A sunny promise

Pennsylvania Sen. Jim Ferlo, shown at the table above, testified today at a hearing on amendments to the state’s open records law, where we were reminded, once again, that the state’s access law is about as bad as those in Communist nations.

Ferlo, D-Allegheny County, said a Better Government Association study ranked Pennsylvania 40th in the nation when it came to quality of its Right-to-Know law.

“It’s time for us to clean up state government,” Ferlo said before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee at the hearing in Uniontown.

Those of us in the news business don’t need rhetoric on how difficult it can be to take peek at such things as police blotters, reports paid for with taxpayer money or coroner’s records. Reporters fight this battle on a daily basis, and often meet up with ridiculous denials.

But state lawmakers are promising to add teeth to the law, that the hearing was not just another “dog and pony act.”

What's the big secret? Part 4

Here is an editorial from today's edition of the Observer-Reporter:

An IQ test to see a public record?

We thought we had heard every excuse in the book for denying citizen access to public records until we read the front page story on Sunday. The executive director of the Washington County Conversation District balked at giving our reporter a copy of a report because he would be too dumb to understand it.
It was only after County Commissioner Bracken Burns visited the office to explain the county’s policy on open records that the director, Gary Stokum, agreed to make a copy available to us. Burns noted that the county does not require an IQ test to view a public document.
Stokum correctly pointed out that none of our reporters is a trained geologist. Thus, he argued, there was no point in giving us the report because we couldn’t properly interpret it and might in fact misconstrue it and report on it inaccurately.
In the real world, that shouldn’t be a problem. Journalists frequently have to report on complex subjects in fields where they have no background - in science, medicine, law, even religion. In order to adequately inform the public, they have to interview competent people who have expertise in these matters. The notion that a reporter would take a technical geological study and try to interpret it in print himself is nonsense.
But the whole argument is beside the point. Public officials are not the owners of public documents, only their caretakers. The owners are the citizens - the people who pay for them - and they don’t have to satisfy the records’ guardians that they are smart enough before they can see them.
The first request to examine the estimated 40-page report that was funded by the state came from a community activist concerned about a power plant in Robinson Township and whether it can treat water from abandoned and flooded mines to cool its towers. When she went to the office, she was given just eight pages of the report and was allowed to read the rest of it only if someone stood over her.
But the government shouldn’t be allowed to control how much information citizens groups can have on the basis of how well-prepared its members are on the subject. Even if, heaven forbid, a public report is misunderstood, the agency always has the opportunity, if not the obligation, to set the matter straight. It may be a messy process, but it’s the way things should be done in a free society.
Then there was a footnote to the Conservation District story. On Tuesday, an estimate arrived in our newsroom of how much it would cost for a copy of the study. It came with the letterhead not of the agency but of a local company that does digital imaging, printing, copying and the like.
The total would be $219.23 for a total of 138 pages, counting all the bells and whistles, none of which we asked for. Most of the pages would be printed on “Williamsburg white” paper, but some others would be printed on “Mohawk color” or “Engineer white.” There are charges for “special drilling, “hand fold,” “tab typesetting” and “hand insert tabs.”
For Heaven’s sake, doesn’t the county own a copier it would let the Conservation District use? We asked for a copy of a public document, not a customized printing job. But this is an old story: Make access to public records as expensive and difficult as possible. Maybe the public will go away and leave the public agencies in peace.


UPDATE: We obtained 100 + pages of the mine water report Friday, Sept. 28, at a cost of $29.50.
It came with a fee of $25 cents per page under the terms of the Washington County policy on releasing public documents. The director of the Conservation District, which is an independent state agency housed in the county courthouse, agreed to adhere to the county policy Wednesday in a letter to the editor and publisher of the newspaper. The letter also falsely accused me of being rude and demanding to his staff. One of the things that I learned a long time ago when asking for records is the importance of pouring on the honey to clerks who hold the keys to the files.

Part 1

What's the big secret? Part 3

In our continued effort at the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa., to obtain a copy of a mine water report from the Washington County Conservation District, we were hit today with an estimate of $219.23 to reproduce the 158-page document. The bill showed costs for such things as hand folding and typesetting, which were not part of our right-to-know request.
You can view the bill here, and read the related stories at this link.
The newspaper responded to the Conservation District today in writing that the bill was unreasonable and that a simple copy from its copier would have been sufficient, at a reasonable cost, as stipulated in Pennsylvania's Open Records law.
Had the staff looked at its policy on producing such records, it might have realized that there shouldn't have been a charge for the first 10 page. The policy was written with the guiding hand of the state Department of Environmental Protection to include a fee of 15 cents for each additional copy. The price, then, would have worked out to $22.20. Stay tuned....

Part 4

What's the big secret? Part 2

Last week I posted something about the problems members of the media have faced with obtaining public records from civil servants. Before the week was out, I was met with a brand new excuse from an executive director of a government agency who didn't want to give me a copy of a feasibility study on bringing water to a new waste coal power plant being developed in Washington County, Pa. In a nutshell, the executive director of the Washington County Conservation District denied my request because he didn't think I would be able to understand the report. Here's how it went:

Gary Stokum, executive director of the conservation district office, appealed to a reporter with the Observer-Reporter to “be reasonable and use a little common sense” when he denied the newspaper a copy of the Erie Langeloth Francis mines report Friday.
“I have no idea what it costs to copy that report,” said Stokum, adding that the state Department of Environmental Protection had given him the impression that he does not have to provide copies of reports the agency generates.
Stokum said it would take a geologist to correctly interpret the report, and that it might be “misconstrued” and reported inaccurately in the newspaper if he wasn’t present to explain the document to a reporter.
“What good is it to you if you don’t understand it?” he said.
Ron Ruman, spokesman for the DEP in Harrisburg, said Friday afternoon that he also would investigate the newspaper’s complaint that it was unable to obtain a copy of the report.
Stokum’s salary is paid with taxpayer money, but he is not technically a county employee, said Washington County Commissioner J. Bracken Burns. County conservation districts are funded through a variety of sources, including money from the state Department of Agriculture.
Burns said he paid Stokum a personal visit to explain the county’s liberal open records policy Friday afternoon after becoming alerted to the difficulties people were having with getting a copy of the study.
Burns said it’s not necessary to “run an IQ test” on someone or judge their competence before making copies of public records available to residents.
Stokum then called the newspaper shortly after 3 p.m. Friday to say that the report was at a copying company and would be available to a reporter as early as Thursday.
“Well, you managed to rattle enough chains,” he said.
Observer-Reporter

Part 3

(The sunshine logo belongs to the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition)

What's the big secret? Part 1

News reporters who are more than bodies in newsrooms being spoon-fed information by public officials can fill a book with stories about the troubles they have obtaining public records.
One of my favorites involves a Chartiers-Houston School District office clerk’s reaction in 1998 when I asked for the salaries of the principals at the public schools in her district in Washington County, Pa. She said she understood that the salaries were public information, except, in her opinion, they were to be kept private. My request was denied in what was then a test the print media launched into Pennsylvania's conflicting right-to-know law.
And then there was the case of police in Beaver who trailed me out of town while running a check on my driving history after I asked to see the police blotter, records that Pennsylvania’s courts have ruled should be readily available for inspection by residents. I will be writing more about that later.
My experiences were nothing when compared to what happened after Jim Parsons, an investigative reporter for WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, sought to inspect the travel expenses of officials with the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which provides grants and loans to offset the cost of a college education.
Parsons eventually got to see the documents after the station and other media owners spent $70,000 on legal bills to force PHEAA to shed some light on its books. But he was hit with a nearly $30,000 bill for the cost of making copies and the time it took PHEAA officials to black out what they didn’t want him to see in the receipts. He has not paid the bill.
PHEAA, meanwhile, incurred $400,000 in legal expenses.
The reporter uncovered abuses at the agency that left many people wondering how many kids could have been put through school had the agency been a little more responsible with its expense accounts.
Parsons told his story Saturday at a workshop on open government at the University of Pittsburgh. It was sponsored by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition.
The groups are holding such discussions across Pennsylvania while lawmakers debate three amendments to the state’s Open Records law, which is among the worst in the nation. It doesn’t even presume that all documents that are paid for with tax dollars are worthy of public scrutiny, or provide an clear definition of those that can be kept secret.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, which printed the postcard shown above, is collecting stories at a new blog from people who have had trouble getting a peek at records kept by their elected officials. Drop the association a note as it lobbies for stronger measures to let the sun shine on just how your tax money is being spent.

A related post.

UPDATE: PHEAA boss resigns