Jan 31, 2015 4 min read

Gov. Tom Wolf has an ambitious agenda he wants to enact and a Legislature chock-full of Republicans who might not be inclined to see things his way. Clearly, he needs to pick his fights carefully.

He did not do that when he decided, two days after his inauguration, to fire Erik Arneson as the executive director of the commonwealth’s Office of Open Records.

Admittedly, the fate of a relatively obscure state employee is not something that’s going to light up the phones or send most folks to the ramparts, so here’s a recap of how Arneson found himself suddenly jobless: Upon the long overdue creation of the Office of Open Records in 2008, Terry Mutchler, a former journalist and attorney, was appointed to be its executive director for a six-year term. When her term expired last April, then-Gov. Tom Corbett dragged his feet on whether Mutchler would be reappointed or whether the office would have a new executive director. After Corbett was defeated by Wolf in November, Corbett’s spokesman indicated that the appointment would be left to Wolf.

However, in an about-face, just one week before leaving office, Corbett went ahead and appointed Arneson, a former newspaper scribe and an aide to Republicans in the state Senate, to the executive director’s job. Wolf, perturbed, went ahead and fired Arneson, and argued the appointment was “rushed through at the last minute after months of politically motivated delays” and that by removing Arneson, “I am standing up against an effort to destroy the integrity of the Office of Open Records and turn it into a political operation.”

The whole mess is headed to Commonwealth Court, where a hearing is planned for Wednesday. No matter the outcome, though, neither side has exactly covered itself in glory.

Corbett either should have reappointed Mutchler when her term expired, or named Arneson then. And Wolf should have kept his powder dry and given Arneson more time in the job. While working with senators, Arneson helped craft the Right to Know Law that led to the establishment of the Office of Open Records, and colleagues vouched for his evenhandedness and good character. If a pattern of partisan manipulation, or any other form of wrongdoing, emerged in Arneson’s handling of the post, then his dismissal would have been warranted.

As John Baer, a Philadelphia Daily News columnist, put it, “… Corbett played political opportunism, grabbing an appointment away from Wolf, and Wolf looks locked in political paranoia suggesting open records will close.”

Statewide media organizations, including the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, took Wolf to task for his handling of the matter. In a statement released Friday, the managing editors said it “sets a dangerous precedent” and that “Wolf has sent the message that the position can and will be tied to political affiliation.”

Until the creation of the Right to Know Law and the Office of Open Records, Pennsylvanians had to run an arduous course if they wanted to get their hands on public documents, from budget statements to memos or anything else having to do with the day-to-day operation of government. Now, the process has been smoothed, and, if a request for a document has been denied, the burden of proof is no longer on the person who is making the request, but the person who is denying the request. This is as it should be: In a democracy, people have a valid right to know how their tax dollars are being spent. Officials should err on the side of transparency and accountability, not obfuscation.

The Office of Open Records is too important to be rudderless for long. We hope this fracas is resolved quickly and the independence of the agency is assured.