Williamsport Sun-Gazette, Oct. 25

On election eve, Rendell finds open-records religion

As a newspaper that struggles daily to provide the public information that is systematically denied them by the most onerous open records law in the nation, we're heartened by Gov. Ed Rendell's promises for a wider open-records law in his second term, should he be elected.

But our thanks must be accompanied by the facts of the governor's first term.

He has been in office three years and 10 months.

He has been written four times by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, asking for his help in improving the state's public access laws.

His office hasn't broken any ground in providing records.

We are now two weeks from an election and, voila, he has found religion regarding open records when asked about it in a newspaper interview. He says he'll be glad to sit down with publishers and hash through improvements to allow the public more access to public records.

On what basis are we to come to the conclusion that this will happen? The governor has shown no indication through an entire term that reform of the open records law – which is based on a confusing, 50-year-old definition of what records are public – is important to him.

Rendell's Republican challenger, Lynn Swann, also supports expansion of records subject to disclosure. Unlike Rendell, he hasn't been in a position to do anything about it. Rendell has spent almost his entire public life in positions where he could directly impact reform of the open records law, which starts with the assumption that citizens must prove why a record must be made public.

The governor is awfully late to this party, but we'll welcome him at our table.

And we won't forget, come January, that both he and Swann want to bring the right to know public business in Pennsylvania into the 21st century.

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