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Sadly, three local state representatives, Todd Eachus, Phyllis Mundy and Karen Boback voted with the legislators who took what was originally a good open records law and turned it into a secrecy in government document.
Rep. Boback also voted against an amendment that would have abolished an exemption in the modified law that allows any request to be denied if a public servant found the request to be “harassment.” Since when is asking for information harassment?
The list of problems with the bill is long, from the exclusion of existing records in order to protect current politicians from scrutiny, to the delay of its implementation until after the next legislative election, to the explicit preservation of court rulings that close public records.
All of those provisions speak to the hubris of lawmakers, but another provision even tops those for sheer arrogance.
The gutted bill would exempt all government e-mail from public disclosure.
The issue in public disclosure isn’t the ability of citizens to obtain pieces of paper from the government. It is their ability to obtain information. That information is public property whether it’s stored on paper or in a digital format.
(The House rejected an amendment by Rep. Babette Josephs of Philadelphia to kill the e-mail exemption. Reps. Eachus, Mundy and Boback voted against this common sense proposal.)
The supposed purpose of the e-mail exemption is to shield from disclosure correspondence between citizens and government officials. The result will be much more government business by e-mail in order to shield the public officials.
So far, the House has made a travesty of what was supposed to a key reform. If passed, this bill will make Pennsylvania, the state with one of the three worst public disclosure laws in the nation, the only state to shield government e-mail from public disclosure. Every other state either specifically includes e-mail in public disclosure laws or does not differentiate between e-mail and other documents. Apparently, in every state capital except Harrisburg, public information is more important than its form of storage.
John Yudichak and Mike Carroll both voted in favor of amendments that would provide for open government. They are to be commended.
On the other hand, Reps. Eachus, Mundy and especially Boback must remember that they work for the taxpayers. The taxpayers have a right to know what our government is doing. They should legislate accordingly.
