West York flirted with getting rid of its borough police department and contracting with another local department for service, before deciding against it.

York City and Northern York County Regional police made bids. After West York decided not to pursue contracting for service, it shredded the bids — which were public documents and should have been retained, according to Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

We filed right-to-know requests with the respective police departments to get the bids. Here they are. They’re interesting to look at not only because you can see how they pitched themselves as the best agency for West York, but because of what they reveal about each department’s philosophies and finances.

For example, city police break out costs for overtime, police vehicle and fuel, among other things. Northern York’s has department financials, how it decides when and how to staff the department, and the breakdown of where its calls for service came from, among other things.

Check them out. If you find anything newsy, let me know.

If you want to know how much business York County has done with someone, you can do so by requesting the county’s contracts with and payments to individual businesses.

Reporter Ed Mahon did so recently and wrote a story about the county’s financial relationship with McClure Co., the HVAC company that had been doing work in the county prison. On Nov. 21, a carbon monoxide leak from one of the systems sent 49 female inmates to hospitals for treatment.

County officials generally backed McClure. To help residents know more about their relationship with the county, we requested the annual amount the county has paid McClure, and paperwork including a current contract. That’s all part of Ed’s story online.

The Associated Press’ Mark Scolforo reports that the AP used the Right-to-Know law to get a copy of a letter written by Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer that appeals the state’s decision to revoke Sandusky’s pension.

Sandusky’s pension was worth $59,000 per year, but the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement Board revoked it after the former Penn State assistant football coach was sentenced in October on his child sex abuse convictions.

Scolforo wrote:

Sandusky attorney Charles Benjamin’s five-page letter to the board, written two weeks ago, was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press through the state Right-to-Know Law.

Marc Levy of The Associated Press filed this today, noting that a Democratic state senator wants Gov. Tom Corbett to release unredacted public records of a company’s bid to run the state lottery:

HARRISBURG, Pa.  — Democratic lawmakers are taking aim at the Corbett administration’s move to privatize the Pennsylvania Lottery’s management, saying it is shrouded in secrecy and will result in a corporate giveaway that diverts hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s services for the elderly.

In a Friday letter, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, asked Gov. Tom Corbett for an unredacted copy of the proposed agreement between the state and Camelot Global Services, an unredacted copy of Camelot’s bid and a full explanation of the scope of expanded lottery gambling being considered.

“A decision as important as handing over an extremely well-run, efficient, and successful lottery to a foreign company should not be made behind closed doors, by a limited amount of people and without public input,” Costa wrote.

Corbett has said he is exploring privatization of the lottery management to see if a private company can help ensure that lottery profits keep pace with demand for programs that benefit the state’s growing elderly population. A substantial expansion of lottery gambling to keno and online games is expected to be part of the Republican governor’s plans to produce more lottery revenue.

One of the nation’s largest state lotteries, the Pennsylvania Lottery had $3.5 billion in sales in its last fiscal year, of which about $1 billion was profit that benefited programs for the elderly.

Corbett administration officials expect to decide by Dec. 31 on whether to award the contract to Camelot, a Britain-based company that runs the national lottery in the United Kingdom. It is the lone bidder after two other companies, which the Corbett administration will not identify, dropped out.

Camelot is pledging to produce more than $34 billion in profits over 20 years if it wins the contract to manage the $3.5 billion system, profit projections that are in line with the lottery’s past performance.

Continue reading →