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9/9/2007 3:33 AM

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Several years ago, a coalition of Pennsylvania newspapers, including the Observer-Reporter, took part in an experiment to see how difficult it would be to obtain public records from local governments. The unhappy results were then publicized, including a clerk who refused to show the animal control ordinance and a local police chief who had a reporter's license number traced for asking to see a police blotter.

Our Open Records Law remains as bad as ever, and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association has issued a challenge to citizens, asking them to request one public record from an agency of their choice. With more than 5,000 local agencies to choose from, there is little chance that any particular county, municipality, authority, etc. will be overly burdened.

Yet, that is one objection raised, albeit parenthetically, by the Pennsylvania Local Government Conference, an umbrella group that represents counties, cities, boroughs, townships, municipal authorities and school districts. In a letter to PNA, it objected principally that the campaign ignores "the plain fact that we fulfill the vast majority of records requests easily, immediately and completely, and instead persists in portraying records retrieval as some arbitrary and torturous process."

But in our experience there are times when that is an accurate description of the process. We had an example last week.

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Burgettstown Borough is preparing to take action Monday on an ordinance dealing with dog problems, from attacks to excessive barking, and also regulating the presence of "exotic" animals. In an attempt to write a story informing residents about the issue, one of our reporters asked the borough building for a copy of the proposed ordinance.

The request was refused on the grounds that it was only a proposal and it might be misconstrued as law. (Bizarrely, we were told we could come to Burgettstown and read it, but a copy could not leave the premises.) We then called a councilman who told the borough employees to release the document, but he had to intervene a second time when they insisted on waiting to get permission from the solicitor.

We finally obtained it, but at a price of $18 for a nine-page FAX transmission at a rate of $2 per page! Now $18 is no hardship for our company, but it could be enough to discourage an ordinary citizen looking for information.

It would be unfair to single out Burgettstown as an open records offender. We not only were helped through the intercession of a councilman but the borough solicitor called later to apologize about any difficulty we experienced.

But the point is we need a new law, spelling out that all records are presumed to be open to the public unless there is a valid reason to keep them confidential. Social Security numbers of public employees, for example, would be off limits, but not plans to deal with barking dogs.

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