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Thanks a lot, Harrisburg
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Thanks a lot, Harrisburg
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This afternoon, the state Senate passed — without debate, without a public hearing, and with a single dissenting vote — the insidious SB 1469, which will basically allow local governments to slink further away from the spirit of the hard-fought Right to Know Act the legislature passed in 2008. And seeing how our own city leaders handle public records requests, this is not at all confidence inspiring. Among other things, this bill will allow the fine folks at City Hall and other local agencies to charge you up to 12 1/2 cents per page just to look — not to copy, but to look — at public records.
Want to take a gander at, say, the city's contracts with its labor unions? Or maybe a city budget? How about some personnel files, or the Internal Affairs files of dirty cops? Bring your checkbook: Those things can run into the hundreds of pages. And that's exactly the point, despite Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi's disingenuous claim that this bill would only address procedural problems, or whatever.
Another âprocedural problemâ: The bill would also narrow the citizenry's ability to obtain records about government contractors — you know, like the kind the state recently contracted with the spy on activists.
The bill now goes to the House, which is also considering its own affront to the Right to Know Act, a bill that would exempt government workers' dates of birth and home addresses from public records, as Social Security numbers are already exempted. Of course, these are also the types of info newspapers often use to sort out different people with the same name. As Deborah Musselman, director of government affairs at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, tells us, âEliminating these identifiers from public view could result in an innocent person being wrongly associated with criminal case records.â
The House bill is currently in appropriations. Hopefully it stays there. And hopefully the House — which has had more than its share of corruption problems of late — recognizes that the last thing this state needs is a weakened public records law, and dumps this thing. OK, maybe we keep the good parts of the bill, like the part the requires state agencies to produce records in the requested format, and the part that expands access to drafts prepared at public meetings. But the rest of it needs to go.
Sunshine, as they say, is the best disinfectant; sadly, our leaders are all too happy to live in the shadows.
More on this in A Million Stories this week.
*With reporting by Holly Otterbein.
Getting to public records in Philly is already a sad joke. This is FUBAR.
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