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8/13/2007 3:32 AM

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It was coincidental that barely a week after the Minneapolis bridge disaster a Pennsylvania legislative panel was presented with an example of why our state's Open Records Law should be changed. Among the records that public agencies believe can be lawfully kept from the public are bridge safety ratings.

As part of a hearing on proposed changes to that law, the House State Government Committee had requested testimony from the Department of Transportation as to why it refused to release the ratings as requested by the Beaver County Times.

Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler told legislators he would release the records, although we doubt if he would have done so without legislative prodding. More interesting, though, was his justification for withholding them: that they might cause undue alarm or breach public security.

"It's simply a judgment call," he said.

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And that is the whole problem. Access to public documents too often depends only on the "judgment" of particular officials. That is why, for example, you can't find out how many accidents have occurred at a particular intersection. It's because their judgment is that such information could be used as evidence in a lawsuit.

The present law covers only a narrow category of documents held by government. That's one thing that has to be changed.

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