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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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