PA Officials Mull When To Charge More For Public Records

By Andrew Staub | PA Independent

Several years ago, when Elam Herr was planning an addition to his home, he submitted to the township plans that included installing a hot tub.

Soon, a pool and hot tub business began sending him ads and solicitations.

The company leaned of Herr’s plans through building permits filed with the municipality and was using the public information to pick up a new customer.

“The township did their research for him, and the taxpayers picked up the bill,” Herr said.

Herr happens to be assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, a group that has concerns about the costs commercial requests can have for municipalities and, in turn, taxpayers. The association supports legislation from state Sen. Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, that would make several changes to the Right-to-Know Law, including allowing agencies to charge more for commercial requests.

That stance feeds into a larger philosophical debate. The Right-to-Know Law is a valuable tool for residents, media and others use to gain access to records that show how their government works, and perhaps it’s fitting the government eat the cost of complying with those requests, said state Rep. Kate Harper, chairwoman of the House Local Government Committee.

But in a time when Facebook is tracking its users’ interests and even smart TVs can spy on personal conversations, businesses can still use an old-fashioned paper trail to find potential customers.

Harper said it’s legitimate to ask whether that’s an appropriate expense for municipalities.

“They don’t have people who are sitting around doing nothing waiting for these requests to come in,” Harper said, pointing out that extensive requests can be hard on small agencies with few employees.

Harper is proposing the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee study the fiscal impact of the Right-to-Know Law to determine whether a problem needs addressing. The examination would extend further than commercial requests, with Harper noting the Department of Corrections has been swamped with requests from inmates, too.

Corinna Wilson, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, said the group supports any attempt to gather data and is sympathetic to government agencies trying to do more work with fewer staff members. But she also noted concerns with charging more for commercial requests.

Corporations also pay taxes, she said, and charging them more for public records raises the issue of a double level of taxation. Plus, there’s concern about how to define a commercial request.

“Just because someone’s making money doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have as legitimate an interest in a record as anybody else,” Wilson said.

Under Pileggi’s legislation, agencies would provide commercial entities an hour of free search, retrieval, review and redaction services but could then charge for additional time spent on the request. The fee could not be more than the hourly wage of the lowest-paid public employee who is capable of the work.

Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Pileggi and a person who is fighting to run the state’s open records office, said commercial requests differ from requests from people trying to hold government accountable.

“That’s one kind of request. It’s an entirely different kind of request to have somebody looking to gather data and then make a profit from it,” Arneson said. “We’re not saying that the latter should be disallowed. People have been using government data to help their businesses in any number of ways for any number of years.”

Herr is just looking for “reasonable criteria” to make sure taxpayers aren’t picking up the tab for those using commercial requests to make a profit, he said. He welcomed Harper’s proposal to study the issue further, saying legislation sometimes has “unintended consequences.”

The study, if approved by lawmakers, could take six months to a year, Harper said. Until then, she doesn’t want to make any judgments.

“The best thing is to see how big the problem is first,” she said.