BCT Editorial – 6/8/06

This page was last updated on June 8, 2006.

Right choice; Editorial; Beaver County Times; June 8, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Beaver County Commissioners were right to side with public’s right to know

“The Beaver County Commissioners deserve credit for protecting the public’s right to know.

“Last week, the commissioners rejected a proposal that would have removed the name-search function for all property owners from the county’s property assessment Web site.

“Striking this function from the options was seen as a way to placate Beaver County judges, who had sought to have their names kept off the county Web site. President Judge Robert Kunselman issued a court order on April 24 requiring that the names of judges be removed from the county’s Web site, the public-access terminals in the assessment office and the office’s compact disc of properties that are sold each month.

“The commissioners appealed to Commonwealth Court.

“The matter didn’t end there. The commissioners and Judge Deborah Kunselman, who was appointed to represent the county judges, reached the proposed agreement that would have removed the name-search function for all property owners. At that time, the county’s appeal was withdrawn and Robert Kunselman, who is Deborah Kunselman’s father-in-law, vacated his court order.

“But after thinking it over for a week, the commissioners decided to stick with the status quo.

“What was heartening about their decision is that the commissioners came down on the side of the public having access to public records about public officials.

“‘We’re going to keep everybody’s name online,’ commissioners Chairman Dan Donatella said. ‘The thinking behind that is that it’s public record.’

“Removing the name-search function after making it available to the public for five years ‘doesn’t make any sense,’ Donatella said. ‘We don’t want to begin a process ... of trying to deny certain records to the public.’

“Commissioner Charlie Camp said the county has invested heavily in making public records available on the Internet, and removing the function would have been regressive. ‘I didn’t want to go backward from that, even though legally we could,’ he said.

“Their attitudes and policies are refreshingly rare in Pennsylvania, which has open-records and open-meetings laws that are aimed at minimizing the public’s right to know while maximizing the ways in which public officials, elected and appointed, can avoid public scrutiny.

“We hope the judges recognize the merit of the commissioners’ position and drop their effort to remove their names from the Web site.”

[RWC] I expend a lot of time illustrating why I believe Times editorials support wrong positions. This time, though, I have to agree with the sentiment expressed in this editorial and previous Times positions on this topic.