Category Archives: Right-to-Know Law

This editorial from The (Hanover) Evening Sun shows what can happen when events outpace the right-to-know response from an agency that requests a 30-day extension to figure out whether it will release a record.

Trainers are telling state workers learning a new phone system that they can use an instant-messaging feature to avoid citizens’ public record requests, the state’s open records director told Gov. Tom Corbett in a letter.

YDR staffer Ed Mahon reports that Rep. Eugene DePasquale (D-West Manchester) believes his bill to bring Penn State and other state-related universities under the Right-to-Know Law would pass, if it can be brought to a vote. The Freeh report, he said, gives it momentum.

Open records advocates say a recent Commonwealth Court decision threatens one of the hallmarks of Pennsylvania’s 2 1/2-year-old right-to-know law: That instead of a requester having to prove records are public, an agency has to prove they’re not. The York … Continue reading →

There are big reasons to use the state’s right-to-know law, and journalists do that regularly and often in a high-profile way — say, by requesting time-response logs (see entry below). But there are tons of other reasons people who aren’t … Continue reading →

Late last year, state Sen. Dominic Pileggi’s proposed amendments to the right-to-know law he authored including a provision that would allow agencies to charge people to look at records if they didn’t want copies made. That caused a lot of … Continue reading →

There is some interesting reasoning in a recent court’s ruling that e-mails about public business on a public official’s personal computer are not public records. The case involved e-mails on York Township commissioner Ken Silberstein’s personal computer.  The requester, in … Continue reading →