We have a right to know what officials are up to

Recent bad behavior by the Legislature reminds us of that having laws to ensure openness doesn’t guarantee it.

Just in time for the nationwide observance of Sunshine Week, the Pennsylvania Legislature gave us an unequivocal reminder (no irony intended, just business as usual) of why we must keep the spotlight of public scrutiny trained unrelentingly on our government.

Sunshine Week, March 15-21, sponsored by several news media organizations, calls attention to the importance of government openness and accountability, and reminds citizens of the laws that ensure public access: the Sunshine (open meetings) Act and the Pennsylvania Right to Know Act.

But having laws to ensure openness doesn’t guarantee it— especially, it seems, in Pennsylvania. It takes constant vigilance by citizens and journalists. Recent bad behavior by selfanointed secrecy zealots in the Legislature reminds us of that.

Two media organizations, The Caucus and Spotlight PA, requested records to uncover how the Pennsylvania Legislature — the country’s largest full-time legislature — spends $360 million a year in tax dollars. The officials’ response: The House provided expense records with many redactions. When the news organizations asked for additional records, the House continued to black out expense details.

At first, Senate officials also blacked out expense details. But when the news organizations submitted a new request, officials took the unprecedented step of deleting thousands of expense explanations as though they’d never existed, without acknowledging they’d done so.

The expense redactions and deletions provoked protest, not only from the media, but also from many legislators, for whom the arrogance and shamelessness of the move were too much. On March 5, the House relented. Officials restored many of the redacted expense details and said they would provide more information soon. The news organizations are still pursuing the complete Senate expense records.

We don’t have room to include all the damning details here, but the redactions/deletions were little more than blatant attempts to skirt the Right to Know to hide what so far looks like totally innocuous information.

For example, according to Spotlight PA, information initially blacked out on a $73.31 breakfast meeting during state budget negotiations had simply stated that staffers met with “Senate leadership” to discuss the “voting calendar for the week of 6/5/2017.”

Trivial things are often covered up simply as a power exercise or worse, to inure us to larger future coverups. As PBS journalist Bill Moyers said, “Secrecy is the freedom zealots dream of . . . The secret government has no constitution. The rules it follows are the rules it makes up.”

Pennsylvania lawmakers have long been “making it up,” by skirting the law requiring public access to information. The problem now readily apparent is that public officials who routinely operate outside the law undermine the credibility essential to enlisting public support and trust during crises such as the one we now face with coronavirus.

That’s why “sunshine” in government matters.

— Harrisburg Patriot News/ Pennlive.com/ The Associated Press

Crisis reveals need

Just as the Great Recession revealed the need for better long-term financial regulation, the unfolding COVID-19 national health emergency reveals the need for better statelevel public health policy.

An analysis of state responses to the crisis, by the financial services site WalletHub, found that Pennsylvania has the 21st-most aggressive program among the states. It’s an aggregate rank based on prevention and containment (22), reducing risk factors and quality of health care infrastructure (25), and limiting the financial impact (33).

But the state is a laggard regarding funding for health care emergency preparedness, at 47th among the states in per-resident spending.

That continues a long downward trend. Last July, a State Health Access Data Assistance Center analysis found that Pennsylvania ranked 45th among the states in health care spending per person, $13, through the end of 2017. The national average at that time was $36 per resident. It reached $13 per resident after a long, steady decline from 2005, when Pennsylvania spent $29 per resident on public health. (This year the state Department of Health received a modest budget increase, from $199 million to $203 million.)

As the Wolf administration orchestrates its short-term response to the current crisis, it is not too early for lawmakers to commit themselves to making public health preparedness a higher priority. And for all the rhetoric about government priorities, the surest proof of those priorities is in the budget.

— The Scranton Times-Tribune/ The Associated Press