Friday, April 10, 2009

Official: Rendell Administration foils open-records law

Good story in today's edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer by reporter Angela Couloumbis about how Gov. Ed Rendell is going out of his way to block public access to government documents.

That assessment comes from Terry Mutchler, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Office of Public Records. Mutchler has written a letter to the governor expressing her concerns about his secretive administration.

Makes you wonder what the governor has to hide from Pennsylvania taxpayers.

From Couloumbis' story:
In the three-page letter, obtained by The Inquirer, Mutchler revealed a list of her concerns over how the administration has dealt with her and her staff - as well as individual records requests - since she was tapped to lead the open-records office in June.

According to her letter, the situation has gotten so bad that lawyers in Rendell's office have put representatives of every state agency on notice not to even take her calls. Everything has to be in writing, the lawyers insist.

"At a maximum, these examples demonstrate an anti-open-government spirit," Mutchler, a reporter turned lawyer, lamented in her letter to Rendell, written late last month.

She continued: "Some agencies ... are using the Right-to-Know law as a shield with which to block information rather than a tool with which to open records of government."
Read the full story at the newspaper's Web site.

Originally posted at TONY PHYRILLAS