The Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg (FILE PHOTO)
A local state representative says fulfilling too many right-to-know requests is interfering with the ability of local government to operate smoothly, which is why he has proposed legislation that would require commercial entities to pay a fee in order to file them.
State Rep. Justin Simmons (R-131). (FILE PHOTO)
In a news release Tuesday, State Rep. Justin Simmons (R-131) said his House Bill 283 was passed by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority of 177-15 this week.
Under the proposed law, each person who submits a Right-to-Know request would have to indicate whether the request is being made for a commercial purpose, and government offices would be permitted to charge search, review and duplication fees when responding to commercial requests.
According to the proposal, “the fees must be reasonable and cannot be established with the intent or effect of excluding individuals from access to records but should instead deter businesses from using these offices for commercial gain at the taxpayers’ expense.”
“Commercial purpose” is defined by the language included in the bill as follows:
(1) The use of a record for any of the following purposes:
(i) Selling or reselling any portion of the record.
(ii) Obtaining names and addresses from the record for the purpose of commercial solicitation.
(iii) Any other purpose through which the requester can reasonably expect to generate revenue.
Nonprofit educational or noncommercial scientific institutions using right-to-know requests in conjunction with scholarly or scientific research, as well as news media, journalists and authors who use them for purposes of “news gathering or dissemination in a newspaper, periodical, book, digital publication or radio or television news broadcast” are specifically exempted from the requirements under the proposed bill.
According to Simmons’ news release, House Bill 283 is “intended to balance the importance of the general public’s right to know with the value of preserving the ability of local governments to juggle their many responsibilities and serve their taxpayers” and will also “disincentivize private entities from abusing the Right-to-Know process for financial gain.”
“The resources of local government offices may be quickly overwhelmed by a large volume of Right-to-Know requests made for profit-seeking purposes,” Simmons said in the release. “When local governments have to dedicate time and energy to fulfilling public records requests from business enterprises, some of which originate from other regions of the Commonwealth or even out-of-state, it is the taxpayer who suffers.”
House Bill 283 now heads to the state Senate for consideration.
