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Editorial: Open Records

A victory for Pa.

The word

reform

is tossed around too easily in politics, but legislators in Harrisburg have completed a new open-records bill worthy of that label. Gov. Rendell should sign it into law.

Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law had been one of the weakest in the country. The new legislation should create more openness at all levels of government, from the local magistrate to the governor's office.

Unlike the old law, documents will be presumed to be public unless government officials can prove otherwise. Until now, the burden has been on citizens to prove why they should have access to records.

Legislators decided to extend the law's coverage to state-related universities, such as Penn State and Lincoln University, and to the General Assembly itself. That's progress.

This is one of the clearest examples yet that the legislature is trying to be more responsive to the public since the pay-raise debacle of 2005. Among the leaders of this reform effort who deserve plaudits are Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Chester) and Reps. Tim Mahoney (D., Fayette) and Josh Shapiro (D., Montgomery).

No law is perfect, and there are drawbacks to this one. Although the law covers the legislature for the first time, legislators gave themselves some wiggle room. A semi-independent Open Records Office will decide on record requests involving most government agencies, but the House and Senate will appoint their own officers to rule on inquiries for legislative records.

That's a big fumble. It leaves the door open for legislative leaders to unduly influence decisions about which records are made public and which ones are kept secret. It will be up to the integrity of these appointed officials in the House and Senate to uphold the spirit of openness in the new law.

But Pileggi is correct when he says the new act is a "quantum leap forward." It should enable most citizens to obtain records without the cost of going to court.

Compare that with the experience of three news organizations that sued to obtain spending records of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Authority. They spent 20 months and nearly $50,000 in legal fees before finally obtaining agency records that should have been public all along. (A judge wisely has ordered PHEAA to repay those legal fees for its willful disregard of the open-records law).

Legislators did a reasonably good job of balancing privacy concerns and the public's right to know what public officials are up to. In the end, the legislation received unanimous support in the House and Senate. That's a rarity in Harrisburg.

It's a good start to the new session. The next challenge is for legislators to tackle other reforms, including the state's antiquated campaign-finance laws.