Pa. open records law has unfinished business
Pennsylvania’s incoming transparency official believes his appointment will have no effect on pending revisions to the state’s Open Records law.
Proposed updates to the 7-year-old law are still being hashed out by lawmakers. The tweaks would expand the law’s scope to bring college campus police records into the public eye. Other changes would clarify parts of the law that have led to a deluge of record requests from groups including prison inmates and commercial interests.
Longtime state Senate aide Erik Arneson, tapped by Gov. Tom Corbett to head the Office of Open Records, said most of the proposed updates to the “Right to Know” law are widely supported.
“I don’t think that whether I am physically located in this office or a couple hundred yards to the north makes any difference in the bill’s likelihood of passage,” said Arneson, who has served as a spokesman for two Senate majority leaders, including the recently deposed Sen. Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware.
Arneson’s new gig begins Tuesday.
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