information before you eat?

The state health inspector was at the York Fair on Friday. Before you get worried (and/or nauseous), it appears everything that was checked out passed.

To do the search, go to the state's online inspection database. Then, search for the phrase York Fair (do not use quote marks around it). If you'd like to whittle it down, you can use the drop-down box to select "York County." *(Note: This works to search for any restaurant or food-serving establishment that's inspected. Just type the name you're looking for into the 'facility name' bar.)

If you are doing a search, it's worth noting that some violations are less serious than others and it's not uncommon for the inspector to find something wrong.

From my experiences with the state's database, look for places with repeat violations. Read the paperwork associated with each inspection -- maybe one place had 12 little things, but another place had one big insect infestation.

State police in Gettysburg said today that a registered sex offender wasn't living at the Littlestown address he'd given authorities, so police charged him with failing to meet sexual offender registration requirements.

That hits on a problem area with Megan's Law that we've written about:

•  Offenders are required to tell authorities where they live, but the state police have said they usually investigate only if they get a tip or if an offender doesn't register on the anniversary of the conviction date. A 2007 story by staffer Rick Lee reported that up to 10 percent of convicted sex offenders don't follow registration guidelines.
  
• And, a recent court ruling held that homeless sex offenders can't be convicted if they don't register an address with police. In July, a three-judge panel from the Pennsylvania Superior Court suggested the legislature ought to look at that loophole.

 You can look up registered sex offenders' information on the state's Megan's Law Web site, but the registration-requirement problems mean you might not be getting accurate information.

 For example, in today's news release, state police said that 27-year-old Christopher Lee Coleman (pictured above), whose registered address was 145 W. King St. in Littlestown, wasn't living there. How long was he living elsewhere? The news release doesn't say. But the point is, for some period of time, he wasn't where the Web site said he was, or where police thought he was.

 The question is what to do about it. Some have suggested GPS monitoring, or that police should physically verify every offender's registered address. But GPS might not work perfectly, and there's a question about whether police have the manpower to check each address.

Meanwhile, authorities urge people to be vigilant in their own neighborhoods. Even with the problems in Pennsylvania, at least people have some information to go on. In Canada earlier this year, there was a movement to open sex offender information to the public instead of making it available only to police.

*Update to original post: @regularguy on Twitter wondered whether the Jaycee Dugard case would make agencies take a closer at such laws. We'll look into what might be happening here. Meanwhile, here are the Google News search results for "Dugard Megan's law" if you're interested.

Original documents from state and federal governments, courts, schools and other agencies have a new home on the York Daily Record/Sunday News' Web site. Instead of residing on the Full Disclosure open records page, they now have their own page.

You can get to them one of two ways:

The 'Reading Room' link on the Full Disclosure page

or

go directly to the 'Reading Room' page.

The documents are now organized by topic, so they're easier for you to look through and find what you want. If you have suggestions on how to make the page even easier to navigate, let me know. I plan to add dates to each entry soon.

 If you have documents you'd like to share online, let me know and we can get them on 'Reading Room' -- and we'll give you credit for digging them out. If you have ideas for documents you think we should get from an agency and put online, let me know. And feel free to link to the page for quick access. 

 Three Mile Island Unit 1 has two more hurdles to jump before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the plant to operate for an additional 20 years.

 York Daily Record/Sunday News staffer Sean Adkins reports that on Thursday, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent body of experts that advises the NRC  nuclear-safety matters, will meet to discuss any outstanding issues related to safety at the plant such as leakage concerning the plant's containment building.

  This weekend, the committee will draft a report based on its observations and recommendations on TMI's bid for license renewal.

  Next, the NRC's director of the office of nuclear reactor regulation will review the committee's report as well as the commission's safety and environmental evaluations completed earlier this year on TMI. (For the safety evaluation, scroll to "Reading Room." For the environmental report, scroll to "Supplement 37.")

 The NRC expects to issue its decision whether to re-license the reactor in November.

The state's open records office is offering training on the right-to-know law and Sunshine Act this month. Anyone is welcome to attend.

Specifics:

Sept. 21, two sessions, 10 a.m.-noon and 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 North Street, Harrisburg
 
Sept. 29, two sessions, 10 a.m.-noon and 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 North Street, Harrisburg

A registration form is available at the OOR's Web site.

If you're planning to go, drop me a line.

Links to news involving federal Freedom of Information Act:

• Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press joined news organizations in filing that urges U.S. Supreme Court not to review a lower court's decision that the FOIA "requires release of images of alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan carried out by U.S. troops."
  
• Thanks to Charles N. Davis of The FOI Advocate blog for alerting us that Openthegovernment.org has released its FOIA scorecard. It assesses the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration. Davis breaks out some interesting facts; and you can get the whole report at the openthegovernment.org site.

Is your right to view court proceedings in jeopardy? I blogged earlier about a Georgia case in which the judge closed the courtroom because it wasn't big enough for the jury pool and the public.

Now, the New York Times reports that although "the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases" because of the efforts of a California newspaper, it is getting harder these days for newspapers to fight those battles.

"The days of powerful newspapers with ample legal budgets appear to be numbered," a public defender in Georgia, Gerard Kleinrock, wrote in a recent Supreme Court brief, according to the Times story. "Will underfunded bloggers be able to carry the financial burdens of opening our courtrooms?"

Read more at the link above.

In my story yesterday about a settlement payment to a former director of the York County School of Technology, I had to use an estimate for his payout.

The settlement, which came Wednesday via a Right-to-Know request, showed up on my desk around 3:30 p.m. The contract didn't spell out his salary, and my last record was from 2005-2006.

Today, in response to another Right-to-Know request, I got the updated salary from the state's pension board for educators, the Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System.

Former director James A. Kraft made $126,438.73 as of June 30. Under his settlement agreement he is due his weekly salary until March 31. That's $87,534. He's also getting health care. In return, he's agreed not to sue the district.

Court rulings indicate that government agencies "may not contract away their statutory responsibility to produce public records," according to Melissa Melewsky, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

I asked Melissa about Carroll Township's denial of a request for preliminary development plans, which it says are "predecisional" and are to be kept confidential as part of the the settlement of an ongoing conflict with the developer about its plans.

Here's the back and forth, which hopefully helps shed light on the issue:

 Record Tracker: Is it legal for a municipality to enter into a legal agreement that
makes public records private? Does the situation between Carroll Township and the developer reveal a loophole in open records law -- that if two parties want to keep records private, they can go to court and draw up a settlement that stipulates
that otherwise public records will be kept private?

Melissa Melewsky: "There is strong appellate court precedent that unequivocally holds settlement agreements between private parties and government agencies are public records despite any confidentiality provision contained in the agreement. It is clear from these opinions that government agencies may not contract away their statutory responsibility to produce public records. 
 
 "There is no loophole in the RTKL that allows agencies to contractually negate their obligations to produce public records. Records that are confidential pursuant to a court order can be kept private but the court order itself must be legally appropriate.

If you're just stopping to check in today, I wanted to call your attention to a couple of public-records based stories on our site today:

• The York County School of Technology is paying former director James Kraft nine months' worth of his $100,000-plus salary as part of a settlement he and the school reached as they parted ways earlier in the summer. The document reveals the tech school was not happy with Kraft, and the settlement allowed him to avoid possible discipline or demotion. Reporter Nickie Dobo got the settlement through a right-to-know request.
  
• This morning, the state education department released PSSA scores and adequate yearly progress numbers -- the measure of how schools and districts are doing under No Child Left Behind requirements -- and that means there are a ton of numbers out there. We've tried to make sense of it with this story, and Nickie has created several searchable databases and an interactive map to help make it easy to find your school's information.

Court records provide details on how the Brothers family farm, a 400-plus acre tract that was sold at auction last month, went under. It marked the end of a two-generation farm, although the buyer says he will keep farming the land.

The records don't answer all the questions, but you can piece together some of the story, as reporter Rick Lee did recently in this story and timeline, sourced through court records:

 The property bordering Bowers Bridge Road and the Conewago Creek was auctioned off for $1,704,300. A former dairy farm, it had not been used for agriculture since 1991.
 
   Edward Brothers Jr., who was deeded the land by his father, "Big" Edward Brothers Sr., in 1982 for $1, had operated a trucking company since 1962 when he was 18 years old.

    The trucking company, which began on the farm and moved to a Willows Springs Industrial Park terminal in 1998, had an apparently successful run.

    But for reasons not alluded to in court documents -- financial over-extension, a downturn in economics, ever-increasing operating costs -- the company began to founder around 2000.

    In 2003, Brothers Trucking Co. filed for Chapter 11 protection. More than 100 creditors filed claims against the company for almost $15.5 million.
  

I sent Carroll Township's right-to-know officer an e-mail with some questions raised by its response to the state's open records office, which asked about the township's denial of an RTK request for development plans.

Josephine Patton said this morning that the township would have no comment at this time. The township's official correspondence, for now, speaks on the matter. That correspondence is linked to in previous posts about the RTK request, the township's denial and a residents' group's appeal.

The township's response to the open records office included its willingness to share a couple of documents, but its letter prompted some questions. Here's what I had asked Patton (note -- these questions will make more sense if you read the previous posts and comments first, and look at the linked-to correspondence):

Carroll Township appears to say that it doesn't have some documents requested by a residents' group, but will allow the group to look at stormwater management plans related to a proposed development. (The letter could be read to say the township didn't have the documents as of the date specified.)

 The stormwater management plans, the township says, are part of an ongoing settlement with the developer, the terms of which included that plans be kept from the public, so the records "are therefore not otherwise of public record."

Carroll Citizens for Sensible Growth has posted the letter on its Web site.

The township's letter was in response to information requested by the state's open records office, which is considering CCSG's appeal that plans related to the development be made public.