Records law brings change in attitudes

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A new test of how government agencies respond to records requests shows that a year after Pennsylvania’s revamped Right-to-Know Law took effect, it may be transforming attitudes among government officials about the public documents and information under their control.

Over two days this fall, reporters and others from 33 Pennsylvania newspapers, a TV station, and a community college journalism class filed 274 requests for public records from police agencies, local government offices and school districts in an audit coordinated by The Associated Press.

The auditors drove nearly 5,000 miles, took copious notes and paid $335 in copying fees to see how agencies responded when people showed up at random to seek information.

About one in seven requests failed entirely, compared to nearly one in three during similar coordinated surveys conducted by Pennsylvania news organizations in 1999 and 2005.

Although the three audits involved different records, different laws and different methods — making a true numerical comparison impossible — they revealed clear patterns.

Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit organization that advocates to help people get access to public information, said the survey showed some barriers to access remain in place.

“Just because we have this complex new law, I don’t think it has opened the hearts and minds of those who are entrenched in government secrecy,” she said.

The auditors were instructed to request grant applications, 911 logs, police blotters, school superintendent contracts and job applications or resumes of public employees.

One similarity from past surveys was that some government officials, even those who produced the records, peppered requesters with questions about who they were, where they worked and why they wanted records.

The experiences of auditors provided some lessons for people who plan to seek records.

One requester was handed a $151 bill before he realized the scope of what he was getting, a reminder that requesters can ask to examine the records before they order any copies. Employees at another office refused to mail the records, even though the state’s Office of Open Records has ruled that agencies must do so if asked.

The easiest of the five record categories to obtain proved to be copies of a school superintendent’s contract, which were fully provided in 64 of 65 instances.

Five years ago the success rate for the same document was barely 50 percent, and some superintendents expressed surprise that their contracts were public records. It probably helped that the Altoona Mirror, in a 2007 reporting project, posted many superintendent contracts on its Web site.

Thirty-two of 46 police agencies provided full or partial access to their blotter — a log of their calls over a recent 24-hour period — meaning 30 percent offered nothing. In the 2005 survey, the failure rate was about 40 percent.

The state’s Criminal History Record Information Law says blotters are public records, although questions remain about exactly what qualifies as a blotter. Appeals-court decisions have defined it as “the equivalent of incident reports” and “a type of chronological compilation of original records of entry.”

When a reporter from The Morning Call of Allentown showed up at the Nazareth Police Department and requested a blotter, he had to produce photo identification three times, provide the name and number of his supervisor and was repeatedly asked to explain why he wanted the information — even though the law specifically bars agencies from forcing someone to reveal how they will use records.

The reporter, Kevin Amerman, walked away empty-handed.

“We don’t show that,” Chief Thomas Trachta told him. “We don’t just open our books like that.”

Trachta said later he was suspicious of Amerman’s request, but as a result of the exchange subsequently adopted a policy to post a blotter with basic information at the front desk.

The new law specifically allows access to “time response logs” from emergency dispatch centers.

Surveyors succeeded in obtaining the logs in 20 of 37 attempts, and in six other cases recorded partial access ranging from a log without callers’ names to a 50-page printout that was essentially incomprehensible.

Pennsylvania Newspaper Association lawyer Melissa Bevan Melewsky said 911 time logs are not defined in the new law, and cases to establish such a definition are still working their way through the courts. Some emergency centers told requesters they were watching those cases before deciding how much to disclose.