This came as no shock to me. I fully expected Pitt to want to fight any attempts to change the Commonwealth’s open records law to include Pitt, Penn State and Temple. Penn State may be out on point on this, and getting the most attention. Pitt is in there as well fighting against it.
In written testimony submitted for Pitt, Paul Supowitz, vice chancellor for governmental relations, said “the public is entitled to know how the university makes use of the funds provided by the commonwealth. However, inclusion in the broadly mandated disclosure requirements of a full open records provision will have very unnecessary and detrimental results for the University of Pittsburgh.”
Pitt and Penn State emphasized concern about their status as competitive research universities. Spanier said Pileggi’s bill would make Pennsylvania’s public research universities less attractive for company partnerships and deals surrounding licensing technology.
Oh, bull-effing-crap. Can they please cite the state that can claim the competitive advantage from a lack of open records that aided university research partnerships with companies? Pennsylvania has one of the weakest and worst open records laws — to go with the historically lack of transparency of government — amongst the 50 states. Lack of state government transparency should not be a competitive advantage.
You know what’s depressing about the hearing, only 3 of the 11 state senators on the committee bothered to show up for it.
The bill falls short of a similar proposal advocated by Mr. Rendell, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and others.
True open records law reform must include language that presumes government records are open to the public, testified Teri Henning, chief counsel for the newspaper association.
Senate Bill 1 does not change the presumption that records are closed unless the requester proves otherwise.
“Most state laws, and the federal Freedom of Information Act, begin with the presumption that records in the possession of agencies that relate to public business are public records,” she said.
It’s not even that strong a bill, though, the sponsor of the bill, State Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is interested in amending the bill to change the presumption.
“Since introducing Senate Bill 1, I’ve heard from many people who believe that the legal presumption should be that a government record is public unless it meets an exception specifically listed in law. That position was also advocated by several of those who testified at today’s public hearing.
“I am now convinced that we should reverse the presumption in Pennsylvania’s law, despite concerns that doing so could lead to an increase in litigation and delay the benefit from strengthening our Open Records Act.
“Reversing the presumption is a major change, and we need to carefully balance the right of citizens to review records with the need for appropriate exceptions to protect legitimate interests. Developing the list of exceptions should involve input from a wide spectrum of interested parties.
“My goal is to work with Sen. Piccola and other members of the Senate, members of the House, Gov. Rendell, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and other organizations. I hope to prepare an amendment to Senate Bill 1 which can be offered in the State Government Committee as soon as possible.”
Sorry if this seems off-topic, but the sad fact is that Pitt is just as eager as Penn State to keep the status quo. Pitt may have made the base salaries of its highest paid coaches publicly known, but they are happy to keep Paterno’s and the situation the same. That doesn’t make Pitt better on the issue. It just makes the school a little more savvy about staying directly out of the argument.
