Aug 27, 2017 3 min read

The fight for open records in Pennsylvania can be a long and winding road.

That was illustrated recently by the Observer-Reporter’s fight to make public the federal settlement between Central Greene School District and a special education teacher who accused a former high school principal of coercing her into a sexual relationship.

Six months after it was finalized, the settlement was finally released after the newspaper successfully made the case it is indeed a public document.

The state’s relatively new “right-to-know” law passed nearly a decade ago is a vast improvement over the previous one, which assumed records are private unless the requestor proves they are public. Now, all records are considered public unless the government agency proves otherwise.

But the process is still too slow.

The newspaper initially made its open records request April 17, asking officials from the district to release the federal settlement. It was a standard request under the right-to-know law in which the district had five days to agree to release the document, deny the request or ask for a continuance of 30 days to allow the school board’s solicitor to research the legality of the request.

The district asked for a continuance, which is typical to ensure it’s on firm legal ground when deciding whether to release a document. At the end of those 30 days, the district declined to formally respond by the May 19 deadline, in effect denying the newspaper’s request.

From there, the newspaper took its case to the state Office of Open Records (OOR), an independent agency in Harrisburg that makes final determinations for matters across Pennsylvania. Over the next 60 days, the OOR solicited and reviewed information from both sides before making a ruling. That decision usually is returned within a month, but this time, it took the entire 60 days.

The OOR agreed with the newspaper that the federal settlement is a public document and ordered the district to release it within 30 days, barring an appeal in Greene County Court. The district did so last Tuesday when no party involved appealed.

In all, it took 128 days – more than four months – from the start of the process to the settlement’s public release. That’s just too long and must be streamlined.

The district did nothing wrong with how it responded to the request. It followed the rules and complied with the order.

But that initial 30-day continuance period after a request is made all too often is used as a stall tactic by public agencies. There are legitimate reasons why a lawyer representing a school district or municipality needs that time period to perform a thorough review. Other times, it seems a school district or municipality knows from the very beginning they don’t plan to release it.

That timeline should be shortened – maybe 15 days instead – so the public document is still relevant by the time it’s released.

The current open records law has been a great boon for the public’s right to know more about what its government is doing, and these rights are afforded to everyone in Pennsylvania.

But a few small changes to shorten the timeline would be even more beneficial in the public’s ability to find information while it’s still fresh.