At first I was a bit worried about how difficult this assignment would be. Especially after I looked up Pennsylvania's ranking in the Better Government Assosciation's 2002 survey of state open records laws and found that Pa. was number 48. Out of 50 states and seeing that ours was number 48, I didn't think that was a good sign. The only two states that were below Pa. out of all fifty states were Alabama and South Dakota.
But I guess you can only hope for the best. So I decided to send my request letter to the Indiana Area School District and asked to obtain the documents reflecting the total amount spent on legal fees in the Indiana School District for the year of 2006.
I sent my letter in the mail by April 3 and got a reply on April 16. I was pleased it only took them less than a week to get back to me. They sent a cover letter as well stating "this information is provided to you in accordance with provisions of the Right-to-Know Act." They did not try to argue or struggle with giving me the information because they knew they had to.
Although maybe I picked the wrong type of information to request from a high school because the information I got back didn't even cover a third of the page. Apparently purchasing professional and techincal services was the only legal services they had in 2006. But I guess the challenge wasn't meant to study the information you got back but to see if they would send it to you.
The next thing I did was use the website www.passopenrecords.org to find out if "my" legislators have signed on in support of improving Pennsylvania's open records law. I live in Indiana County so I first had to look up our representatives on www.legis.state.pa.us.
I found that Dave Reed had signed on in support of the law.
Samuel Smith did not. I had trouble locating an exact e-mail address for him. However, on his webpage I found a type of comment box that said it would sent the e-mail to him, so I tried that way but have not heard a reply.
The last representative was Jeff Pyle and he did not sign on. I e-mailed him to ask why and got a reply early this morning:
From: "Jeff Pyle"
Subject: Re: PA Open Records
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:30:48 -0400
To:
Hi Andrea
I didn't sign on to it because I objected to exposing constituent case files to the press. In actuality, we passed the bill last December and the Governor signed it into law. I voted for its passage.
I don't think I had a very difficult time with the PA Open Records Challenge and I suppose that's the way it's supposed to be. There is a reason these are "open records". It should be easy for the public to get their hands on information that is, well, public.
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