Lawsuit ruling was win for transparency

A Jefferson County judge dismissed a lawsuit last week filed by Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati’s campaign against The Caucus and two journalists.

Implications mean that people of Pennsylvania won’t be priced out of their government.

As Mike Wereschagin of The Caucus reported, “Scarnati wanted The Caucus, a publication of LNP Media Group, Caucus Bureau Chief Brad Bumsted and Spotlight PA reporter Angela Couloumbis to pay his accounting firm$ 5,070 for producing and copying public records that documented questionable campaign spending by Scarnati. He also wanted the trio to pay $ 1,000 in attorneys’ fees and court costs. But Magisterial District Judge Jacqueline Mizerock ruled that Scarnati’s campaign — not the journalists — should be on the hook for the costs his accounting firm incurred.” Spotlight PA is a nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer whose partners include LNP Media Group.

It seems important to remind everyone that the records in question in this case were public records of the campaign spending of Joseph Scarnati, the most powerful lawmaker in the state Senate.

Those public records had to be sought from an accounting firm because Scarnati’s campaign had stored them with the firmClyde, Ferraro & Co.

Had the district judge ruled in favor of Scarnati’s campaign — and should the campaign refile its lawsuit and succeed — the implications would be alarming.

As David Cuillier, a public records expert at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism, told The Caucus and Spotlight PA last month, campaigns could simply hire a pricey legal or accounting firm to maintain public records, then demand thousands of dollars fromany citizen who seeks access to those records.

“It’s totally contrary to the intent of the law and democracy,” Cuillier told The Caucus and Spotlight PA. “Essentially, you price people out of their government. It’s really dangerous.” We couldn’t agree more. It seems important to also point out that this lawsuit from Scarnati’s campaign clearly was aimed at getting revenge on journalists for doing their jobs too well.

LNP Media Group’s Bumsted and Spotlight PA’s Couloumbis — along with three other journalists — spent a year digging into the campaign spending of Scarnati and other state lawmakers. What they found is that a significant portion of that spending could not be traced using the information the lawmakers’ campaigns had publicly disclosed.

Candidates are required by state law to disclose campaign donors and expenses. But lawmakers frequently obscured their spending by listing expenses as credit card payments without detailing the actual expenditures.

In his records, Scarnati used vague descriptions like “lodging” without disclosing, for instance, that some of his hotel stays in 2016 were in Europe — where, as we noted last month, not many of his Jefferson County constituents reside.

The Caucus and Spotlight PA journalists found that Scarnati’s shielded spending amounted to nearly $ 246,000, which was more than any of the other nearly 300 campaigns the news organizations examined.

Last October, hours after The Caucus and Spotlight PA published their investigation, lawmakers — rather than expressing any kind of mortification — instead attempted to change the law to make it harder for the public to access the records upon which the investigation relied.

That effort quickly was abandoned ( it should have died of embarrassment). But as Wereschagin noted last week, media experts believe a “refiled lawsuit might achieve the same goal through the courts if it succeeds.”

Tom Murse, editor of The Caucus and executive editor of LNP ‘ LancasterOnline, called last week’s ruling “a victory for the citizens of Pennsylvania.”