The director of the new state Office of Open Records is criticizing parts of the law that created her department.

Terry Mutchler, a former Associated Press reporter overseeing the office that will handle appeals under the Right to Know Law, said she does not support sections of the law that set lower standards of openness for the Legislature than for other government agencies.

“Down the road I will advocate for a different procedure there,” said Mutchler, 42.

She called the law’s changes “fundamental,” but said in an interview she realizes that most people do not know what to make of her, because of her transition from being a reporter to becoming a lawyer and now, a government bureaucrat.  read more »

Mayor Nutter is now supporting a Penn Law student’s effort to get voting results available to everyone on election night, and he wants changes in place by the November election.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg is waging a campaign to end the system in which voting results, as they come in, are accessed only by people with passwords. He says any 12-year-old with computer experience could figure out how to export voting results to a website so they can be viewed on election night.

But the city commissioners’ office, which oversees elections, says altering their system would present tremendous technical hurdles. Staffers there say exporting data to a web page would require periodic system shutdowns during election night, impeding the tally.  read more »

New open-records legislation is on its way to the governor’s desk with the unanimous support of both chambers of the Legislature.

The Senate yesterday passed the bill, which is designed to let the public know more about state and local government spending and operations.

The sweeping rewrite of the Right-to-Know law was a key part of a wider reform agenda aimed at garnering public trust that was lost over the middle-of-the-night pay raises lawmakers approved for themselves in 2005.

Under the changes, all government records will be considered public unless their custodian can show there is an exemption in the law precluding disclosure.

An overhaul of Pennsylvania’s antiquated open-records law is on ice, awaiting a House vote that could send it on to the governor or prolong the debate for months.

The measure is considered the most likely reform bill to emerge from this Legislature.

The fundamental issue — balancing the public’s right to know with an individual’s right to privacy — was settled months ago. Lawmakers agreed that most government records should be open to the public, and to require agencies that keep records secret to justify their actions.

The latest Senate bill was approved by unanimous vote last week.

The Senate on Monday readied a rewrite of Pennsylvania’s open records law for a vote as senators look for ways to compromise with a House version that passed six weeks ago.

The Senate Rules Committee approved an amended bill, 14-1, and set it up for a potential vote today by the full Senate.

House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, expressed confidence yesterday that the chambers would send a final version to Gov. Ed Rendell for his signature this week.

In general, the Senate and House versions are designed to subject more records to public review and give citizens a better chance in court when challenging a government rejection of an open records request.

A coalition of government reform groups wants Gov. Ed Rendell to call a special session of the Legislature to act on what it calls “integrity issues,” such as campaign finance limits, reducing the size of the Legislature, imposing term limits for legislators, banning lobbyists from taking lawmakers to dinner and giving them gifts, and ending lame-duck sessions in November.

“Today is Day 921 since the pay raise of July 2005, and our government has done virtually nothing in law or [changes to the] constitution to improve integrity and prevent more of the scandals on parade that we have seen since the pay raise,” complained Tim Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising PA.  read more »

Bonus: A goofy historical quote from Bill DeWeese!

For a year that rang in heightened expectations of government reform in Pennsylvania, 2007 is retreating with a whimper.

What advocates hope will be the first overhaul of the state’s weak Right-to-Know Law in a half-century is bogged down in a dispute over details. Legislation to limit how much money donors may give to state and local political candidates has gone nowhere. So has a plan to replace the election of appellate judges with a system in which the governor appoints them from a screened list.  read more »

In a procedural move that left Republicans fuming, the Democrat-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted yesterday to send a Senate-approved open records bill directly to the House floor for debate tomorrow.

Republicans on the committee complained that Senate Bill 1, the open records bill that the Senate passed 48-1 last week, should first have gone to the House State Government Committee for the initial discussion about differences between that bill and a House version.

The State Government Committee last week approved an open records measure, House Bill 2072, that differs from the Senate bill in several ways.  read more »