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Editorial: Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law Needs Reform

Published: February 28, 2005
Last Updated: February 28, 2005

Sample editorial: Please run week of March 13.

Feel free to replace the examples with your own. This needs no attribution if it's an editorial. If you prefer to use it as a column, credit Susan Schwartz, Pennsylvania Sunshine Chair for the Society of Professional Journalists.

This is national Sunshine Week, a time to celebrate the rights we as American citizens have to keep tabs on what our government is doing.

But here in Pennsylvania, there’s not much to celebrate.

Ours is one of the most secretive governments in the country.

If our township supervisors want to enlarge the local sewer plant, they can refuse to let us see their plans until it's too late for us to register objections. That's what happened recently in a township near Allentown, where supervisors told a resident he would have to pay several hundred dollars to make a copy of the document. He was told it was not a public document because the board had not yet acted on it, so it was kept from him, even though the plant might cause his taxes to increase or bring more development and traffic to his neighborhood.

If a serial rapist is stalking our neighborhoods, police can legally decide not to warn us. That's what happened in Pittsburgh in 2000, when police believed a serial rapist had sexually assaulted four women, but failed to alert the community. They also refused to release the crime reports once word got out and a local newspaper requested them.

If a teenager dies because a 911 dispatcher shrugs off the phone calls reporting that he is being beaten to death by a gang, we might never find out. In 1994, Eddie Polec, 16, died in Philadelphia despite 20 calls to 911 reporting the beating. It was only by chance the public learned that dispatchers refused to take the calls seriously. 911 logs are secret in Pennsylvania.

And you'd better hope the restaurants where you eat don't violate health laws. If the Department of Agriculture decides the violations are serious enough to take court action, it won't necessarily close the restaurant while the case is pending. But it will close the records that could warn you.

Even when we do have a clear right to government documents, bureaucrats can illegally refuse to hand them over. Or they can charge us ridiculous amounts.

The only way we can force them to follow the law is by taking them to court. When we do that, they'll fight us with lawyers paid by our tax dollars.

It doesn't have to be this way. In most other states, police incident reports are public records, and their crime rates are no higher. In 46 states, all records put together by government agencies are open to the public, with some exceptions for things such as the names of confidential informants and Social Security numbers. In some states, there's even a government office devoted to helping citizens and government employees understand and follow the state's right to know rules.

But whenever open government advocates fight to change Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law, legislators reply that none of their constituents care.

We know that isn’t true. Ask Becky Heller of Berwick, a resident concerned about a huge tax increase who was ordered to pay $15.50 an hour while she scanned minutes of old school board meetings into her computer. Or ask Joseph and Jacqueline Martella of Johnstown, owners of a pharmacy who recently lost a court case to see the application a medical center filed to build a parking lot right next to their business.

It's wrong that Pennsylvania, which helped lead the country to a government by the people, for the people, is now one that stifles the people's right to see what their government is doing.

Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law must be reformed. We shouldn't have to spend another Sunshine Week in the dark.