Stacks under wraps
No reason to withhold report on lt. governor
Gov. Tom Wolf has made the disappointing decision to withhold a report on the alleged abusive treatment of state employees by Lt. Gov. Mike Stack and his wife, Tonya. Mr. Wolf said an airing of the contents would amount to “piling on” and be unfair to Mrs. Stack, who sought mental health treatment in the spring.
However, the state openrecords law does not permit the withholding of records to prevent “piling on.” Mr. Wolf is substituting his judgment for the law, just as Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald recently did in refusing to release their bid for Amazon’s second headquarters.
Months ago, news organizations reported that Mr. Wolf had stripped the Stacks of their state police security detail and scaled back staffing at their state-owned home because of reports that the couple had been abusive to the help. At the time, Mr. Wolf asked the state inspector general’s office to investigate the Stacks’ behavior, and he said he would consider making the IG’s report public.
There’s no reason not to do so. Mrs. Stack’s mental health treatment was acknowledged in the spring, and the IG’s report isn’t likely to contain details about her diagnosis or treatment. If it does, that information can be redacted. No one wants to pry into Mrs. Stack’s health.
However, the report likely will shed light on what the Stacks did and said, and to whom. Mr. Stack has acknowledged rudeness, without giving many details. The IG’s report is likely to provide details, and that information is relevant to voters, who will have to decide next year whether to give Mr. Stack another four years in the state’s No. 2 job. By running for office, Mr. Stack, a Democrat, sought the spotlight. He can’t turn it off at this pleasure.
On Wednesday, Democrats in the state Senate decided to endorse Mr. Stack’s bid for a second term. If they did so without reading the IG’s report, they made a decision in a vacuum. That’s bad politics and poor leadership. Mr. Stack should be frank with voters if he wants them to give him another chance. Instead, he’s pleased with Mr. Wolf’s decision to keep the report private, a sign that he remains unfit for his job.
Mr. Wolf has displayed a disconcerting penchant for secrecy where the top officials in his administration are concerned. In October, he refused to explain the abrupt departure of his secretary of state, Pedro Cortes, which came in close proximity to reports that hundreds of ineligible immigrants had been registered to vote in recent years and that Russian hackers nosed around voter registration data before the 2016 election. Through an open-records request, news organizations obtained an email from the governor’s office that shed no light on the reasons for Mr. Cortes’ exit but hinted that he was forced from office.
The governor may believe that he’s doing the right thing by keeping the report on the Stacks under wraps. Mr. Peduto and Mr. Fitzgerald may believe the same about the Amazon bid. Citing a competitive advantage in keeping other applicants in the dark, the pair have said that secrecy about the incentives Pittsburgh offered to Amazon “is in the region’s best interest.”
More important, however, is what the law requires. News organizations now are making vigorous efforts to obtain the Amazon bid through the open-records process. The same process is available for possible access to the report on the Stacks. However, Mr. Wolf should see the error of his ways and simply release it. His duty is to the people of Pennsylvania, not to the Stacks.