The Morning Call Archives
The Morning Call Archives
Copyright © 2009 The Morning Call
ID: 4315659
Publication Date: February 22, 2009
Day: Sunday
Page: B1
Edition: SECOND
Section: Local
Type: Local
Dateline:
Column:
Length: medium | |
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|Byline: By Paul Muschick Of The Morning Call |
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|Headline: Public has right to hear tapes of meetings |
|The ruling is in. You're entitled to listen to tapes of your elected officials' public meetings. |
|But ask quickly, because those tapes don't have to be kept for long. |
|The state's open records office ruled last week the recordings are public records under Pennsylvania's new Right to Know Law. It |
|issued the opinion after several governments, including Chalfont Borough in central Bucks County, asked for advice. |
|If you can't make your school board, township or borough council meeting, you can listen to the verbatim discussion, if it was |
|taped. |
|The pressure's now on Chalfont officials to prove their commitment to open government and continue to record council meetings, |
|knowing what they say can be heard by more than the handful of people who attend. |
|That thought has scared some Chalfont politicians. They've considered not recording meetings anymore, so there would be no tape to|
|make public. Devious, but legal, because there is no law requiring meetings to be recorded. The law should be changed to require |
|it. |
|Chalfont officials didn't pull the plug on their recorder immediately, opting to wait for the state's opinion, which is on my blog|
|at . |
|Borough Manager Melissa Shafer said officials will discuss how to proceed at council's March 10 meeting. |
|If they want to back up their boast about having nothing to hide, they won't change a thing. They'll keep taping. |
|What's the harm? |
|In January, a few council members said they'd behave differently knowing the public could hear tapes. That's disconcerting. It |
|suggests that with a tape rolling, council is more likely to script its comments. |
|If council chickens out and stops taping, that won't stop the audience from recording. The law allows it, whether council likes it|
|or not. |
|That's because what council says isn't meant to be secret. Meetings are public so residents can observe the people they've trusted|
|with their tax money. |
|Chalfont isn't the only local government concerned about meeting tapes being public records. |
|Franklin Park, a borough near Pittsburgh, also requested a formal advisory opinion from the state. Others have informally asked |
|about it, said open records office Executive Director Terry Mutchler. |
|Mutchler said the law should not scare governments from recording. |
|"I think that the better open government approach is to continue taping if you're taping, but just to recognize this is a public |
|record," she said. "I want local officials and citizens not to be afraid of public records, and I think that's what's happening |
|here." |
|I've listened to meeting tapes of Allentown and Northampton County councils without encountering resistance. Other reporters have |
|listened to East Penn and Bethlehem Area school board and Lehigh County commissioners tapes. |
|The resistance in Chalfont started in November after a property owner who is suing the borough over a proposed development asked |
|for a tape of the meeting in which the development was discussed. |
|The borough rejected the request, which was placed under the state's insanely restrictive old Right-to-Know Law that kept many |
|records secret. |
|Chalfont said it didn't have to turn over the tape then because the written meeting minutes, not the tape, were the public record |
|of the meeting. |
|Chalfont would have to provide the tape under the new law. But the property owners, Harry and Anne Hassan and the Oxford Lane |
|Homeowner's Association, don't intend to pursue it for reasons their lawyer wouldn't tell me. |
|If they change their minds, the tape might not be around. |
|The state open records office didn't address how long governments must retain tapes, deferring to the state's record retention |
|law. |
|Susan Hartman of the state archives and history bureau said recordings are considered a "draft" document and may be destroyed |
|after they have "fulfilled their purpose." |
|In Chalfont, a secretary uses the tapes to compile the written minutes. The tapes are destroyed after the minutes are approved, |
|usually a month later. |
|Some other local governments operate the same way, so don't hesitate if you want to hear a tape. |
|The Watchdog is published Thursdays and Sundays. Contact me by e-mail at watchdog@, by phone at 610-841-2364 (ADOG), by |
|fax at 610-820-6693, or by mail at The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA, 18101. |
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