Lifting the Lid off of Pennsylvania Government
Jamie Blaine, a former US Army Staff Sergeant, teacher and newspaper publisher from Avondale, Pennsylvania, had done a lot of things before this past April—but blogging wasn’t one of them. That was before he launched PassOpenRecords.org, a new website advocating for more open, transparent government.
Pennsylvania’s open records laws have never been good, according to Blaine, but the current spirit of government reform in the state, not to mention an electorate restless for change, has provided a unique opportunity for local leaders like Blaine to spread the word about free speech and transparent government.
“The aim of PassOpenRecords.org is to begin an open conversation in which everyone can participate,” says Blaine. “It’s a project of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, a member-driven organization, that has been trying to get the open records law changed for a long time.”
Blaine explains how there are three areas of the open records laws that are in need of reform. “The first has to do with presumption. The legal presumption has always been that records are not public unless the requester can demonstrate a legitimate reason to see them. The burden is on the requester to justify that he or she has a need to see a record, much less a right.”
But changing the burden of presumption is only the first step. “Currently, the records of the legislature are not public; they’re not considered a public record,” says Blaine. Other state legislative bodies are also exempt from public records requests. For instance, Blaine says the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA)–the board that manages state student loans–argues that its records are not public records because they were "legislative records;” they would disclose "trade secrets;" and they would violate the privacy rights of individuals. Blaine says that this is an example of why the burden of presumption needs to change.
Reform also needs to happen in the area of timing. Specifically, says Blaine, government offices should respond to records requests within a reasonable amount of time. Blaine tells the story of how the Harrisburg-based Patriot-News newspaper requested records on legislators’ board retreats, only to end up having its request tied up in court for 18 months before it won access and discovered that the state paid between $800,000 to $900,000 for the trips. Lately, there has been an effort to find out legislative staffers’ bonuses, but without reform, Blaine says, it could be a while before those who are requesting the records will get any results.
Blaine has high hopes for his new website, as well as the discussion that he intends to begin. “When I first started posting on the blog, I felt as if I was talking to myself, but suddenly people started jumping on,” Blaine says. “We sent out news releases about the project, but I have a feeling that a lot of the publicity has been through word of mouth.”
“The end goal of this project is to pass a good open records law, and when we’re finished I’ll be happy to have been able to call this new blogging project a success.”
