Celebrating 10 years of open records

What a difference a decade makes.

Imagine a state where public records were presumed to be private.

Welcome to Pennsylvania prior to 2008. No wonder they called us the Land of Giants.

Prior to that time the standard in the Keystone State was that the business of the people was none of the people’s business. The financial workings of state and local government – contracts and other key documents – were presumed to be private.

Despite the fact that it was your money, your taxpayer dollars funding state, county and local governments, the presumption was that you had no right to inspect those records.

Instead, the onus fell on a citizen – or a news organization – to prove why that should not be the case, on a record-by-record basis.

It had been that way since 1957, making Pennsylvania the back waters of open, transparent government.

That changed in 2008, with passage of the Pennsylvania Open Records Law/Right to Know Act.

Then state Sen. Dominic Pileggi, R-9 of Chester, led the fight to change the law. Pileggi was the Senate Republican leader. It took 13 months, but the law was eventually passed and signed into law by then Gov. Ed Rendell on Feb. 14, 2008.

This week Pileggi, now a Delaware County Common Pleas Court judge, and Rendell celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the law during a special panel discussion at Neumann University.

Pileggi explained the change in the “presumption,” reversing the long tradition of secrecy in the state and instead placing the burden square on the shoulders of our elected representatives when it comes to why a state record or document should not be public. The law flatly changed the way government entities operate in Pennsylvania, beginning with the presumption that state and local agency records are open for public inspection and copying, and insisting that government have a very good reason to deny that right.

Pileggi explained that part of the push for the law can easily be traced to the outrage that erupted after legislators passed themselves a pay hike in the middle of the night in 2005. People were angry, and they started venting that ire at the voting booth. Several longtime political powers in Harrisburg were felled.

Harrisburg finally responded. The heat was on for a more transparent, open style of government. Pileggi stepped into this foment and pushed through a bill that changed an archaic system that had been in place since 1957.

The Right to Know Law now guarantees citizens the right to obtain public records from state and local agencies in Pennsylvania. It also guarantees your right to obtain legislative records from the Pennsylvania General Assembly and financial records from the state judicial systems.

The law put the “public” back into the notion of public funding.

The law also set up the state Office of Open Records, an independent agency, to handle disputes over the law and questions about which records should and should not be available for inspection. Gov. Rendell named attorney Terry Mutchler as the first state Open Records chief. The position is now filled by Eric Arneson. Is the law perfect? No. Very little in Harrisburg is.

There are still areas that remain out of reach. Currently one source of disagreement is the state report made into the activities of Lt. Gov. Mike Stack investigating reports that he and his wife verbally abused his state security detail.

In response Gov. Tom Wolf pulled the detail, but he has declined to release the report.

The law also has not been amended in the last 10 years. That is something the current Legislature should address.

“I believe that transparency builds trust in government,” Pileggi said after his bill became law.

And nowhere was that more needed than here in Pennsylvania.

Kudos to Pileggi for bringing Pennsylvania out of the dark ages when it comes to public access to government records.

They say sunshine is the best disinfectant.

The Pennsylvania Open Records Law/Right to Know Law scattered the clouds that shrouded government actions in Pennsylvania for decades.

Let the sun shine.