Legislators prepare to redo Pa. law


House and Senate bills would widen the state’s very limited definition of a public record.

HARRISBURG (AP) — State legislators received a firsthand look Tuesday at why critics say Pennsylvania’s open-records law is too weak: In front of them, the state’s top highway official reversed a decision his agency had made to withhold bridge safety ratings from the public.

As part of a hearing on proposed changes to the open-records law, the House State Government Committee had requested testimony from the Department of Transportation on why it refused to release bridge safety ratings to a newspaper that had asked for them several months ago.

With the collapse of a major bridge in Minnesota last week, bridge safety is a high-profile issue across the country, and Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler told legislators he would release the ratings despite internal agency concerns that releasing information would cause undue alarm or breach public security.

“It’s simply a judgment call,” Biehler told the panel. “I’d rather err on the side of providing information.”

Biehler said he arrived at the decision Tuesday morning, before he testified.

Critics of the state’s open-records law say that, among other things, it gives officials at all levels of government wide latitude to deny public records requests, a loophole they say has helped make Pennsylvania one of the worst public-access states in the country.

Another occurrence

The seeming capriciousness of PennDOT’s decision to withhold, then release the bridge safety ratings was not lost on Carl Lavin, a deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Lavin, who testified after Biehler, said the Philadelphia School District had refused to release a consultant’s report on student violence against teachers — until a teacher was seriously injured by a student Feb. 23 and the Inquirer planned a story about the district’s refusal to release the report.

“Miraculously, that report became available,” Lavin told legislators. “A judgment call, just as you saw today.”

A Philadelphia School District spokesman said the district initially refused the Inquirer’s verbal requests because the document is considered an internal draft report. It released the document out of concern that the Inquirer planned to write about an incomplete or outdated copy it had obtained, spokesman Fernando Gallard said.

Under current law, the definition of a public record is limited to an account, voucher or contract, or a minute, order or decision. House and Senate bills under consideration would widen the definition so that everything is considered a public record unless specifically exempt.

The extent of those exemptions are likely to be the subject of long and heated debate, from the e-mails that are sent between government officials to tapes of calls to emergency-response centers.

Bridge safety lags

Like Pennsylvania’s open-records law, the safety of Pennsylvania’s bridges also lags the nation. Of the 14,868 PennDOT-owned bridges that are longer than 20 feet, about one-quarter are considered to have a structural impairment — more than any other state.

In its rejection of the Beaver County Times’ request, PennDOT had maintained that the bridge safety ratings do not meet the definition of a public record, and fall within exemptions for internal reports and records whose release could endanger public security.

Biehler told reporters it could be weeks before PennDOT is able to release the safety ratings of the 25,000 bridges of 8 feet or longer it owns. However, he said the agency hopes to release within the week the safety ratings of Pennsylvania’s 54 truss bridges that are being reinspected because they are similar in design to the bridge that collapsed last week in Minnesota.

There are also about 7,000 bridges in Pennsylvania that are 20 feet or longer that are not owned by PennDOT.

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