State Resources

Sunshine Week is happy to post state-specific resources provided by press associations and others. Please send materials for consideration to: sunshineweek@asne.org.

Pennsylvania:

Addresses Not Exempt When Seeking 911 Response Logs, By Niles S. Benn, Esq., and Terence J. Barna, Esq., Benn Law Firm, York, PA: While the legal battle over release of public-school employee home addresses has continued to rage in Pennsylvania’s appellate courts, another aspect of the home address debate is settled. In Czech v. County of York, a unanimous panel of the Commonwealth Court clarified the parameters of the Right-to-Know Law’s exemption for 911 records and information, holding that the Law does not exempt address information from “time response logs.” Read more

Open Records Still a Work in Process, By Kim de Bourbon, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition: Four years ago, Pennsylvania’s new “Right to Know Law” went into effect and gave citizens more access to government records of all kinds. Much of the state and local government, however, still operates in the shadows, and many documents that are routinely part of the public record in other states are still off limits here … or officials act as though they are. Some of that — a lot of that — has to do with sections of the law that are vaguely written and riddled with “gray area.” Many provisions need to be clarified, and some need to be changed outright. Four years out, there is still a lot of confusion about how parts of the law should be interpreted. Read more

South Carolina

The South Carolina Press Association offers free online materials for anyone to use during Sunshine Week, including house ads, a cartoon, op-eds on state FOI issues, and other resources. All can be found on the South Carolina Press Association website.