Hard to open records

By: David Noack Survey by 13 papers says requests denied often

Local government officials in Pennsylvania denied requests for public records nearly a third of the time, according to a statewide survey conducted by 13 newspapers.
In addition, when the papers factored in rejection rates for police logs and school and county financial records, the overall refusal jumped to 43%. Those are just part of the findings of a far-reaching study of how the public fares in getting access to government documents.
In a test of the Pennsylvania's ""Right to Know Act,"" the participating newspapers sent 90 reporters to selected government agencies in all 67 of the state's counties to get access to government records that are considered public under state law. The audit was conducted in mid-January, with follow-up visits and phone calls made in February.
The stories were published in 13 newspapers on April 25. It was up to the individual newspapers to decide how they wanted to play the stories. The Patriot-News in Harrisburg published an eight-page pull-out section and The Morning Call in Allentown used five stories over a week's time.
Other survey findings include: police records were denied 77% of the time, and the state police refused to release any records. The salaries of school superintendents were denied 29% of the time, and access to county telephone records were rejected 30% of the time. On a positive note, access to county meeting minutes was 100% and access to local animal control ordinances was 97%.
The project was spearheaded by William Northrop Sr., vice president and co-publisher of the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa., who embarked on personal lobbying campaign to line up newspapers to participate in the project.
Northrop, who has long been involved in pushing for greater access to public records and open government meetings, decided to see whether other newspapers in the state would be interesting in participating in a public records audit, which is modeled after a similar project conducted in Indiana. Since then, newspapers in Virginia and New Jersey have conducted similar ""public record audits"" using Indiana as the model.
In the states where the project has been duplicated, the results have been strikingly similar.
""We made it simple and easy to comply with. Nothing strange. We researched the legal side to make sure that these [public record requests] indeed withstood court tests. There was a concern that ... if the compliance was really good than we shot ourselves in the foot,"" says Northrop.
The unusual collaborative effort was an offshoot of earlier work to gain access to public meetings with Operation Open Government, where newspaper publishers and editors joined forces to strengthen the state's ""Sunshine Law."" The new effort, called Project Open, was created to test the availability of public records.
Northrop says he wasn't surprised by the results of the survey.
""We've known this is going on, but most of the time, you get from local officials and legislators that it isn't widespread; it's just occasional; they have good reason; [or] they are protecting confidentiality. For an average citizen to pursue this stuff they have to sue,"" asserts Northrop, a former president of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
Local governments in Pennsylvania are not taking the survey lying down.
In a memo dated April 28 to members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, who would vote to revamp the open records law, the Pennsylvania Local Government Conference is disputing parts of the newspaper project.
They contend that records maintained by local governments go far beyond the documents requested by the newspapers, such as deeds, mortgages, wills, land use, property assessments, and judicial records.
The group also accuses the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers of abandoning an earlier effort to revamp the current law.
Tim Darragh, assistant city editor at The Morning Call, says the reason the paper ran five stories from the 20-story series was based on space considerations.
""We ran an installment of a Morning Call-driven project that we started earlier this year and that dominated our front page, so it was just a matter of competing projects,"" says Darragh.
Tracy Collins, assistant managing editor for news at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, says his paper did a story about charter schools, which use public money, who don't feel they fall under the open records law.
""We were debating how much more to do because we also wanted to keep in mind the public's appetite for it, and we figured that since we already had a budget of 20 stories, we were probably at capacity,"" says Collins.
He says various aspects of the project were divided among the newspapers, with the Post-Gazette copy editing and creating graphics, while the York Daily Record developed the audit form for reporters to take in the field and document their findings, and the Patriot-News did a good deal of the writing.
Patriot-News managing editor Tom Baden says when the project was planned, the aim was to ""not have government fail in this.""
""This was not to get records that are in a gray area or ask for records that we knew they would say ""no"" to automatically. We tried to ask for records that plain people would want. What we found was that an awful lot of the time, too much of the time, you can't get records and that obtaining them is a process that is much more difficult, more intimidating than it should be,"" says Baden.
Don Asher, Porter County editor at The Times of northwest Indiana, who was the driving force behind the Indiana public records project, says he's surprised the project has been copied elsewhere.
""Never in my wildest imaginations did I ever believe the Indiana access project would be replicated to the degree it has been. Four states now have published access projects, and I know of at least two more states in the process,"" says Asher.

Pennsylvania newspapers participating in the project include:
Times-News Erie
Tribune-Review Greensburg
The Patriot-News Harrisburg
The Tribune-Democrat Johnstown
The Bradford Era Bradford
Pittsburg Post-Gazette Pittsburg
Reading Eagle Reading
The Sunday Times Scranton
Centre Daily Times State College
Observer-Reporter Washington
The Times Leader Wilkes-Barre
Warren Times-Observer Warren
York Daily Record York

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