EDITORIAL – Pa. House votes to open records

How are our tax dollars being spent?

Finally, it seems like we’ll get an answer to that… How are our tax dollars being spent?

Finally, it seems like we’ll get an answer to that question and many more. The House State Government Committee will vote and most likely approve legislation today to make state and local government records more open to the public, according to the Tribune-Review.

Pennsylvania has a reputation for having the worst public records laws in the country. In fact, its definition of what qualifies as public record, written in 1957, has not been changed since.

Currently, Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Act cites only certain documents coming from certain agencies as public. Government records are deemed closed to the public unless the person requesting the information proves otherwise.

The Right to Know Act also allows certain exceptions to the law. For example, while state-affiliated universities are regarded as agencies that are subject to the law, past court cases have shown that there are ways for universities to get around providing the public with information.

Thankfully this legislation, if passed, will bring Pennsylvania out of the dark ages and will open up its laws to reevaluation.

Legislators have seen the light with this bill. If it is approved, records will be considered public unless they are part of a new, narrower list of exclusions.

The legislation has eliminated many of the previous exceptions that allowed agencies to withhold information that could potentially be deemed open to citizens. “The more exceptions, the more opportunities there will be for [government officials] to deny access to information people should have,” Beverly Schenk, a Harrisburg resident who has been pushing for the passage of this bill for more than four years, told the Post-Gazette.

Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, who is sponsoring his own public records bill in the state Senate, told the Post-Gazette that “all Pennsylvanians deserve to have ready and easy access to all levels of government and they have a right to know what elected officials are spending, legislating and regulating with the public trust they have been given.”

And Ferlo is absolutely right. People should always be entitled to know how their government is functioning and how their tax dollars are being spent.

Recall the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the Petersen Events Center, the thousands of dollars spent on its restorations and repairs. Taxpayers were kept entirely in the dark about exactly how much money was being spent on the arena and exactly for what their money was being used. Pitt might have misused our money and there’s no way we would know. School officials kept quiet and were protected by law.

But, hopefully, this legislation will change things. It will allow us access to information about where our tuition is going and how our board of trustees is using money. How else can we catch mistakes or negligence or hold agencies and institutions accountable for their actions?