In Frank Curry and FOIABuddy v. South Western School District, AP 2024-1311, a school district (“District”) received a request for records related to IT operations, contracts, staff, and IT budget from Frank Curry and...more
In Pa. Office of the Governor v. Brelje, 2024 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 65, at *1 (Commw. Ct. Feb. 23, 2024), the Office of Open Records (“OOR”) concluded that requests for all incoming and outgoing email for two agency employees over...more
In Coleman v. Parkland Sch. Dist., 2023 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 187, at *10 (Commw. Ct. Nov. 8, 2023), a divided Commonwealth Court concluded that the recently enacted Section 712.1 of the Sunshine Act does not permit local...more
In Forrest v. Erie City, AP 2023-1701 (Sept. 28, 2023), Erie City responded to a request for a list of all rental properties registered and licensed in the City in an Excel spreadsheet by providing a PDF conversion of the...more
Methacton Sch. Dist. v. Off. of Open Records of Cmmw., 250 C.D. 2021, 2021 WL 6122163, at *1 (Pa. Cmmw. Dec. 28, 2021). The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania holds that a request for the emails of four individuals over a...more
As an elected school board member, you are looked to as a community leader and are expected to take a leadership role in representing your school district’s interests. In fulfilling this role, many school board members...more
In Allegheny County, tax appeal season has begun for 2021. Every year, County property owners have the opportunity to file an assessment appeal, and as always, an appeal may provide an opportunity for a reduction in your...more
In Scott v West Chester Borough Police Department, AP 2020-1987, the Department denied a request for records identifying the weapons and other equipment possessed by the Department. The request sought documentation that...more
In Anonymous v. Norristown Municipality, AP 2020-2496, the Municipality received a request for records about a police officer from a Requester identified only as “E3E3” that was sent from admin@e3e3.com. The Municipality...more
In Rosner v. Buckingham Township, AP 2020-1364 (“Rosner II”), the Township redacted residents’ names, home addresses, and tax map parcel I.D. numbers from the requested invoices setting forth charges to residents under the...more
In Schultz v. Montgomery County, AP 2020-1280, the Requester sought records related to a County Commissioner’s social media accounts, including sent and received Twitter Direct Messages and private Facebook messages, all...more
In Weik v. Pennsylvania State Police, AP 2020-1139 (October 6, 2020), the Requester sought records related to a fatal police shooting. The State Police identified a responsive Incident Report, but denied the request, arguing,...more
On July 15, 2020, the OOR stated the following in an email:
Two bills related to the Right-to-Know Law and one related to the Sunshine Act have been advancing in the General Assembly.
House Bill 1780 would clarify that...more
In Bradley v. Lehighton Area School District, AP 2019-2068 (Jan. 13, 2019), the OOR confirmed that the scope of videos covered by Act 22 (and, therefore, beyond the reach of the RTKL) is significantly broader than many...more
In Serfass v. Northampton County, AP 2019-1664 (Nov. 7, 2019), the Requester sought 911 call records. The County denied the Request, arguing that the responsive records were exempt Section 708(b)(18) of the RTKL, which...more
Previously, this blog address how the Office of Open Records, in Steinheiser v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, AP 2019-1877 (Nov. 6, 2019), confirmed that local agencies are not required to provide original...more
In Steinheiser v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, AP 2019-1877 (Nov. 6, 2019), the Requester sought the business card of SEPTA’s Open Records Officer. In response, SEPTA provided a scanned copy of the card. ...more
In Maciejewski v. Southern Columbia Area School District, AP 2019-1094 (Sept 16, 2019), the Request sought all emails between 10 District email addresses over a 14-day time frame. The District argued that certain responsive...more
In Frederick v. Caln Township Police Department, AP 2019-1059 (Aug. 1, 2019), the requester sought an update on his case against another individual by submitting a RTKL request to the police department (“Department”). ...more
In Ruland v. Southern York County School District, AP 2019-0567 (Aug. 8, 2019), the OOR concluded that, in certain circumstances, emails from community members to an agency can be public records.
In this case, the...more
In Friedman v. Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, AP 2019-1182 (Aug. 28, 2019), the Office of Open Records (“OOR”) discussed whether all records delivered to and in the possession of an agency are records “of” that agency...more
An entity must be a Commonwealth agency, a local agency, a judicial agency or a legislative agency to be subject to the RTKL. 65 P.S. § 67.302. In Pysher v. Clinton Township Vol. Fire Co., 1237 C.D. 2017, 2019 WL 2017782, at...more
We’ve addressed whether RTKL request are sufficiently specific before, but it’s worth reexamining the issue again in the context of requests for electronic correspondence because requesters frequently make broad requests for...more
When responding to large requests, Open Records Officer frequently identify records that are responsive to one part of a request but not another. Does the response letter need to identify which records are responsive to each...more
Last week, we discussed how the OOR concluded that, for the most part, Taser discharge reports are public records. This week, we’ll examine whether policies related to Tasers are public records. In Ciavaglia v. Newtown...more